Exile IN Exile

By Jan Pêt Khorto

“Extremely unbelievable!” Many newcomers in Denmark say this when they compare between the ways of processing the asylum system and treating of foreigners here with their homelands or other EU countries.
Especially when it comes to the “patience” and “slowness” of processing cases, moving between the asylum centers every while, the living conditions, the way of handling their situations if their cases being rejected and what happens in the “Kommune” after getting the permission to stay in Denmark, and the ways of integrating the refugees (school, praktik, ... etc). Problematic is also how refugees are expected to know all the system and rules in a few months, the authorities confusing them with their letters in Danish every day without worrying about if they got the meaning of it or not, and plus all of that, the updating news from the Danish People’s Party and their leaders who are making the situation of asylum seekers and refugees being worse and worse here in Denmark.
I didn’t mean that the system is not in “working mode”, it’s absolutely systematic and well-organized, but if the government here is used to it - even though that I heard a lot of criticisms about the health care system and other topics from some Danish people - they should not expect from the newcomers in a short time to know everything, therefore the general picture becomes that the foreigners are dumb or they “came from behind the cows", as a kurdish saying goes, which means that they only know farming, so many of them are not able to be integrated.
Some spent months, others spent years in their way to Denmark, having the dreams in their imagination for a better life, living, future..., and suddenly being in front of a huge wall of rules and laws against the foreigners, smashing all their hope’s columns, and being ordered to be a Danish person - whereas no European would be Somalian or Iranian, if we changed the positions. And those rules are not only aimed at the asylum seekers or refugees, it’s concerning all the foreigners who come to Denmark. But would the Danish people, when they have to be in another country for any reason, have to change all him/her self to be a part of that community?
Before some days, I read an article in “Copenhagen Post” about comparing the leaders of the Danish People's Party to Hitler, and actually – if we tried to remember that period of time – we will see that when he was talking about the “pure Germany”, and now hearing about deporting the foreigners and having the “pure Denmark” as Pia Kjærsgaard likes it, don’t you think it’s a bit close?

“Becoming a part of the 'selected'", as Michala Clante Bendixen, member of the Committee for Underground Refugees says in her last article in Politiken newspaper on 16 of May, or being a citizen, is getting to be a kind of dream for the foreigners or let’s say “the Aliens”. Or, as Michael Svennevig, the Danish Novelist and play writer, says: “to be accepted in the group is one of the main targets which you have to work on”. But, let’s have a moment of thinking; many reasons were under the light when those people fled from their homelands, political reasons or humanitarian, and now they have another kind of surviving project in this community called “holding the spider’s network” where every body have what's call "starting help" from the government, which you have to make a dramatic system for your self to reach to the end of the month doing nothing - just eating and school. But, what kind of integrating it will be if you are just attending school and have no ability - because of the Financial situation - to do any thing else?. So this network is the lowest limit to live which you will feel like you had been stock in it with no moves.
So, do the humanitarian organizations - Amnesty International, Red Cross-Asylum Department, Danish Refugee Counsel to name a few - have any kind of effects on the present government with the situation of “Aliens” here, I don’t think so, and if, it will be like a painkiller injection for a short period of time while they cook more new laws and rules in their “politician’s kitchen” for the guests.