Remembering Sharpeville

Today, March 21, is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The day marks the 1960 massacre of nearly 70 people in the Sharpeville township outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, about which IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann also posts below.
The 69 persons who died and the 300 who were injured had joined tens of thousands in a peaceful protest of the apartheid regime’s oppressive pass laws; then police “deliberately opened fire on the unarmed crowd.” (credit for photo captioned "Protestors fleeing the Sharpeville Police Station, 21 March 1960")
The U.N. General Assembly declared the day one of remembrance and action in 1966, calling on the international community “eliminate racial discrimination and apartheid.”
Yet more than 50 years after that declaration Navanethem Pillay (below right), the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and herself a native of Natal, South Africa (prior post), reports that “millions of people around the world . . . are still, today, victims of racism and racial discrimination.” Just last year, as IntLawGrrl Jaya Ramji-Nogales posted then, Gay McDougall, the U.N. Independent Expert on minority issues, and Githu Muigai, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance, called for an end to “anti-Roma sentiment and violence” in Europe. And in the United States, African Americans are reportedly more than 10 times likely to be sent to prison than whites for drug offenses.
Frustratingly, amid this climate of ever-present global racism, states have failed to reach consensus regarding the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, a comprehensive international program of action aimed preventing racial discrimination. The declaration was the result of the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa, which, though intended to “create a new world vision for the fight against racism in the twenty-first century," was nearly derailed by disagreement regarding Israeli-Palestinian relations.
In the 8 years since Durban, negotiations around the declaration have been fraught with conflict between the parties, particularly with respect to Israel and religious defamation. Next month, from April 20 to 24, country and NGO representatives will convene at the Durban Review Conference in an effort to surmount these challenges and agree on the declaration’s text. To that end, a preparatory committee of UN member states and NGOs recently revised its draft outcome document for the conference by shortening it and converting it into a “rolling text” in hopes of breathing new momentum and confidence into the negotiations. Highlights of the rolling text include calls:
► for U.N. member states to contribute to a Trust Fund for the Programme of the Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination;
► for special attention to women, refugees and migrant workers suffering from racism and racial discrimination; and
► for renewed calls for ratification and removal of reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Reflecting upon the document and the challenges facing conference negotiators, Commissioner Pillay, about whom IntLawGrrl Fiona de Londras also posts today, said:

I urge all states to refrain from taking narrow politicized or polemical stances on particular issues, and to work together for the remainder of the process towards a successful outcome for the victims of racial discrimination and intolerance around the world.

Xenophobia Rising?

The economy, of course, is on everyone's minds these days, and when asked how it's likely to affect my field -- immigration -- I think of the obvious: fewer jobs, fewer remittances to send home, and eventually, fewer immigrants, particularly the low-skilled and undocumented. But here's a grimmer possible outcome: increased xenophobia and violence against immigrants. We've seen it before, from Marseilles to Johannesburg -- when unemployment rises, so does anti-immigrant sentiment, which quickly turns to violence against those whom even the police often don't protect. Indeed, we see politicians exploiting racial hatreds in order to get elected, and local officials at best turning a blind eye to abuse of migrants, and at worst, participating in the violence.
This concern may underlie yesterday's press release in which the UN Independent Expert on minority issues, Gay McDougall (right), and the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance, Githu Muigai (left), expressed "grave concern" over the recent increase in violence against Roma in Europe. The Roma, who migrated to Europe from India in the 11th century, have continually suffered extreme discrimination by state actors, from genocide at the hands of the Nazis to recent reports of coercive sterilization by the Czech government and police brutality in Greece and Romania. In McDougall's words, “Extremists may feel they have license for their attacks when the message they receive from government activities in other spheres is also that the Roma are a problem.”
So what does this all have to do with immigration? While Roma may be citizens of the country in which they reside, their nomadic lifestyle may lead them to cross borders without authorization. Even in states where they are citizens, Roma may face numerous obstacles to obtaining residency documents including exclusion as the "other". This lack of regularized legal status combined with government neglect or hostility is an explosive combination that may lead to severe violence, such as the incident in the Czech Republic that prompted the UN experts' press release, in which far-right extremists attempted to attack a Roma community with stones and petrol bombs. As the world economy faces perilous times, we must be particularly vigilant in ensuring that financial woes aren't translated into increased assaults against migrant communities. As McDougall suggests:

Governments must strongly condemn such actions. Moreover they must be committed to finding ways to create safe environments for all by carefully monitoring and strengthening their own anti-racism activities, through leadership and public education, by swiftly denouncing hate speech and prosecuting the racist and violent actions of others in society.

'Nuff said.