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What Happened to the Good Old Compassionate and Caring England?
- Kazem Zarrabi (4 September 2009)
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Kazem Zarrabi, academic researcher BMCSRC, 2200 Copenhagen N., Denmark.
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Fortunately, the authorities in Wales have succeeded to change the regulations so that asylum status denied asylum- seekers can access free health care. Unfortunately, this is not the case in England where such people are expected to pay for their own health care. Apparently, years of xenophobic policy formulations by the politicians, and the systematic lies that they fed the public have alienated the masses by robbing them from their historical and traditional humanism. Extending the health care to the asylum-seekers whom have been denied the legal refugee status is very important and touching move and I congratulate the authorities in Wales. It is equally very unfortunate that policymakers and the health authorities in England are unable to share the same humanism that we have seen in Wales. The question is why not? Interestingly, this can indicate that something is badly wrong in England. Irresponsible media misrepresent the immigrants and refugees as the scapegoats for the ills and failures of the society. Ordinary people are misled by the reckless tabloid press and ultra-right wing politicians who intentionally distort the facts for their own narrow political gains. In exchange, the politicians who mainly care for their own reelection follow the misperception of the getting tough with the refugees. As the result, this is how the falsehood and xenophobia are recycled back to the society, and the society becomes irrational and intolerant time after time. This is a familiar pattern in history. Similarly, the irresponsible politicians and policymakers at state authorities uncritically misuse these sorts of anti- immigrant and anti-refugee sentiments in order to satisfy their own drives. All that such bureaucrats offer as excuses for their denial policy are senseless bureaucratic red tape, which is worth nothing. Indeed, what kind of a society would deprive the neediest people from health services i.e. by asking the people who have no money to pay for their own health care? Foremost, what kind of a society would deny health coverage for its own refugees i.e. with or without formal refugee status? The matters such as who has or hasn’t received the refugee status are bureaucratic formalities that should not concern the state and health care authorities who should care for all. This is mainly based on the principal biomedical practice and ethics that health of all individuals in a given society are essentially interlocked. Why English authorities fail to acknowledge this very basic fact? Are the refugees humans or less/non-humans? We can easily recall that such well-defined distinctions in treating people as humans and less-humans belong to the totalitarian states at past and present. We saw how people were treated as humans and less/non-humans in Nazi Germany and the former Stalinist USSR. Apparently, not much has changed since. We see how people are inhumanly treated in Afghanistan, Iraq, Burma, China, Mr. Putin’s Russia, and Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Iran. It doesn’t matter how you base your definition of a human and a less- human. The very fact that you make such a distinction will qualify you as a distinguished honorary racist. Anthropologists and sociologists usually examine the level of ethic and social tolerance, humanitarian solidarity, and social coherence in democratic states by using indicators such as the rights and equality of the ethic and religious groups and the status of women and children with the mainstream social group(s)i.e. especially in legal issues and daily life routines. I suggest that treating asylum-seekers and refugees, and the policy formulations towards such groups both in theory and practice, can be also used as a reliable indicator to explore the depth of xenophobic sentiments, indifference, inhumanity, and alienation in our modern democratic societies. Dr. Kazem Zarrabi, BMCSRC, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Competing interests: None declared |
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