Lindie Heeralall

On 25th August 2021, I received an email from my very dear cousin, with subject line: ‘A question on my mind…’

Below is my reply which I have updated, because I wanted to think about these issues and share my thoughts with you. Forgive me. It was a very big question to answer so my response is heavily flawed but it is just the start of a thought process.

—-Original Message—–
From: Lindie Heeralall
Sent: Sep 9, 2021, 9:14 AM
To:
Subject: Re: A question on my mind …

Dear A

I’m sorry for my slow reply. We were away with my husband’s family and now M has returned to school, happily thankfully. Also, I found your question so interesting, I wanted to try to reply when I had some headspace.

You’re right, I did study Anthropology and later Human Rights, because I have always been fascinated, concerned with our origins and past and how we treat each other. So, you asked – How is humanity doing in the bigger context of history and do we – humans – learn from past mistakes?

It’s a big question. As I write I will try to form an answer.

A global catastrophe, such as a pandemic, may have global-level learning. But a war or tragedy in one country may not change the behaviour of another.

Human rights are breached in so many ways, there are the obvious culprits like interstate wars for land/resources and persecution of particular ethnic/religious groups. Nation states are historically the worst persecutors of their own citizens. Looking back to the holocaust, the horrors and trauma of that legacy has long, enduring lessons for the nations and ethnicities involved. But those lessons would not necessarily inform other countries. Genocide in Germany may have little reach in Rwanda, for example. The persecution of Jews does not prevent the persecution of Muslims in Bosnia or China. Nor does it prevent the persecuted from becoming the persecutor. The fear of being persecuted again can in fact, drive more aggressive behaviour.

In the UK and US, human rights breaches have evolved from the transatlantic slave trade to human trafficking. We still have slaves in the UK but they are now harder to trace. No one is keeping a log anymore but they are still making money and that profit is still circulating in our economy, so the UK still benefits from slavery. And trafficking is made easier for transnational organised crime networks, by the British governments vilification and dehumanisation of most commonly, brown-skinned migrants from non-Western countries, to enable more oppressive immigration laws. This pushes desperate people into the open hands of smugglers and traffickers. So, there is a symbiotic relationship between UK and TOCs. Both are responsible actors in the tragic and avoidable deaths of people seeking asylum, many of whom are children.

Our human rights record is no better than any other country, it is just better hidden. It is Shell Petroleum (a part UK and part Dutch owned corporation) that is responsible for catastrophic pollution of the Niger Delta, contaminating water, destroying fishermen’s livelihoods, increasing poverty, polluting the air with gas flaring causing respiratory illnesses and leukaemia. Corporations are not benign. On the contrary, there is a large body of evidence to prove that as recently as 1990s, an oil company was complicit in Nigeria’s military action of burning villages to suppress protests against their operations, which included the rape, torture and murder of civilians.

Transnational corporations from wealthier countries collude with governments of poorer ones, to enable them to operate without regulation, at the lowest cost possible, to maximise profits. They prey upon people who do not have the protection of their government or a robust legal system for recourse. Children in resource-rich countries die, so we can steal their oil, and complain about the price of it, from the heated comfort of our SUVs. Our colonial roots run so very deep. It was British officials who made the laws in many Commonwealth states to enable the extraction of resources. So, the theft is legal.

If the motivations for these breaches of rights, are nations/corporations competing for resources, state oppression of own people to secure or retain power, fear that a faith/ethnic group is becoming too dominant, too powerful, too wealthy, too numerous that it may threaten whatever order is desired by leaders at the time, then to be very simplistic, the main drivers are very often power and control to secure resources. These are often dressed up as ideology. Ideology is a great mobiliser, enabling humans to rationalise their actions, to give them a greater meaning than power/money.

Then there are the good things that happen as a result of tragedy. Women were given the right to vote after WW1, where the lack of men necessitated they be released from domestic prison and allowed to work in traditionally male roles where they were integral to the war effort. International human rights laws evolved from the Genocide Convention 1948, which was a response to the holocaust during WW2. The US Civil Rights Act 1964, the UK’s decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 and many other equality and discrimination laws have resulted from the courage of the oppressed to come together and fight for their rights. More recently the shocking police murder of George Floyd, witnessed by the world, triggered Black Lives Matter. But in this case, the ensuing two legal acts and a civil rights bill, in Floyds name, to prevent tragedies like this occurring again and hold the police to account, have failed to pass through the Senate.

So, do we learn? Yes, we do…eventually.

Change can happen, especially when equality is economically convenient. But change comes with a cost and even if the long-term saving is better, if the short-term economic cost of equality or human rights or tackling climate change, is too high or just not profitable, I do not think change is likely.

The fundamental nature of human beings, especially the male of the species, who hold most of the power at present, is to fight for resources. On an anthropological note, our closest living relatives are chimpanzees, a primate species that displays coordinated lethal behaviour. Sound familiar? Yet, we have had two female Prime Ministers who were actually worse than the men. Thatcher speaks for herself, and Theresa May tried to abolish the human rights act. It was Priti Patel, an Asian female Conservative MP who suggested that we build a floating wall in the Channel and send migrants who cross the Channel from France, to the island of Ascension in the middle of the Atlantic, to be processed and removed.

Some of the most vocal voices in right wing politics are themselves, like me, the children of immigrants. Suella Braverman, who shares my Mauritian heritage, describes asylum seekers as an ‘invasion’, Pro-Palestine protestors as ‘hate marchers’ and homelessness as a ‘lifestyle choice. Many Indo-Mauritians were immigrants who were recruited by colonial sugar plantation owners and trapped in debt bondage slavery. Sadly, being a descendant of migrants and people who have been oppressed, does not necessarily lead to a generation of humane, empathic, altruistic beings. 

My fellow second-gen immigrants are ensuring there are no safe and legal routes for people to seek asylum in our country. The present choice for asylum seekers is drowning in the English Channel or freezing to death in Calais, when their tents are torn down by the police. It is hard to imagine it getting worse, but The Rwanda Bill, introduced by Boris Johnson, in 2022, and Sunak’s small boats legislation will do just that. Britain does not give sanctuary. Britain does not help those in need. We are a nation of immigrants, dating back 10,000 years to the dark-skinned Cheddar Man, who raise the drawbridge behind ourselves and dig our heel into the fingers clinging to the underside. Proud to be British?

So, I suppose, it is not about what we see on the outside. It is not about where we are from or what we have endured. It is about the inner values of the people we elect. And, if they possess the strength of character to retain them once ensconced within the corridors of an inhumane power. And if they can survive the machinations of a malevolent media. And then, once they have won, can they then change the rules of the game itself. Perhaps, the very nature of people who are able to compete for and secure positions of power is an aggressively ambitious and less altruistic one. If our electoral system itself favours those who are mercenary and weeds out humanitarians, the people in charge will be, fundamentally, ambivalent to the welfare of the people.

So, I guess, my big question is how do we change systems of power to open up space for people who care about people?

I hope it isn’t too much. I really enjoyed thinking about this so thank you so much for asking the question. I’ve had so much in my head, which was bothering me about, you know, everything, that I found it very cathartic thinking through this in a more reflective way, rather than just filling my head with the daily news. I’m going to look up the book you mentioned now.

I hope you’re well.
lots of love
Lindie Xxx