These are the consequence of the relentless past and present exploits of the rich and powerful searching for land, treasures and people to exploit, through colonization, invasion and war. Today, this push is costing so much to those living carefully, in sensitive parts of our planet, and who have so much less, trying to maintain a delicate balance with nature — learned from centuries of experience but undermined by the greed of others far away.

Great Waves

Great waves of migration have built the complex and dynamic fabric of countries across the world. Those waves have often been generated by exploitation and cruelty: the Atlantic slave trade or the entrapment of people through bonded and indentured labor, like the Indians who came to South Africa to work in the sugar fields. Those migrants, whatever the reason behind their movement, contributed to building the infrastructure of their new societies, like the Irish diaspora who fled intense poverty and famine to build roads and canals in the UK, the US and Australia, or the Chinese migrants who built the railways across the United States.

The Irish fled poverty and unemployment created by centuries of colonial exploitation by the British. They waited on the backstreets of north London for building work, facing blatant, unashamed racism in the form of discrimination in housing — â€śNo Irish, dogs or blacks” — no real or protection from accidents. Those now leaving Ireland for work are more likely to be IT specialists from the burgeoning software industry benefiting from an education system that invests in skills.

The postwar flowering of modernist design and architecture in the UK was enriched by emigres and refugees fleeing fascism in Germany and occupied Europe. Take, for instance, the influence on ceramics by the brilliant modernist potter and teacher Dame Lucie Rie, who left Austria in 1938 to escape the Nazis and found refuge in London.

Or think of the production design of the Bond movies and the iconic Stanley Kubrick films, including the war room in “Dr. Strangelove,” and the exquisite and lyrical evocation of the British aristocratic life in “Barry Lyndon,” all designed by Jewish refugee Sir Ken Adams, who left Berlin in 1934 and became a fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force. He inspired the imagination of so many children with the creation of the star of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” — the car. Transport treasures were designed by Czech Jewish refugee Tom Karen, who left his home in Brno at the age of 13 and designed the beloved Raleigh Chopper children’s bicycle.

The building of Britain’s national treasure, the National Health Service (NHS) has been on the shoulders of nurses from the Caribbean, many arriving during the Windrush years following World War II, and whose children subsequently suffered under the cruel injustices of the “hostile environment,” a Tory government policy that tried to deny thousands of innocent people who had grown up in the UK their rights as British citizens. Expert doctors and health workers have also joined the United Kingdom from across Africa, India, Bangladesh and many other countries near and far. The iconic was designed by Berthold Lubekin from Georgia.

Postwar reconstruction required labor and skills in abundance. The flagship showcase in the great celebration of the new world of peace and growth, the Festival of Britain and the Royal Festival Hall, were designed by the London County Council as a project for the public good. It brought together talented young architects, including German-born Peter Moro, who arrived in London in 1936, penniless and unable to speak any English.

The 2012 London Olympics showcased the glorious undulating swimming pool, whose architect, Zaha Hadid, came to the UK from Iraq as a student and became one of the most revered architects in the world. The ArcelorMittal Orbit built to view the site games, designed by Indian-born artist Anish Kapoor, who became the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art in London.

It is the same story across the world. In the United States, the Smithsonian Museum and the National Mall in Washington were designed by the Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye, who also designed the Holocaust Memorial and the learning center planned for Westminster.

Global Citizens

This year, Refugee Week takes place during an unprecedented crisis that highlights our connectivity and the importance of open borders. In the UK, over 20% of health workers are from a black, Asian, minority ethnic (BAME) background. We now know that those from BAME communities are at from COVID-19. to a study by The Guardian, six in 10 of the 200 NHS staff who died from the disease by end of May came from BAME communities.

The skills and talents of global citizens have built, changed and enhanced our cities and our lives. We all gain from those who bring us skills, talents and determination along with their suitcases from around the world. And it also makes economic sense. to the Refugee Council, some 1,200 medically-qualified refugees are on the British Medical Association’s list. While it costs around £25,000 to support a refugee doctor to practice in the UK, training a new doctor costs between £200,000 and £250,000.

The Refugee Council hosts the important project, , which works with UK mentors and runs training that will help refugee doctors learn not only the language, but also the subtle nuances of the NHS that will allow them to add vital resources to the struggling system. This has never been more important than now, with the COVID-19 crisis illustrating so vividly the exceptional contribution made by refugees and migrants to our health and care services.

Without their talent, courage, dedication and expertise, Britain’s health and care systems would have collapsed, yet many of the staff working under certain have had to fight to ensure that they can access the very health system they are sustaining. A heroic struggle has been led by a Syrian refugee and filmmaker Hassan Akkad, volunteering for a vital job cleaning hospitals during the pandemic, who, along with many others, was threatened with a ruling that meant he would have to pay for access to health care in a system designed to be free at the point of need for all. His courageous and powerful testimony ensured that this inequity was scrapped for all health workers.

celebrates our global common citizenship and offers us all opportunities to learn more about what is given by those who have to sacrifice their homelands to seek peace, freedom and the chance to build bridges. It also gives us a chance to understand the profound challenges that refugees and migrants experience — so often denied rights, impoverished and humiliated, facing the risk of being under Britain’s current immigration rules.

The Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group not only visits and sustains those unjustly detained at the Gatwick detention center, but has organized inspiring walks over the last five years with those who have experienced unjust detention to highlight this injustice and to campaign to end indefinite detention. They have worked so hard to bring in new supporters, working with brilliant writers like Patrick Gale, Ali Smith, Kamila Shamsie and Gillian Slovo (a child refugee from apartheid South Africa herself), musicians like Ibrahim Aziz, and various artists. This year’s will be a virtual event with the theme of building bridges. All global citizens can participate, walking wherever they are and sharing their experience by joining the at Refugee Tales with other supporters and survivors of unjust detention.  

Without the skills of those who make such sacrifices and endure so much to leave their countries of birth, the NHS would be unable to cope, and creativity in design, music, art and architecture would be weakened. All of us as global citizens would pay the price of this evisceration in every aspect of our lives. This Refugee Week there is so much to celebrate, so many heroes to honor, but also so many more battles that must be fought if we are to keep building vibrant bridges of love, trust and respect.

*[Correction: This article previously referred to Sir David Adjaye as Ghanaian-Tanzanian. Updated on June 16, 2020, at 17:50 GMT.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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British rule has cast a long shadow over Ireland. Now 27 EU countries, large and small, are defending the Irish Republic’s right to maintain a frictionless and open border with Northern Ireland, as mandated by the historic Good Friday Agreement. Why did no one seem to see the issue of the Irish border spoiling all the little Englander plans for their new small-island world? How did it come to be a surprise, with 800 years of painful history to muse on?

Sea of Blood

The problem is that in looking back to a supposedly glorious past in “taking back control,” the British are looking back at a legacy that was built on a sea of blood and injustice. It is a history of cruelty, exploitation and neglect. During the 16^th and 17^th centuries, the wholesale colonialization of Ireland accelerated as land was stolen from the Irish people, who were punished for using their own language, forbidden to own land and denied any political rights. Catholics experienced discrimination in every aspect of their lives. A system of vassalage reduced the rural poor to tiny plots of barren land, obliged to pay extortionate rents to local and absentee landlords in England.

To this day, the population of Ireland has not from the human destruction of the great famine of 1845-49 when the potato harvest failed. Potatoes constituted the main diet of the impoverished rural communities, and while butter, cheese and wheat continued to be exported, and a wide range of food was available, the rural poor were left to die in terrible circumstances. The landlords showed no mercy for the starving population, the largely ignored by the British ruling class. A million died and a million emigrated, with the population falling by 25% within a decade. The pain and horror of this disaster for the people of Ireland was a powerful driver for their determination to fight for independence and still resonates today.

Over many years after the famine, successive waves of resistance and struggle for independence continued, culminating in the , during which a republic was proclaimed by the leaders of the rebellion against colonial rule. In the British reprisals that followed, the rebel leaders were , and hundreds were killed. The severity of the backlash heightened the Irish people’s determination to free themselves and increased support for the republican Sinn Féin party, which won decisively in the , gaining 73 out of a 105 seats reserved for Ireland in for the House of Commons. Sinn Fein were not prepared to take their seats in Westminster — and refuse to this day — and set up an alternative government in Ireland, the first Dail Eireann.

The British government, however, refused to honor the results of the election, and the unionists in the north of Ireland threatened violence. The War of Independence started in 1919, lasting until 1921, when a truce was called. The result was the partitioning of Ireland and the creation of the Irish Free State, which had control of 26 of the island’s 32 counties. In 1948 it was renamed the Republic of Ireland, though this was contended by those who believed the republic should include the whole of Ireland. The six counties of the northĚý became Northern Ireland. A border with no historical or geographical relevance was created to maintain a unionist majority in the six counties of the wealthier industrialized north, which then continued to be ruled by Britain as Northern Ireland and as part of the United Kingdom.

The unionists then maintained power through the next eight decades by gerrymandering, discrimination in housing, in the workplace and at the ballot box. The most basic principles of democracy and enfranchisement were absent. This was subsequently challenged by the of the late 1960s. The violent response to these peaceful protests, including the murder of innocent civilians in the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1972, escalated into a decades-long armed conflict between the British government and the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. The Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998 with immense effort across the whole of Ireland and the United Kingdom, with international mediation. It is founded on key principles including an with the republic — which is now threatened by Brexit.

Arbitrary Borders

The policy of imposing arbitrary borders, created to solve the problems caused by colonial rule, was a model the British followed with disastrous results, leaving a legacy of pain and conflict to this day — in places like India, Pakistan, Palestine and Nigeria. Nearly a quarter of the world was once under the extractive and rapacious rule of the , at its height before the Second World War. The gentle pink of the maps did not show what was stolen, how many died — how culture, history and heritage were denied.

Ireland’s place in the world, its success as an exporter of its rich culture — music, art, literature, technology and expertise — have all been given the opportunity to flower within the EU’s diverse trading block, built on the free movement of people and goods. Dublin has become an international, vibrant and dynamic city, with a lively and youthful culture that challenges the reactionary forces that have dominated Irish politics for so long. A modern, truly European and sophisticated country has emerged from the crushing impact of its past oppression. It has thrown off the shackles of the Catholic Church in recent years, voting for gay marriage and to end the country’s cruel anti-abortion law — the 8^th Amendment that prevented all recourse to safe termination even if the price was the death of the mother.

These issues continue to divide neighboring Northern Ireland, with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which currently gives the Conservative government its parliamentary majority in Westminster, still clinging to fundamentalist attitudes toward and the LGBTQ community. Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union, but the DUP is committed to leaving the EU and remaining in the bitter past. It has been embroiled in corruption scandals like the “” debacle that led to the collapse of the power-sharing agreement in Stormont, leaving Northern Ireland for over two years and counting.

Earlier this month, in the absence of a governing body, MPs in Westminster voted to extend rights to abortion and gay marriage to Northern Ireland.

The billions that were promised by Teresa May’s Conservatives to DUP leader Arlene Foster was a hopeless attempt at vote-buying in order to secure a working majority in the UK Parliament. The DUP’s attachment to its failing powers becomes narrow and blinkered in the context of the electoral successes of Sinn Féin across the whole of Ireland and the increasingly progressive changes that have transformed life in the republic.

Taking, Not Giving

The British have a long history of wanting to continue to take from their erstwhile colonies but not being prepared to give back. They benefited, after the destruction of the Second World War, from the Caribbean immigrants who were encouraged to come here to provide desperately needed skills, only to cruelly reject these children of the Ěýwho drove our buses, nursed our patients and helped rebuild our country. Despite the scandal, the National Health Service is once again to make for the shortfall in staff following the EU referendum vote.

Yes, curry may be Britain’s most popular national dish, but discrimination and the toxic impact of the UK Home Office’s policies have created a “hostile environment” fostered in the six years of Theresa May as secretary of state have continued under Amber Rudd and now Sajid Javid. We have seen so many cases of injustice and abuse, most recently with the to academics from Africa visiting the UK for vital work on issues such as the Ebola epidemic.

The initial stages of the attempt by the Home Office to manage the question of have been marked by incompetence, confusion and uncertainty, bearing the hallmarks of another episode of discrimination and hostility. The building of new barriers, a cornerstone of Brexit, will impoverish the United Kingdom and sow disunity and disorder, unpicking the fabric of our society built on a free movement for all — both for those who have brought their skills and talents from other countries in Europe and for British citizens who have chosen to retire in sunnier places or work in other countries on the continent.

Those of Irish heritage in the UK have flooded their embassy with requests for an Irish passport, allowing holders to continue to travel and work across Europe as free citizens. The rest of us will be in the slow queue, going backward.

The burden of history is weighing heavily on Britain as it battles with its fantasies of taking back control and the bizarre idea that a trading bloc is actually a cruel colonizing power. So many myths have taken hold, with Brexiters embracing victimhood. The real politics and history of the border between the republic and Northern Ireland, created by the colonial past, have somehow been forgotten along with the fragility of a hard-earned peace.

The idea that an Ireland it once totally controlled and exploited having any power over the mighty British bulldog seems an unreasonable reversal of fortunes, feeding the fantasy that Britain can return to its “glorious past” when it ruled the world, building its wealth and strength on the misery of others in countries both nearby and far away.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The flight of the Rohingya people is an exodus of unprecedented scale and speed.ĚýSince August, over have fled Rakhine State in Myanmar.ĚýAround 300,000 of them are , 20,000 who are completely alone, orphaned by the brutality of the Myanmar military. Every refugee has been driven by violence, terror and the threat of death. Loved ones have been lost along the way, homes destroyed, . Many of the people we spoke to told the same stories — throats slit, bodies burned (), women raped, neither children nor the elderly spared, with men at highest risk of brutal summary execution.

We saw the smoke rising from the burning villages near the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. Bangladeshi locals told us they see about 20 such fires every day. I was accompanied by a remarkable , with whom we had worked over many years on different and challenging issues — the stigma of HIV/AIDS, the impact of the . I recently met up with him in London, and he shared with me his anger and anguish about the Rohingya who have found refuge in his country, Bangladesh. In his determination to focus attention on their suffering, to drive change and build support for these persecuted people in their exodus of pain, he asked if I would go with him and help in any way possible. I volunteered immediately, knowing that his understanding of the context in Bangladesh and his commitment to challenging injustice would bring a special energy and focus, and that I would learn so much from him because we would be moving in very different circles to those I had experienced working with established international charities.

Through Shahidul I met a young journalist from Myanmar, who cannot be named for his protection. He explained that when land is burned, it reverts to government ownership, so it is no accident that , where valuable minerals are ready for exploitation once the farmers have been scorched off their land, murdered or banished. The journalist also gave an explanation for the acceptance by so many people in Myanmar of the longstanding cruelty and discrimination inflicted on the Rohingya, with decades of dictatorship having blunted critical thinking and years of sanctions having poisoned trust in Western media. The people of Myanmar have become easy prey for propaganda by those in power, who still comprise many of the military figures from the darks days of the dictatorship, including some of the closest advisors at the highest level of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government.

The consequences of this have been dire. In their flight, the Rohingya are leaving behind all they know and love. At the Balukhali camp in Cox’s Bazar, a young woman said to me: “I did not want to leave my home to come here. I had two cows and land, and now I have nothing.” Looking at the rain-soaked bare earth, seeing her shivering, emaciated children, the prospect of returning to a life where she could milk her cows and tend to her crops seemed a distant dream.

The Lost Children

Walking through the sparkling green paddy fields near Teknaf, a small town on the river Naf that borders Myanmar, the calm swishing of the boats rowing downstream ushers in an awareness of the scale of what these Rohingya had lost and left behind: homes, rivers to fish, fields to plough, animals to tend, space for children to play, and the friendship and comfort of families and neighbors. Standing atop an old Bangladeshi army watchtower, overlooking the burning villages across the water, no more than half a mile away, looking backward at the simple but peaceful villages of Cox’s Bazar, you have a vivid sense of their past and their painful present — hungry, dislocated and alone, families separated in the flight or murdered before they escaped, villages broken up and social life destroyed. The most painful of all is to see the lost and frightened children in the camps. Even those who have not been orphaned or lost, they no longer have their smiles.

I saw a child of about age 3 piteously crying for his mother. I saw a mother crying for her lost children. Were they connected? Was the lost child hers? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The toddler had already disappeared into the chaos, and the woman was still looking for her children. Thankfully, Handicap International and other charities have set up projects to reunite loved ones — an immense job in the vast, overcrowded camps.

Later at the Sadar Hospital in Cox’s Bazar, we met a woman named Senowara Begum. She had been shot three times and deeply traumatized by the loss of two of her three children, adding intolerable grief to the pain of her wounds.

At Tefnar, we met Abdul Basar, struggling with clumsy adult wooden crutches, his leg amputated after severe burns. His father was also injured and in a hospital far away, his mother dead and his cousin Abdul BasarĚý— just an inch taller and a year olderĚý— was the only person to care for him as he struggled to walk, his delicate face pinched with pain and anxiety.

Trauma Trap

The logistical challenges of the makeshift camps are overwhelming. The tarpaulins have been hastily fixed to bamboo poles, the trees torn from the hills to make space, narrow, winding steps hacked into the sandy soil. Water flows over latrines, spreading the stench of sewage everywhere and with it the fatal risk of cholera, with other diseases like measles and polio waiting in the wings. There is a risk of a major setback to the advances fought so hard for in Bangladesh, which has managed to eradicate polio despite extreme poverty but is now facing the prospect of it returning with more pain and maiming. The lack of clean water, pollution and the urgent need for medical care and food is frightening. Even the most experienced aid workers have said that this is the worst refugee crisis they have ever seen.

© Shahidul Alam

After the flight to safety other terrors await: the risk of hunger, trafficking, loneliness, loss and death. Some of the sickest and most traumatically injured have managed to get to the hospital. The Sadar District Hospital in Cox’s Bazar is overcrowded and short on both staff and medicine. The heroic health workers are doing their best to help. The resident medical officer, Dr. Shaheen Chowdury, has immaculate records of the injured and sick: gunshot wounds, burns, pneumonia, near drowning, obstructed labor. The hard journey and the camp conditions have taken their toll on the weakest and the most vulnerable.

Narshida, a lively young girl, no more than 10 years old, was smiling at us, glad of a break from her sad task of caring for her handsome young father as he lay immobile on a mattress on the floor, too weak to respond to his daughter’s loving ministrations. As we left, she was carefully stroking his forehead. Fatima was cradling her tiny baby, delicately trying to encourage her little girl to eat. She had traveled for 20 days, and the journey had taken a terrible toll on her child’s health.

Another father held his daughter, Nurkajol, who is only 9, in his arms, her broken leg immobilized, weighted by a simple plastic bottle filled with water to help the healing and prevent the pain. But on her face agony was vivid and present, her eyes listless, her limbs so thin and the trauma of her experience at the hands of the military an unwelcome and constant companion. Her father explained that when the military came and attacked their village, in the panic they lost Nurkajol. Then, before fleeing across the border, they crept back into the village and found her alone, a frail little girl that the military had beaten with their rifle butts.

The life force and curiosity of these children shines through the pain of their exile. In northern Rakhine State they suffered severe discrimination, having access to only the most minimal education, but right now there are thousands of children in these camps across Bangladesh with even fewer opportunities. Amidst the pressure of so many people and so many children, schooling has not yet been given priority. Education must be properly provided to help these children survive and thrive. In the chaos of the camps this is a challenge, with so much else needing to be done. But these children are the future, and education can provide a way out of the trap of trauma.

Well-Meaning, Ill-Advised

The government of Bangladesh has brought some order to the camps that have spontaneously sprung up, housing over 800,000 Rohingya. Longer-term plans being discussed by theĚý government have suggested moving refugees off the hills to , but this presents a major logistical challenge. The Bangladeshi government and nongovernmental organizations are doing their best with the problematic geography of an unstable hilly environment, which makes it difficult to move people or services effectively and also makes the job of water engineers designing latrines and wells difficult.

The Bangladeshi military is also organizing and building basic infrastructure and doing crowd control, which is badly needed when so many frightened people are trapped together in cramped conditions. Local and international organizations desperately need to scale up the relief effort, but the government needs to be assured that the organizations coming in are the right ones for the job.

Bangladeshi charities such as Brac are significant players, with a local and international presence, and other local charities are providing important services, including specialist help for those who have become overwhelmed by trauma. The clinical psychologists I met at a mental health service center run by , a local medical charity working in partnership with , said they believed everybody in the camp was traumatized. But they were only able to treat the very worst affected, like the young girl lying outside the tent clinic who had been rendered speechless by the violence she had witnessed and, in her torment, was violently attacking her own mother. She is only one of the endless thousands in need of mental-health assistance.

Refugees sleeping underneath a cyclone shelter in Teknaf. © Shahidul Alam

The United Kingdom has the advantage of the Disasters Emergency Committee that, when it comes to crises of this scale, enables a unified approach to raising funds and support by coordinating major charities like , , Concern, , and half a dozen other experienced organizations. has set up clinics, and are also on the ground in Bangladesh, but it still is not enough when the continuing exodus of pain is driving tens of thousands of new refugees every day into the already seriously overcrowded camps.

The logistics and transport links are a challenge. Well-meaning but ill-advised attempts to contribute have not helped: When we were there, the Rohingya were busy trying to clear endless piles of muddy and useless clothing that have been tossed out of the windows of passing cars by well-intentioned local people. A trampled sweater in the mud was a sad sign that expert help is needed, not woollen clothes in the brutal heat of the Asian summer.

The Rohingya have suffered decades of discrimination and stigma and have endured so much on their tortuous journey to safety. Just the other day I heard from the talented , who worked with us in Cox’s Bazar, that he had been back to the border and was devastated to see that new refugees escaping the brutality in Myanmar were being prevented from entering Bangladesh. It is the duty of the international community, governments, national and international charities and all of us as citizens of the world to put our best efforts into helping the Rohingya and to raise our voices wherever we are to defend their right to return to their lost lives, lands and to a better future.

*[For more of Shahidul Alam’s work, visitĚý. This article was updated on November 15, 2017, at 23:00 GMT.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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I can still remember the thunder of police horses in Grosvenor Square, the chaos, the anger and the fear, the visceral hatred for the United States and its pointless, bullying and brutal war against the Vietnamese people. My 14-year-old sister was with our mother, a veteran of the May Day demonstrations in the 1930s and 1940s, who explained how a handful of marbles could be used as protection when thrown under the thundering hooves.

My mother had been arrested by the police during the late 1950s in South Africa, where she moved after the war to be with my father. There, she had driven through the police lines after they had stopped her car: In it was a brave group of South Africans who were part of the Ěýignited by a steep rise in the fares that were a financial disaster to the impoverished Africans who had to travel from the townships many miles outside Johannesburg to work. Moreover, they could only move with an official pass and were hounded and harassed at every turn.

Hundreds of thousands walked the 22 miles to protest the fare hikes, and honorable white people like my mother Jenny drove as many as they could to save them the long walk. The boycotters had to endure this long march after a hard day of work back to the bleak townships bereft of electricity, sewage systems or any decent infrastructure. Her patience snapped when an elderly woman was harassed and forced to unpack her box of meagre possessions, and so the next police line, the next petty harassment of the bus boycotters became the last straw. My mother drove through the police line and ended up being arrested and facing a frightening punishment—a possible death sentence for threatening the life of a police officer.

There is a great photo of her remonstrating with a baton-wielding officer. Of course, in apartheid South Africa her white skin provided protection and she escaped with a fine. The bus boycotters were successful and the fare hikes delayed.

Later, a peaceful demonstration at Sharpeville in 1960 to protest the pass books forced on every African turned to tragedy as 69 innocent citizens were gunned down. The incident ignited outraged protests and demonstrations across South Africa, where a state of emergency was declared and the African National Congress (ANC) banned, and the world, drawing a condemnation from the United Nations (UN).

Keeping Up the Pressure

The power of the crowd and the dedication of demonstrators was a vital part of the long, hard battle to end the cruel apartheid regime, where people were denied rights on the basis of the color of their skin—a highly organized and articulated system written into law and discriminating against people in every conceivable area of life, from whom you were allowed to love to where you could live.

For the South African people, the constant vigils outside the country’s embassies around the world and at sport events were vital in keeping the pressure and attention on the apartheid regime. In South Africa itself, the courage of the crowd was evident in so many ways, and in particular the extraordinary heroism and leadership of young people during the 1976 when schoolchildren demonstrated against the compulsory introduction of Afrikaans as the main language in all schools. Rejecting that all African children should be deprived of any decent education, they fearlessly marched against the police and the military, their courage burnt into our hearts by the Ěý.

Back then, these crowds communicated to power through word of mouth by the very risky production of posters and leaflets, and elsewhere the voice of enlightened and brave journalists published in print and shown on TV. In South Africa, airtime was denied to the population lest it become a way for people to know what was happening in their country and the world. The tools of communication are different now in the internet age, but the power of people protesting together is the same.

Protest for the Internet Age

At the Women’s March gathering outside the US Embassy in London, and again at the protests against the Donald Trump visit to the United Kingdom, we have witnessed the continuing relevance of the demonstration in this internet age.

I remember hearing a brilliant talk a decade ago from Gene Hashmi, a Greenpeace digital guru running a campaign to from a damaging development driven by the steel company TATA. He had designed the whole campaign to be digital only, but he had to learn from early failure—that to bring it to life and save the lives of these rare turtles he had to design some real-life opportunities for people to create a connection, a crowd and chance to share their passion for these precious creatures. As he himself put it: You have to have offline/online integration.

The extraordinary convening power of the internet age gave us, at the point of Trump’s inauguration, the power of the crowd in awesome numbers across the world. But it also had the handmade, creative brilliance of the pink pussy hats. It still required the human effort to get on coaches, into cars and walk to protest Trump’s loathsome attitudes and behavior—an experience my sister’s friend Grace from Minneapolis who, at 70 years of age, having traveled on a coach for 15 hours, described as life-changing.

In London, the distances were smaller but the creativity, the diversity and the sheer chutzpah were awesome. Nearly all the posters handcrafted inventive, funny, rude, cheeky, feisty and challenging signs, and the pink hats conceived in the US were embraced and given a British twist. As one protester sign proclaimed: “This pussy bites back”—with rather a graphic image.

There is a thrilling new freedom in the power of the crowd both in the speed in which it can be convened and in the energy of events grown without any “central committee” curation. The impromptu Downing Street called by journalist Owen Jones saw a crowd of at least 10,000 in London alone, with demonstrators fashioning placards from old bit of cardboard outside Westminster Station after work. I went with my Iranian-British friend Shabby who works for a charity that works internationally to address extreme poverty and now fears for her ability to visit vital US-based institutions.

Enthused by the people and the placards, longing for one of her own who turned to me: “Now I want to demonstrate for climate change next, can you advise?” Well yes! I sure can.

As a veteran protester, it warms the heart to see so many young people in this new wave. Without them we are lost. Though hats go off to the old ladies, whether they be the demonstrating against the attacks on disabled people and budget cuts—or the noble, older , who a few years ago were campaigning on land rights and threatened the local government that if their demands were not met, they (these septuagenarians) would strip naked and march down the main street. Guess what, dear reader, they won.

Getting Organized

I have witnessed the striking signs of how the demonstrations and campaigns of the future will look. In 2016, after the tragic picture of the death of 3-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, was published, many people felt desperate to show their solidarity with refugees and their anger with an uncaring government. I felt it too, and wondered if anything was being planned. Shortly afterward, a very amateur and scruffy Facebook message was shared around. There was no official logo or branding and I was not sure at all if it was “legitimate.” But I trusted the woman who had sent it—a doughty campaigner Belinda Calaguas whom I knew from ActionAid days—and it suggested meeting at Marble Arch in a couple weeks’ time, so I duly shared the post and determined to go.

As the days passed, the reminders started to look smarter with better graphics and design, but still no branding or logos. I spoke to colleagues at Care International who decided to support it. My own human network was all going, and when we arrived I noticed again an absence of official banners or signage and wondered who had “called” the demo.

It was full of families and friendliness and lots of homemade banners. It was also really big: Many thousands marched off to fill Parliament Square for the rally. The mystery deepened until a young woman, Ros Ereria, took to the stage and explained that she had called for the demo on Facebook expecting friends and family to come.

When she got 90,000 “likes,” she decided to approach the big campaigning groups for help. This is such an interesting change: Instead of Amnesty International or Oxfam inviting an individual to join their demo, Ros was inviting them to join hers. She explained to the rally that she did not belong to any party or organization, but as an independent citizen she had acted—an inspiring demonstration of disintermediation.

The connections that happen offline are critical to the networks happening online—they need to feed each other and not to be seen as better or worse. Nor does the learning or creativity stay in one or the other part of the mix. The value and relationships created through the powerful demonstrations during the Occupy Movement have informed and fueled the uprising of this phase of dynamic and spontaneous protest, the human megaphone, the handmade and authentic, the brave attempts to partner inventively are all honorable legacies. Our ideas and determination have been inspired by everything from Tahir Square to the in France and the courage of the Black Lives Matter movement—all shared links.

, professor of anthropology at Hunter College, has studied these new movements and sees the vivid connectedness: “Rather than the end of identity politics, we see a melding of specific struggles, and the establishment in the moment of alliances leading to mutual trust. Since neoliberalism is broad-based in its assaults on the public welfare, the commons has evolved as a way to address multiple assaults together.”

Viewed through the new and the old style media, these all create a complex weave, difficult to always describe or organize, but a vital part of a powerful trajectory of anger, determination and resistance that needs to remain vigilant, endlessly inventive, responsive and creative.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:ĚýĚý

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The Spanish city of Valencia is famous for its wonderful lace and, of course, its oranges.

It is a beautiful city and has so many talented young people living there, but it also hides some sad secrets. Figures show that the , and this has had an impact on the increasing numbers of people being displaced, excluded. Without a home, without a job, without choices, without the chance to build a decent life—people whom poverty has left stranded on the street.

The delicate fabric of life has been torn asunder by the disaster of the financial crash of 2008. Even despite a strong family network and the recent election of a new progressive municipality, the solutions to the fallout from the challenge of austerity and unemployment have been limited and unrealistic, particularly in addressing the disaster of homelessness.

I was visiting Valencia with Building and Social Housing Foundation to work with the talented team at that runs one of the city’s few day centers. The center is located in the heart of the city and offers homeless people breakfast, a shower and the chance to wash their clothes—those normal everyday tasks we take for granted but which are yet another obstacle for homeless people to feeling included in society.

Trying Out New Ideas

I was in Valencia with Isobel and Kim from the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF), to see the launch of the “pilot of pilots”—an innovative campaign that BSHF are supporting using a model developed in the US by Community Solutions as part of the . This successful campaign took a very different approach to the problem of street homelessness by involving volunteers in meeting homeless people, respecting each person by getting to know them by name, doing rigorous but sensitive surveys that would provide the hard data on age, health status, years on the street but also focus a gentle and empathetic light on each individual person by hearing his or her story.

This process not only motivates and energizes the volunteers but provides such important tools for communicating the urgency of the issue to the wider community, the media and politicians at both local and national level. Over the four years of the campaign, the communities involved found housing for over 100,000 of the most vulnerable rough sleepers in the USA.

BSHF, that runs the , was so inspired by the 2013 winners—100,000 Homes Campaign—that they decided to see if it might work in European cities. Working with the (FEANTSA) to identify organizations and cities that might be open to trying out new ideas.

They knew this was an important opportunity to change the lives of homeless people in Valencia and, as Begoña, the inspirational director of the region for RAIS described: “This was a moment to break out of the status quo.” Her passion for change and her frustration shone through in equal measure.

Excluded at Every Turn

Valencia, Spain © Shutterstock

RAIS Fundación are experienced and determined—every day they see homeless people in their day center and on the street. They hear the sad stories of people turned away from the night shelters because they have mental health problems or difficulties with addiction—the very issues that are often a response to their harsh lives on the street.

We met a man—I will call him Josef—who had travelled to Valencia to pick oranges, who never got paid and became trapped, unable to return to his native Romania. For eleven years he has slept on a park bench. Is it any wonder that he turns to alcohol for comfort and solace? So alone, so little hope for the future, so worried about his need for health care, excluded at every turn by the harsh barriers to help.

It was so moving to see Guadalupe, so young, so energetic, who led our band of volunteers around the dark and frightening corners of the parks and shuttered places around the bus station where homelessness people seek refuge after night has fallen.

Despite a full day at work, her energy and compassion were boundless, her bright pink spectacles and her face shone in the dark. We had to walk very fast to keep up, but she was determined. She knows this area well and comes every Tuesday after work to offer support to those whose only home is the street. She is a volunteer with , who had partnered with RAIS to mobilize over 280 people to volunteer, to go out on the street for three nights to survey and count every homeless person they could find in Valencia.

It was wonderful to see people gathering on the first night, squashed into the RAIS day center, spilling out into the street, so diligent, so determined, so organized. It was remarkable—controlled but not controlling, well thought out but somehow relaxed and friendly at the same time.

Each group of volunteers had an experienced leader, who already understood the realities of the homeless. We also had the insight and knowledge of people who had been or were homeless themselves. They could guide us all and give confidence to their compatriots on the street that all of us, in our high visibility jackets, were on their side and that they could choose to participate or not. As Guadalupe said so clearly to Josef, “You are in charge.”

I was lucky enough to spend two nights working with Migue, a very dedicated professional who works for RAIS, and the quiet knowledgeable and charming Carlos, an older man (well not so old–younger than me) who had worked for 40 years for the same firm but, when they went bankrupt, his life fell apart. No money for rent, at 62 too young to collect his pension, he showed me the bench by a church in the center of Valencia that became his home. He explained it was safer than other places, a streetlight above the bench, water from a fountain nearby to wash. Carlos was immaculately turned out and told me how important and how hard it had been to keep himself clean and tidy when he was sleeping on the street.

© Shutterstock

Carlos had now found a room in a flat and was doing better. He was on our team to help others, still facing the trauma and challenges of having to live your life on the street, how heavy that toll is.

Both he and Migue were such sensitive guides, so patient, so respectful. We met a couple living in a cardboard box—she was pregnant—having already had four children taken into care because they have no home. No privacy, no utilities—just a garden torch for light; no kitchen—just the plastic knives and forks carefully tucked into the top of the box; no running water—just a plastic bottle or two; no door to shut against the world—just a bit of cloth across the cardboard. They had dignity, but their situation denies it every day and every night and RAIS, their partners, the volunteers and BSHF are determined to change this.

So Many Miles

By the end of the three days, so many miles walked, so many important conversations, so many hours spent by the staff and dedicated volunteers, so much data entered far into the night by volunteers, with the expert help of Paul from Community Solutions, whose experience of thousands of surveys of homeless people is mixed with his knowledge of how to combine sensitivity and rigorous evidence. We all knew we had the evidence, the human stories and the data to show that the beautiful city of Valencia has an ugly problem—that the safety net is torn, and that the official figures do not tell the true story nor describe the scale of the problem.

That marathon street count—taken over three long and tiring nights—had shown that over 400 people were homeless and on the street and this was so much higher than the official figures from the by the city council (approximately 79 people in 2015). The reality shows a shocking figure. But it was not shocking to Begoña and her passionate and determined team at RAIS who see so many people with so many difficult stories every day. They already knew that this is a city-wide emergency and that urgent and effective measures must be put in place to get people from the streets into homes as soon as possible. Leaving them on the street is not an option.

We know each day on the street robs years from people’s lives. Everyone must work together to find immediate and effective solutions to rebuild the social fabric of this city, which has so much to be proud of, but can no longer hide this sad, dark and hidden story—of the failure to weave people who are on the street, ignored and excluded, back into a good life in lovely Valencia with its orange trees, its beautiful lace and its proud history of progress and cooperation.

The good news is that the mayor of Valencia and the regional government have already met with RAIS and have announced a Housing First pilot in the city. The log jam is moving and the journey has begun—to end street homelessness in Valencia.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Ěý/ Ěý

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This year started with torrential rain: Bridges swept away in the north of England, my friend Colin’s studio in Yorkshire was under five feet of water and sludge. I thought about this on a long muddy walk on the Isle of Wight recently—the wettest January since records began over a hundred years ago.

Then, after the floods, I saw the disaster of drought in Zimbabwe—once the breadbasket of Africa exporting grain and food, now struggling to feed its people. In some of the areas such as Masvingo where is working, our local data indicate that 80% of crops are failing.

Disaster Unfolding

I was traveling the long miles from Harare with CARE Director Phil Christensen toward Masvingo—a province in Zimbabwe 300 kilometers from Harare, bordering South Africa and Mozambique. Though it is only 500 meters lower in altitude that Harare’s 1,500-meter elevation, the difference has a dramatic effect on the vegetation, even more so in a year affected by drought.

You could see the disaster unfolding, with shrunken maize that will never produce golden corn cobs, a vital staple food made into porridge or grilled as a roadside snack. Those feeble maize plants that will never develop will have a on local children, meaning less food in an area where rural children have their life chances, their physical and intellectual development damaged by malnutrition, a lack of calories and protein at key stages of their childhood development. Rural children in Zimbabwe have a high level of stunting caused by lack of food; food shortages caused by the drought also hit particularly hard.

I visited a school in Chivi, also in Masvingo province, where CARE International is working on an impressive program in partnership with World Vision and the United Kingdom’s Department of International Development, building the confidence and resilience of vulnerable girl children. You could see so clearly the impact of the daily struggle to get enough food. These poorer girls who were so thin, with the anxious expression that is so apparent in children who know that every aspect of life—food, water, security—cannot be taken for granted.

Challenging Solutions

Phil is an expert in agriculture and understands not only the problem, but also some of the most effective solutions. He also understands the impressive resilience and courage of the Zimbabwean people—a country with challenges but also real human assets. For a start, it has impressive levels of literacy of nearly 96%, but the economy is facing a difficult year with of only 1.2% predicted and major problems caused by the drought.

The courageous and resilient people of Zimbabwe are struggling with so many problems, but the scale of the challenges they are facing in this drought is simply more than they can manage alone…

The solutions are complex and challenging, but the CARE team in Zimbabwe has real depth and national and local respect, working in the country since 1992. Phil himself has had two lengthy spells since 2000, a calm and thoughtful companion for our long hours on the dry and dusty roads, able to work the whole day in the burning sun without so much a cup of tea or a sip of water. I fear I am made of weaker stuff and had to fuel myself constantly from his water stocks and my snack pack.

Phil is worried about the impact of this drought and knows the carefully planned work they are doing must have more support to deliver what is so badly needed, particularly in the parched and dry lands of Masvingo site of the extraordinary Great Zimbabwe Ruins—a powerful expression of the ingenuity of the people of this beautiful country. These are the remains of an 11^th to 15^th-century city-state with impressive 10 meter-high, intricate dry stone built walls where the Zimbabwe birds—the national symbol of the country—were found.

I visited them over 20 years ago, and they are a reminder of a rich and complex history that existed before the invasion and colonization of this country by Cecil Rhodes in 1888, a colonial entrepreneur who, with his British South Africa Company, caused so much pain and loss for the people who lived there. What then became Rhodesia had endured so many years of ruthless occupation by those who plundered its riches.

Working Hard to Survive

The courageous and resilient people of Zimbabwe are struggling with so many problems, but the scale of the challenges they are facing in this drought is simply more than they can manage alone and they are badly in need of our support.

I met the people of a small village in Chivi who, working with CARE, have built a dam with their bare hands to feed the cattle and provide irrigation for a large field to grow vegetables for the community. Phil asked if we could see the field and our guide hesitated, seeing my gray hair—over rocks and hills, it was quite a walk in the hot sun.

When we arrived, we saw what they have achieved—the land bone dry, but cleared ready for irrigation, a well 50 feet down with only ladders made of sticks, dug by hand. There was no water yet, but they would continue determined until they hit the precious source.

But CARE’s strength is not only using tried and tested methods, building resilience and dams, but also using the new world of technology. Mobile phones have penetrated into even the most remote areas of Zimbabwe and have been priced to create a local market.

From seeing the impact of established irrigation technology to deal with the impact of drought, we traveled to Zaka to see new ways of helping those poor communities facing this crisis, unable to grow the food they need in this parched land.

CARE understands how important it is to protect local markets, it understands how important it is for women to be financially independent, and to ensure poor communities are fully involved and their voices heard.

The weather and its impacts are our global challenge. We must work together to build our common humanity.

In Zaka, I met the villagers who have worked with CARE on a new innovative program that gives control to women and their families, by paying small grants through the mobile phone system. These small grants can be used in the local shops to buy grain or whatever is most urgently needed in this crisis. It is impressive and ambitious but also sensitively delivered and designed.

CARE also ensures that this work is integrated with local government structures. The district administrator traveled with us to ensure we have a shared understanding of any issues or problems that might arise. The community is empowered to report problems, with the CARE team on hand to help with glitches and a special toll-free and confidential number to report difficulties is also available.

In Zimbabwe, this program is reaching more than 300,000 people, but so many more are in desperate need. It is working: As Beauty Pepukai, a local woman benefiting from this program, said at our meeting under the trees, “A hungry person is an angry person. This program has made us happy, we can buy maize and send our children to school.”

After the disaster in the north of England earlier this year, local to help with the clean-up, building connections as well as restoring buildings.

We—who cannot understand what it is to struggle for every drop of water, to have to send our children to bed hungry or to see our crops wither in the fields—must remember the people of Zimbabwe, working so hard to survive. We must keep ourselves connected—from our wetland—to their difficult and dry land.

The weather and its impacts are our global challenge. We must work together to build our common humanity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:ĚýĚý/ Ěý

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I walk past the Tower of London remembering the sea of red poppies that flowed over its walls last year in commemoration of the millions of lives lost in the First World War a hundred years ago. Another precious life was also lost then, a true hero of the struggle against the brutality of colonialism, imperialism, enslavement and cruelty. A man who used all his skills and energy to highlight the suffering of the people of the Congo and Peru, a man who took up the fight against the colonialization of his own people, a hero of the Irish struggle for self-determination, a man who was executed despite his critical role as a true humanitarian, whose reputation was destroyed because he was said to love other men—the last man ever to be imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Now as we approach the solemn ceremonies to remember the 1916 Easter Uprising, we must also remember the extraordinary story of Roger Casement—so vividly evoked in Adam Hochschild’s powerful historyĚý, describing the brutal exploitation of the Congolese people by the Belgian King Leopold, and retold so beautifully by Mario Vargas Llosa in his novel theĚý.

So, what was the dream of this brave and honorable Celt? That people should be treated with love and respect, that enslavement and brutality must be challenged, that we all have a part to play in the fight for freedom. But his dreams also included love and sexual passion for other men. It was for this that he died on the gallows in Pentonville prison on August 3, 1916.

King Leopold’s Ghost

Casement was revered in the United Kingdom and across the world for his role in uncovering the terrible cruelty inflicted on the people of the Congo and Peru. He was the founding father of international human rights campaigning, today owed a debt by the likes of Amnesty International. Unlikely to ever have been a prisoner of conscience, like Nelson Mandela he supported a war of resistance to oppression and fought in the struggle for liberation.

He was well-positioned to speak out and witnessed the horrific treatment meted out to the Congolese people and later the indigenous people of Peru. He was credible, passionate, determined and a powerful communicator—writing, speaking and taking photographs in order to tell this terrible human story. CasementĚýimportantly recorded the first-hand accounts of those directly affected, considered radical at the time—that African people could give direct, trusted evidence. He worked tirelessly with committed campaigners back in the UK, especially E.D. Morel, the tenacious founder of the Congo Reform Association, and Alice Stopford Green, founder of the Africa Society. They took their campaign to Parliament, to the media and to the people.

Roger Casement lived in the Congo for over 20 years, originally working for a shipping company and eventually becoming the British consul. This provided him with a powerful platform to highlight the brutality of the rapacious regime of King Leopold of Belgium and his insatiable greed that envisioned the Congo and its riches as the king’s personal fiefdom, the people who lived there as his personal slaves.

Casement was revered in the United Kingdom and across the world for his role in uncovering the terrible cruelty inflicted on the people of the Congo and Peru.

Casement sacrificed his own health to travel to the most remote parts of the Congo, to give first-hand accounts of the pain the suffering and the many thousands of deaths of the people of the Congo who were seen as utterly marginal, without value when compared to the rich profits delivered to the king of Belgium and his brutal henchmen in the rubber trade.ĚýThe brutality had caused the population to shrink by anywhere between 15% and 50%. The atrocities recorded included numerous hand amputations—punishment for not delivering impossibly high rubber quotas—and slaughter of thousands of women and children.

Casement’s commitment and passion and the work of the association enabled them to bring world attention to these systemic abuses. The outrage that followed delivered real impact and constrained some of the worse abuses. Public outcry and the work of the of the Congo Reform Association forced the private profiteering outside any rule of law perpetrated by King Leopold to end when the Belgian state eventually managed to wrest control of the Congo from the king in 1908.

Casement’s courage, compassion and determination were put to further use when he was asked by the British government to travel to Putanamayo in Peru to report on the human price of the rubber trade in the Amazon, where once again human rights and so many lives were being sacrificed heedlessly for private profit and greed. The Peruvian Amazon Company was a London-registered enterprise with three British directors—John Russell Gubbins, a friend of Peruvian President Augusto Leguía; Herbert Reed, a banker; and Sir John Lister-Kaye, an aristocrat. This forced the British government to order an investigation into the ruthless search for rubber, enslavement of indigenous people and terrible atrocities that came close to wiping them out in a sustained act of ethnocide. Over 100,000 innocent people are thought to have been killed.

Silence and Neglect

However, when Casement became increasingly concerned with the human rights abuses and oppression in Ireland, he paid for it with his good name, his reputation, his knighthood and eventually his life.

The struggle for liberation and self-determination in Ireland had reached a critical stage and the British response increasingly vicious. During his visits to the UK, Casement became more involved in the cultural and political life of Ireland. He was deeply influenced by the progressive historian and Irish nationalist Alice Stopford Green—one of the few people who supported him unconditionally throughout his imprisonment and up until his tragic death. She was later the first woman elected to the Seanad Eireann in 1922.

Marking that historic occasion she wrote: “No real history of Ireland has yet been written. When the true story is finally worked out—one not wholly occupied with the many and insatiable plunderers—it will give us a noble and reconciling vision of Irish nationality. Silence and neglect will no longer hide the fame of honorable men.”

Roger Casement was a most honorable man, having resigned his government post in 1913, losing status, salary and security in order to join the Irish Volunteers and commit himself totally to the fight for Irish independence. His powerful skills as a speaker, writer, campaigner and committed humanitarian were valuable weapons against the increasingly harsh response of the British state, determined to hold onto power and the riches of Ireland. Resources flowed into the pockets of the powerful in Britain their agents in Ireland, at the expense of the benighted people of Ireland.

A quarter of Ireland’s population was lost in the previous decades. A million people died from starvation during the Great Famine of 1845-1852 and another million was lost to forced emigration. Those who remained were living under an exploitive colonial regime that denied them the most basic human rights—punished for speaking their own language, denied any say in their own affairs, disenfranchised, forced to work as sharecroppers or “serfs.” The best and most fertile lands reserved for the ruling colonialist, the system of justice used only to benefit the British and terrorize the Irish.

To the Gallows

Casement’s efforts on military matters, though courageous, were less effective than his advocacy and his plan to smuggle in weapons to Ireland on a German submarine ended in disaster. He was arrested in Kerry, the plan scuppered and his connection with Germany at a time of the First World War lost him many supporters, including his dearest friend and fellow campaigner E.D. Morel.

We should cover the Tower of London with a sea of green, for the freedom of Ireland, and pink for the freedom of LGBT people everywhere, to remember Roger Casement, to honor the memory of a great man whose life was cut short by a cruel, dishonest and vindictive state…

Despite his support of the Irish struggle and the association with Germany, he still had the respect and affection of many influential people. Although he was charged with high treason—by a prosecutor who was known to strongly oppose the Irish cause—there were many calls for the death sentence to be comminuted. That was when the dirty tricks began. Pages claimed to be from Casement’s private diaries, and of no relevance to the charges, were secretly circulated, containing passionate sexual encounters and love between men.

These infamous “Black Diaries” have been highly contested, examined by forensic scientists, hidden from view entirely for over 50 years and the understanding of their veracity informed by changing social attitudes to homosexuality. What is beyond dispute is that the release of these pages carried a particular significance at a time when homosexuality was not only illegal, but punishable by long prison sentences.

Even after his execution his corpse was violated—his anus “examined” to provide further proof of his “perversity.” His body was buried on the prison grounds, and the Irish government and his family spent decades demanding the right to return his body to Ireland—Casement’s dying wish was to be buried in Murlough Bay, in County Antrim in Northern Ireland, where he had grown up. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s government denied that wish and released the remains only on condition that they could not be brought intoĚýNorthern Ireland, as “the government feared that a reburial there could provoke Catholic celebrations and Protestant reactions.”

Casement’s body was finally returned to Ireland in 1965 with full military honors to rest in Dublin’s Glasnevin cemetery. Over half a million people came to pay their respects to a man the author John Banville described as “not only one of the greatest Irish men who ever lived but also a considerable figure on the world stage.”

As we remember the brave men and women who fought for Irish independence against colonial oppression, we must remember and honor this remarkable man who risked his own life, health and wellbeing to tell the world the true story of their enslavement, who died in the defense of the Irish people—isolated, alone and reviled by so many because of his sexuality.

We should cover the Tower of London with a sea of green, for the freedom of Ireland, and pink for the freedom of LGBT people everywhere, to remember Roger Casement, to honor the memory of a great man whose life was cut short by a cruel, dishonest and vindictive state, and whose own life was dedicated to others and the fine virtues of true, indivisible, human rights.

In his final days he wrote: “It is they—not I—who are the traitors, filled with a lust of blood—of hatred of their fellows … These artificial and unnatural wars, prompted by greed of power are the source of all misery now destroying mankind … Alas so much of the story dies with me—the old, old story—yet in spite of all—the truth and right lives on in the hearts of the brave and lowly.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:ĚýĚý/ Ěý

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Growing up in in London in the 1960s, we had two tables that welcomed .

There was our kitchen table where my mother Jenny provided a never-ending flow of her nourishing bean soup, warmth and sustenance to the constant flow of refugees from South Africa, who fled prison and death but continued their fight for freedom. My mother always had refugees at her table.

There was another refuge from the rigors of the struggle: My Jewish father Sylvester’s poker table. The players—heroes in the fight against fascism and racism—bet for big stakes with their lives, small stakes at the table:

Helder Macedo, the great Portuguese poet and writer, who left his beloved country and language to escape the vicious regime of the fascist Salazar regime.

Rudi Nausser, who escaped Nazi Germany aged just 14 with his mother, carrying on them only a money belt to bribe their way out of and away from torture or death. Having arrived in London and at a new school, Rudi heard the singing of the Handel hymn—appropriated by the Nazi regime—and was faced with the horror of thinking he was back in the hands of Adolf Hitler.

Jean Lefevre who traveled through the treacherous jungles of Madagascar, alone at 19 years old, at the start of the Second World War to join those who were forming the resistance to the French Vichy collaborators. Later, he became a Spitfire pilot in the war against fascism. Post-war life in South Africa did not suit him and his wife Monique, also a wartime fighter. After the unprovoked murder of so many innocent people at Sharpeville and so many acts of brutality by the apartheid regime, they left their life in South Africa and joined the diaspora in London.

Joe Slovo, the leader of Umkhomto we SIzwe—the liberation army of the African National Council—husband of Ruth First, renowned journalist and teacher assassinated by the apartheid regime in Mozambique.

Lippy Kessel, a Jewish orthopedic surgeon, one of the brave British band of soldiers who fought the Nazis at the battle of Arnheim.

Lucas Heller, later a Hollywood scriptwriter, who escaped Nazi Germany as a Jewish child to start his life again in Britain.

© Shutterstock

And in the kitchen, my mother’s best friend Helga Keller, who fled Germany at 19, arriving with nothing, living in Bilston as a cleaner, later a distinguished film editor who worked with Laurence Olivier.

Now and Forever

They arrived in London, most with nothing, leaving behind their language, their culture, their status, their homes. All had to be rebuilt from scratch. And they did so with commitment to their new homes, some whilst still continuing the struggle in the countries they had fled.

Helder became an esteemed academic and, after liberation, the first minister of culture in democratic Portugal. Joe Slovo, a member of the team who negotiated the peaceful transition to democracy in South Africa and the minister of housing—quite literally rebuilding South Africa—before his untimely death.

Rudi, a renowned author who rebuilt his father’s German wine business and found his place in the cultural heart of London.

My mother’s life was enriched by refugees: the Spanish child Jesus, fostered by her family during the Spanish Civil War; the Juan Miro print, bought by the family in the 1930s for 1 franc, always on our wall as a reminder of that tragic struggle.

In those times, Britain was really a refuge, providing a place of safety for those fleeing torture, imprisonment and death at the hands of fascist and racist regimes.

How richly we as a nation have benefited from this beautiful tapestry of difference. The beautiful music of the Congo, Zong Zing—now rehearsing around my table—this band of brothers sharing the pain of exile, but also the joy of music. Papy, by day a doorman at the Dorchester, by night a true genius on the guitar. Gianni, a heart-stopping singer and a carer for old people in North London, and Fiston, master musician, keeping the music burning bright.

Stella, exiled from the hard years of turbulence in Zimbabwe, now peacefully growing seeds from Africa for gardens and communities in London. Keeping lost souls rooted in this new earth, all cherishing the flavors of their lost home.

George from Montserrat, master of the steel pan and of fragrant goat curry, he worked so hard for so many years welcoming young and old to the Whittington community center as a caretaker not only of the building, but also of the whole community.

After the terrible volcano eruption of 1995 that destroyed half of Montserrat and his own island retirement home, he worked tirelessly here in Britain welcoming the thousands of islanders uprooted from their Caribbean paradise to the gray streets of Birmingham and London, their lives warmed by his wisdom and his welcome.

Now most recently, my dear old dad at 95, gently accompanied from this world by the tender kindness of Agnes—a carer from Cameroon—and, during his last hours, the expert and loving Yula, a nurse from Nigeria, with him to hold his hand on theĚýfinal journey.

Refugees are welcome at our table, now and forever.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Ěý/ /Ěý

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