In November 2008, Mario
Azzopardi was invited by ARCADE (Awareness Raising on Culture and Development
in Europe) to present a paper and conduct a workshop at the Lille Urban Development Seminar. The following are key excerpts from his
submission:
THEATRE ACTION AS A MEDIATING
FORCE IN
URBAN CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
THE
CASE FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mario Azzopardi
Malta Drama Centre
“Refugees live in a divided
city in their minds, between zones in which they cannot live, and zones which
they may not enter”
Elie Wiesel.
The
reception and social integration of asylum seekers and refugees is a major
challenge facing Europe before the close of
the first decade of the 21st century. According to the UNHCR, it is estimated
that the current number of refugees in Europe
is about 9 million.
Almost invariably, added to
overt or implicit racism and xenophobia, if not also physical aggression,
asylum seekers have to face specific problems related to employment,
communication skills and above all an intense culture shock.
The continuous arrival of the “boat people”, as they have become known,
has provoked very negative reactions in large segments of the Maltese
population. It is argued that Malta is much
too small to take the influx and the financial burden. Since 2002, when
the issue started to become significantly worrisome, 11,300 asylum seekers
arrived in Malta
as human cargo, on 339 boats. This year alone, 2,522 Africans, mostly from Somalia, Eritrea
and Egypt, hit Malta or were
rescued at sea by the island's tiny fleet belonging to the Armed Forces.
Many were reported dead, including children.
Very often, if not detected by patrol boats from Malta or Italy, the Africans are forced to
swim the last kilometre to reach land.
Many of them drown because they cannot swim. Many more drown because the boat or dinghy
sinks.
No one can know for certain where the Africans are starting their boat
journey from, but water patrols assume that they are leaving by the hundreds
from Tripoli or Sfax in Tunisia, a well-known location for
assembling the refugees against payments of 1,000 dollars a head.
Eighty six per cent of Africans arriving in Malta are men, 10% are women and 4%
are children. The asylum seekers are held in nine open centres run by the
Government, seven Church homes and at the Peace Laboratory, a retreat centre
run by Franciscan monks. Psychologically, the pressure of such numbers
has been perceived as “intolerant” by many Maltese, who are living on the most
densely populated island (1,700 people per square kilometre)
in the Mediterranean. To
understand the numbers in a European context, given Malta’s
demographic reality the arrival of 2,500 asylum
seekers on the island in 2008 would be equivalent to 400,000 clandestines in Italy
or 1.3 million in France.
The Maltese Government has
landed a dramatic and unenviable situation. International agencies like
the UNHCR, Amnesty International, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for
Human Rights, the Paris-based International Agency for Human Rights and other
sources have harshly criticised the Government’s detention of illegal
immigrants. The situation in detention camps (sometimes referred to as
tent-cities) were described by European agencies as “shocking”, “miserable”, and
places of “depression, frustration,
indignity and demoralisation”, were women and children “were kept as prisoners”
and where the only form of protest was manifested by hunger strikes so that “the
inmates” could be allowed to speak to the media.
Mounting pressure from international agencies and the EU Commission
forced the Government to publish in 2005 a Policy Document on Irregular
Immigrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers.
The document promised among other rights, the social inclusion of asylum
seekers, sensitivity to the physical and emotional needs of persons in
detention and even respect for cultural diversity, pledging the organisation of
recreation activities.
On the other hand, growing sections of the Maltese population have
pressed the Government to take Malta’s
case before the European Union Council. In 2007, Malta submitted a proposal to the EU Council so that immigrants rescued outside the search and rescue zone
of an EU country (such as Libya
or Tunisia)
would be allocated on a proportional basis among all EU countries.
At European level, Malta
has been clamouring for a Burden Sharing Policy
to contain the ever-increasing influx of such persons from Africa.
It was only late last September (2008) that Malta managed to push for and
secure a Migration Pact whereby member-countries of the European Union would
commit themselves to a "voluntary" scheme to receive some of these
illegal immigrants. For the Social Democrats in opposition, this arrangement
was not enough and the Government was accused of “caving in” and condescending
to European powers.
Even many Maltese citizens are claiming that this is not enough and
there has been mounting pressure and opposition to clandestine asylum seekers who
are now emarginated. Tensions continue to escalate as two far-right parties,
structurally tiny but garnering hidden support from many people, have taken to
the streets of the capital city to protest that Malta is being “hijacked” by Black
people. The melodrama is mixed with hate as Africans are now seen as
“threatening the livelihood” of the Maltese people. Africans are even
perceived as “enemies of Christianity”, a totally
erratic impression derived from the great crusades of the 16th
Century between the Knights of Malta and the Ottoman Turks. Prejudice, intolerance and even
fundamentalist allergies to African people in Malta are rife
and one would never see a Maltese taking to an African on the street. It
has become taboo.
Moreover, a Parliamentary member of the Socialist Party stirred a
scandal when he proposed that “special buses” for Black people should be
scheduled by the Transport Authority to take Africans from their open centre in
the south to the City. Outside City
Gate, regular groups of Africans, unwelcome in other pubs and coffee shops,
assemble in a depressed area to smoke, chat and perhaps create percussion
rhythms on wooden stools. Violence at
the so called Paceville (City of Peace)
erupts frequently as bouncers block Black people from going to the dance floor,
or even enter the establishment.
Rejection and depression recently claimed its first victim : an Arab
hanged himself when he was still in police custody.
Ironically, Africans from open centres are hired and picked up very
early in the morning when they are needed to work on jobs which the Maltese are
increasingly reluctant to accept for themselves, including garbage collection, disposal
of waste and dangerous, unprotected work on construction sites. The pay
is miserable and Africans are totally exploited. Many of them travel on old bicycles bought
with their first mean wages, a perilous way of urban mobility of Malta’s heavily
congested streets and because of reckless drivers. The situation has prompted the General Workers’
Union to raise its voice against the
exploitation of asylum seekers.
The socio-psychological implications are serious and lamentable. On its
part, the Malta Drama Centre, a state institution located in two kilometres away from Valletta, felt strongly that it should deal
concretely and creatively to “defuse” a situation which was becoming more and
more dangerous. The arrival of thousands of Africans to Malta had fired
feelings of racism and xenophobia. The presence of these clandestine
immigrants in detention centres or in open centres in the inner harbour town of
Marsa again, two or
three kilometres from Malta’s
capital city, had started to provoke very aggressive behaviour by Maltese
groups, who took to town and marched in protest. Violence erupted, journalists
were attacked and there was also organised crime against persons and
organisations who favour a decent, dignified treatment of the asylum
seekers.
Journalists’ private residences were attacked and vehicles belonging to
the Jesuit Refugee Service were torched. Racist speakers were brought
before the Courts but this tended to make “heroes” of the perpetrators,
especially since by that time, two new extreme right wing parties, the Imperium Europa
and Alleanza Nazzjonali
were formed, networking with hundreds of followers via the internet and
sometimes in urban centres.
The situation aggravated the tension in urban localities, especially the
harbour area, where immigrants line up every morning
to accost persons and companies for work, which is paid miserably and which has
stimulated action by Malta's
leading Trade Union and the Catholic Church, through its agency for Peace and
Justice, run by the Jesuits.
THEATRE
AND URBAN POLITICS
Within this scenario of hard-core, local and foreign politics, what
intervention can culture and the arts make? How can they mediate?
How could they penetrate such obtuse circumstances? How can the tangible
and the intangible aspects of culture come into play? Can culture, and in
our specific case, the performing arts, become catalysts to neutralise rigid
old paradigms and traditional schemas and prejudices?
In the light of such a situation, the Malta Drama Centre has tried to
give its practical share to defuse mounting discrimination against Blacks
through cultural action and, more specifically, through drama and
dance. The Drama Centre runs a Community Development Programme, exploring,
investigating and devising projects on such issues as estrangement, isolation,
urban getthoism, domestic violence, addiction and youth
problems. The Programme is run by Maltese
tutor-directors and participants include teachers, social workers, nurses,
manual workers and white collar workers. Experts from the fields of
sociology, psychology and medicine are asked to assist voluntarily during interactive
forum-theatre sessions.
Community theatre action is normally "mobile" - the projects
are first researched and devised and then are taken out to towns to target
groups. But there are times when the Drama Centre invites particular
audiences to its premises (eg. young offenders or ex-prisoners) for studio
productions.
In 2005 and 2007, the Malta Drama Centre decided to take up the
issue of clandestine immigration. Two separate methods and indicators
were outlined:
- In the first
instance, the Centre made the necessary contacts with one open centre
and a tent-city, in the inner harbour location and the more
"detached" southern part of the island. The contacts
yielded twelve voluntary African participants (10 men and 2 women), coming
from twelve different Congo
tribes. They worked with two female Maltese stage directors to mount a
presentation of African drama, singing and dance-drumming. The project
would boost not only their indigenous talent but affirm their right not to
estrange themselves from their own original culture, in tune with the
Government’s own Policy Paper of 2005. Another objective was to
acclimatize Maltese audiences to the rich, even exotic performance of the
Africans, which would serve as a creativity lever to affirm measures of
social integration.
- The second
project involved several other countries namely Italy,
Austria, Germany, Lithuania
and Turkey
and was funded by the EU Lifelong Learning Programme. The research
methods, in the shape of narratives recounted by authentic refugees in
the participating countries, were employed by the respective
participants in the project, while the Malta Drama Centre was entrusted
with coordinating actual training in Rome, with a view to
transform the "prose" narratives of the asylum seekers into
dramatised action, which would then be filmed and shown to refugee
communities, NGOs, social and care workers in respective
municipalities.
Both projects left a big impact.
The Drama Centre wanted both projects to focus on the implications
of dealing with good practice, positive impact and reconciliation, taking
into consideration the cultural rights of refugees and asylum seekers. It
also wanted to make an unequivocal political statement through cultural intervention.
Apart from the performance value the Africans offered so spontaneously,
audiences were given the opportunity to become "accomplices" in a
creative event supporting refugee identity.
At the same time a counter-statement denouncing prejudice against such
people was emphasised.
With the first project, called Katanga, new paradigms of
cultural cooperation were immediately established. The project was
so successful that it was then transferred to the Jesuit Refugee Centre and
also to the capital city, specifically at the National Creativity Centre.
Six performances were held and venues were packed to capacity. The
Africans ended up every show by inviting the audience to go on stage and dance
with them. They were also remunerated with 75% of all gate
money. The media was extremely supportive and leading papers carried
double pages in full colour, while the project also featured prominently in the
official Kultura magazine published by the Ministry of Tourism and
Culture. There were plenty of suggestions, including the concept of the
Africans forming a proper Cooperative and present shows in Maltese hotels as
evening entertainment. But the idea was
dropped after the Congolese performers decided they would not wish to stay for
a long time in Malta, since
their main destination was mainland Europe and perhaps, America.
In fact over the past 3 years, the United
States accepted to rehabilitate 144 asylum seekers from Malta
while over the same period of time, six European countries accepted to receive 83. This represents 0.7% of all arrivals and it
is clear that EU countries have to step up their act and assist in easing the
problem.
Speaking to a leading journalist from The Times, the paper with the largest circulation in Malta,
the leader of the Congolese performers explained that for them, the public
performance was a golden chance to show who they are and that they are proud of
that identity. Another performer explained how in their
country, improvised, unrehearsed music and dance-drama is part of
everyday life and that they wanted to cherish the memory.
For the second project, which materialised first in Rome and then in the respective partner
countries, it was not possible to use real refugees to go on stage. The
programme, called In From the Shadows, had a more formal structure, since a
script had to be assembled from the "memory stories" compiled in all
countries. The dramatised text then had to be transferred first on stage and
later on screen in a version by Malta’s Education TV-Channel.
The dramatised action highlighted crucial moments in the refugee stories,
basing sequences on three key phases namely
(i) separation: involving reasons for abandoning the
homeland;
(ii) transition: actual hardships incurred in the move;
(iii) incorporation: or integration, meaning the status of the
asylum seeker/s in the eyes of the
new community, with failure or success.
Displacement is mostly about loss, although it also means the
persistence of memory. Migrants' life stories, if we are ready to listen
to them, have often an amount of baselines which can offer a bi-directional
process. The illness of exile, as one African writer, Mandla Langa, put
it, is not so much geographical but a state of mind, something that branded you
and threatened to consume you.
But should the illness of exile leave one maimed for life?
The question begs for engagement and vigorous debate. And of course,
fortified, cultural commitment.
OTHER INITIATIVES
- In 2002, when the issue of the boat people
started to intensify, the Ministry of Education & Culture reached
agreement with the Armed Forces of Malta for the provision of special
transport for refugee children held in tent camps to attend special
sessions in creativity and free expression at the Creative Centre in Malta’s
capital city.
- That same year, the Ministry focused on a group
of unaccompanied adolescents from Africa
and the ex-Soviet states to search their memories through stories, drama
and painting. The sessions were held at Liberty House, in the town of Santa Venera, which
was turned into a proper, residential home the year before.
- In 2004, inspired by Kofi Anan, the Secretary General
of the UN, the Jesuit Refugee Service Malta in organised a multi-cultural
programme at their retreat house in the town of Mosta. Local families were invited
to interact. Traditional Eritrean food was served, live music
animated the evenings and the refugees were invited to share their
experiences with the Maltese.
- In the summer of 2004, Maltese volunteers created
"a season of fun" for refugee children. They were
introduced to splash-and-fun parks, cinemas and yacht cruises.
Practically, all the odd 30 African children who participated grew up
together in detentions centres which by that time, had acquired a notorious
reputation and were widely condemned.
- In November that same year, a first African
Festival, featuring African drummers, textile colouring, fashion and
indigenous gastronomy was organised at the University of Malta.
The protagonists, mostly young immigrants, came from Libya, Nigeria,
Morocco, Eritrea, Sudan
and Egypt.
- In 2006 the Malta Drama Centre launched a project
which investigated the fate of Palestinians trapped in occupied territory
in the West Bank. The theatre project,
presented at the Centre and the University
of Malta, relied on eye witness
reports of Palestinian refugees who had somehow escaped and landed in Malta.
Running under the title of Il-Ferita
(The Wound) the project also made extensive use of smuggled film footage
and poetry by Palestine's
national poet, Mahmoud Darwish.
APPENDIX
Marsa Open Centre to get makeover
The Times, October 3, 2008
By the end of the year, the
Marsa Open Centre will have received a complete makeover with the façade being
embellished, new medical services being introduced and a library opened, among
other improvements, all aimed at speeding up the integration of the migrants
hosted there.
The project is a first for Fondazzjoni Suret il-Bniedem, which
obtained funds from the European Refugee Fund II to be able to embark on the
large-scale revamp of the place, an unused, run-down school before hosting
illegal immigrants.
The money will be spent on
the upgrade of the education centre, which will now have a library and 10
computers, and on the refurbishment of one of the kitchens, which was in a bad
state. The tables and chairs were hardly
usable and the electrical supply was considered unsafe. The kitchen has now been stripped, extended
and given a new, open plan layout.
More significantly, a clinic
has been built in order to provide residents with medical care three times a
week.
The project will also help
the open center’s residents to find affordable accommodation and integrate
refugees and asylum seekers into Maltese society.
This is the first phase of a
full-scale plan of improvement for Marsa Open Centre. Fondazzjoni
Suret il-Bniedem intends to continue to upgrade the infrastructure and
services at the Centre in the coming years.