Migration is part of life; instead of fearing it let's organise it | Zrinka Bralo | TEDxThessaloniki

Zrinka Bralo shares an emotional experience: what it feels like living in a war zone, being a refugee in a foreign country, but also, helping other refugees in the country that welcomed you. In her talk she gives examples of how the media can contribute in creating a negative image for refugees and presents her initiative to help women immigrants. She asks us to see ourselves as citizens who have the power to accept and protect refugees as the only way to stop being afraid of them.

Zrinka Bralo is Chief Executive of Migrants Organise, a community organizing platform for migrants and refugees. She herself is a refugee from Sarajevo (Bosnia), where she was a journalist and worked with leading war correspondents during the siege in the 90’s. Zrinka is a founder of the “Women on the Move Awards”. She won the 2011 “Voices of Courage Award” by the Women’s Refugee Commission in New York and joined their Board in 2012. She successfully campaigned to end immigration detention of children and currently campaigns to end indefinite immigration detention. In September 2015 she became founding Chair of the National Refugee Welcome Board. She is also founding Trustee of the Bridge of Peace, a reconciliation charity supporting young people working for peace in North Bosnia, in towns where notorious concentration camps were discovered during the 90’s war. Zrinka holds an MS in Media and Communications from London School of Economics and is a 2014 Churchill Fellow.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Have you ever wondered

if our fears concerning migrants
and refugees

are based on facts?

Or have they been media manufactured?

Let me share with you
some of my personal experiences

of media, migration and fear.

When I was a teenager
my parents moved house

and I didn't like it.

I became withdrawn,
I just stayed at home and read.

My worried parents nudged me
to audition for a job

as a presenter on a radio station.

And I did it, I got the job
and my parents regretted it

because I have not stopped
talking ever since.

(Laughter)

Being live on-air at the young age of 18

was terrifying.

I got to make
so many of my mistakes in public.

But it was also character building
and exhilarating.

I made lifelong friends and learned a lot.

My editor taught me
the importance of integrity,

not only as a journalist
but as a human being.

I loved being a radio journalist.

Almost exactly five years later,
on a beautiful April day,

A solitary sniper shot
quickly turned into a gunfire,

which soon became heavy shelling.

Within days there was no way
in or out of Sarajevo.

The siege lasted 1425 days.

It's the longest of this kind
in the history of modern warfare.

11,541 of my fellow Sarajevans

died during that time.

My life was worthless

to the Serb nationalists on the mountains,

shooting down on my city.

To them I became imaginary threat

and they decided, for the sake
of their deranged nationalism,

that I and my city

should no longer exist.

It is very difficult for me
to describe to you

what's the fear of a life under the siege,

under constant sniper fire
and heavy shelling,

with no food, no water, no electricity.

With every day of the siege
I also became less human

to the people that I went to school with,

and I worked with, I fell in love with.

The fear that I felt
was very very different

because there is no safe space.

So, when you're not afraid for yourself,

you fear for your friends and your family.

Hundred thousand people died
during the war in Bosnia.

Many more were wounded
and raped and tortured.

And half of my country ended up
in exile or displaced.

Soon after the war began,

because I was a journalist
and spoke English,

I started working
for international war correspondence.

I truly believed
that if we reported our war,

that would bring it to an end

18 months into this hell,

they helped me escape
the siege of Sarajevo.

And I found myself in London.

Now, I was a refugee.

And I survived.

But my entire life and my identity
had been taken away from me.

I gradually started rebuilding my life
and recovered.

But even in a super diverse metropolis
such as London,

people would tell me that
I don't look like a refugee,

really nice people.

And I would politely asked them,
"What does a refugee look like?"

And they are a little bit embarrassed
to tell me that they don't know.

What does a refugee look like?

Is there such a thing as a refugee look?

If you have met a refugee
or a migrant in person,

that experience will inform your views.

And it can be positive,
it can be negative.

Yes, not all refugees and migrants
are nice people,

it's not a personality competition.

However, if you have not met
anyone in person,

and if you just rely on reported images,

This is what you are exposed to:

Every day, we are exposed
to a torrent of negative media images

of floods that turn into tides

of refugees and migrants
who are coming here to take our jobs,

to take our hospital beds.

Oh my God! Our borders are out of control!

And they're coming to get us!

And this is not a new phenomenon.

Oxford Migration Observatory
analyzed 58,000 newspaper articles,

published in a period of two years.

This is 43 million words.

And what they found

is that the word most commonly
associated with the term immigrant,

is illegal.

In 2003, this was front-page news:

"Asylum seekers ate swans".

And this story had no eyewitness accounts

no police reports,

and it was absolutely baffling
where they came up with this story.

However, because the press
is so poorly regulated,

complaining about such lies
does not repair the damage.

So after a long complaints process,

the newspaper
didn't have to make an apology,

but they had to print a correction

in a tiny little corner of page 41.

The swans' story is very popular.

It comes back every few years.

In 2010, asylum seekers had been replaced

by Eastern European migrants.

Now this kind of negative stereotyping

is present in our daily lives
all the time,

and it goes unchallenged,

and voices of refugees and migrants
are hardly ever heard,

and this creates this climate of fear,

the narrative in which we blame immigrants
for all evils in our society.

It is no wonder that the public
is fearful of immigration.

Poll after poll shows that British public

overestimates the number and the impact
that immigrants have in our society.

And obviously, then,
politicians have to react

to this fear that people are experiencing.

Unfortunately, they do not provide
the public

with reassurance, nor with facts.

Instead, their responses and actions
reinforce those fears.

So they talk about controlling borders,

they talk about reducing numbers,

they take actions
that limit people's rights,

and also they restrict access to services.

And what this does

is just reinforces the fear
that it becomes bigger and bigger.

Now the damage that this does to all of us

is best summed up in the words
of my favorite Jedi Master Yoda:

"Fear is the path to the dark side.

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate.

Hate leads to suffering"

Now, this worries me.

And it makes me feel
a little less human again.

It worries me that
when campaigners and advocates,

such as myself,

when we try to talk about facts

and provide context
for the reasons why people migrate,

we are dismissed as politically correct,
naive and emotional.

And in preemptive strike,
we are often told

that it is not racist to talk
about immigration.

And for once I agree.

It is not racist
to talk about immigration.

I talk about it all the time.

It is how we talk about
refugees and migrants

that makes a difference.

In April last year, just after
the mass drowning off the coast of Italy,

The Sun columnist,
apart from other derogatory remarks,

referred to human beings as cockroaches.

Why should this worry us,
this kind of language?

Isn't this what freedom of speech
is all about?

Allowing all kinds of views
to be aired and debated?

Well this worries me,
because dehumanization

is stage three of the eight stages
of genocide,

as classified by professor Gregory Stanton
the founder of Genocide Watch.

Stage 1 is classification:

we divide ourselves into "us" and "them".

Stage 2 is symbolization:

we give names and other symbols
to different groups.

We call each other Jewish and German,
Tutsi and Hutu, Serbs and Bosnians.

Now, classification and symbolization
do not necessarily lead into genocide,

unless they lead into dehumanization.

What does this fear-mongering mean,

not only for refugees and migrants,

but for all of us?

What are the things
that we're not talking about,

while we are focusing
on these imaginary fears?

What are the consequences
of those silences for our democracy?

Now, I don't get to talk
about facts a lot,

so please indulge me.

Let's have a look at some of the facts

that are readily available
to all of us right now,

as well as to journalists, on our phones.

The fact is that in 2015,
244 million people,

or just 3.3 percent
of the world's population,

lived outside their country of origin.

This is an increase from 2.6% since 1995.

The fact is that no country is overrun
or lost control of its immigration,

including Qatar, where currently
88% of its population are immigrants.

The fact is that there are
sixty million displaced people

in the world right now,

and they're the ones
living in fear for their lives.

The fact is that developing countries

host over 86%
of the world refugee population.

And the fact is that more than
half of them are under 18 years old.

The fact is that about two-thirds
have lived now for more than five years

in exile, with no prospect of return.

Unfortunately, another powerful fact
is that facts are boring,

especially for the media:

there is no drama,
and positive stories do not sell.

But let me be a journalist
for a second again.

Can we just blame the media?

Our recent history is full of examples

of where hate and exclusion
and dehumanization

led to the worst atrocities
that we can imagine:

Holocaust.
Genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Going back further into our past,

one of the interesting examples

was something that was found

as one of the very rare documents

in Shakespeare's handwriting.

And it was recently exhibited in London.

And Shakespeare wrote a speech in a play,

in which he made a passionate plea

for humane treatment of asylum seekers

who had been accused
of stealing Londoners jobs.

And this was the time
when French Huguenots

were coming and seeking protection
in the capital.

1600.

And what struck me about this story

is not only how great Shakespeare is,

and that he's on my side,

but also that the play
was not staged at the time,

because of the fear
that it might incite unrest.

More recently, in Germany,
"Der Spiegel" came on the fire

because some of its readers,

based on no evidence,
accused them of making up

all these positive stories about refugees.

So pollsters discovered
that only one-quarter of Germans

believe that the media
paint a correct picture

of the level of education
and share of women and children

amongst incoming refugees.

So, did we cross to the dark side?

What can we do?

Well I do what I do because I have hope,

and the source of my hope
is not blind faith in humanity.

The source of my hope
are brilliant people I meet everyday,

refugees and migrants as well as citizens,

whose small acts of kindness

make a huge difference for these people.

On one hand, I couldn't convince the media
to change this way of reporting,

on the other hand, I could no longer live
with the fact that facts don't work.

So I decided to try something different:

with my colleagues, I have founded
"Women on the Move Awards".

So every year at the Royal Festival Hall,

we celebrate amazing
migrant and refugee women leaders,

we create a space
for them to tell their stories,

and to be celebrated and recognized
for the contribution that they make.

We invite other powerful women
to share their power and to support them

and amplify their voices.

We celebrate journalists
who do their job with integrity,

and report human stories and facts.

And we also celebrate champions,
remarkable people,

whose small acts of kindness
make integration work in everyday life.

So these champions this year
rose to a challenge.

They decided that
they can think differently

about their duty and responsibility
to welcome refugees.

They decided that they actually
have the power to protect,

and they have the right to welcome people.

And up and down the country
they're now organizing money

in order to sponsor
and bring in more refugees safely.

So going back to my original question:

do we think that our understanding

of migrants and refugees
is based on facts?

My invitation to you
is not only to see the facts,

but to see refugees and migrants
as human beings, on the move,

as resilience survivors,
as soon-to-be citizens.

My invitation to you is to see ourselves

as citizens who have the power to protect,

and the right to welcome them.

When we do that,
when we see migration as the fact of life,

we will stop fearing it

and we will have the confidence
to organize it.

Thank you.

(Applause)