Time to Decolonize the “Anti colonialist humanitarian movement”

You would expect mainstream western news outlets to whitewash the image of the occupier. Newspapers, TV stations and social media accounts of major global news are not only selective in their coverage, but they also tend to twist facts and more dangerously omit news of what are clear breaches of human rights.

It has been always the case when covering for the Middle East, and in specific when it came to Palestine.

Since our early ages, whenever a disaster took place in our countries, which was quite frequent, we learnt to read news with skepticism. We trained our mind to be critical to uncover a glimpse of the truth.

With the rise of social media, we found a medium to spread our truth and our versions of the Middle East realities by raising awareness on our channels and our blogs.

We lobbied, we advocated, we raised flags and unleashed our revolutions loud and wide. We fought our systems of oppression and our own government. We exposed abusers and thugs. Yet the ones in power fought back with counter social media attacks led by the corrupt system. Algorithms conspire with our abusers. Human rights activists’ accounts were blocked. Social media architects are in a sly agreement with the fascists. Terrified of exposing violence and abuses they hushed the voices of the oppressed.

Social media is betraying us once again while fighting occupation and colonialist settlers today. Accounts are being blocked, contents removed and replaced with an ugly propaganda. Footages of massive unjustifiable ethical cleansings are omitted. Algorithms recognize that the truth of the killings of Palestinian children would harm the occupation state. They shut our mouths and manipulate the masses.  They consciously and unconsciously lead the public into a unilateral type of news with the illusion of being democratic, objective and neutral.

Neutrality. We have heard it, supported it maybe and thought of it to be one of the most noble humanitarian principles to be promoted, and to guide all our approaches to support people suffering from any type of disaster and conflict.

Recently the concept of neutrality has become debatable in humanitarian spheres. Should it really be a core humanitarian standard? Merriam Webster dictionary defines it as “the quality or state of being neutral; especially refusal to take part in a war between other powers”.

Is this really what should be the core of humanitarian principles and what they should stand for?

I honestly prefer to abide by my mother’s teachings. Her ethics go beyond any international standards. It is not that complicated; the perpetrators of violence, the colonizers, the occupiers and violators of rights should be called out and condemned.

At our home we learnt to take sides. We learnt to resist oppression. We raise our voice against injustice. No, we do not stand silent. We take actions and defend the rights of the people whose lives been scattered by injustice. We take sides with the people of the land.  

Today more than ever I stand by my mother’s teachings.

Neutrality in such circumstances should be condemned.

Taking acts of solidarity with Palestine is the only ethical imagination we should abide by.

Injustice is not subjective. Standing with a population whose lives and lands are being stolen is not a point of view.

This is a freedom struggle against apartheid and colonial occupation.

We do not call it a conflict. There are no two sides. There is only one Right Holder.

But these truths were expected to be hidden by mainstream colonialist media and spokespersons.

The major disappointment comes from many humanitarian outlets. These same entities who are leading a new humanitarian map, who are encouraging a revolution of the aid system and appear to be waging a war to decolonize the humanitarian sector, many couldn’t pronounce a word of condemnation to the acts of violence.  They make claims to transfer back the power to the communities and yet cannot denounce the colonial state. Some call it on their platform “a conflict” and describe the violence as “clashes”. They “objectively” define the war as a shared responsibility between two parties. Who is the second party they are throwing equal responsibility on as the attacker? Are they the 75 children killed? The head doctor of the COVID response who has been murdered? The children who survived saving their fish? The youth who committed suicide? The 10 years old girl who is in agony unable to act nor suffer like a 10 years old child? Are these the ones to share responsibility in this war?

Who are the humanitarians who can shift and dismantle colonialist power?

I will not trust a body that has a selective criterion on who to call an abuser, an occupier and an oppressor. We are not to trust these types of mechanisms to influence agendas nor to bring back power to the people. Maybe they will, but I do not trust which side of justice they will chose.

Today we need to create our standards of justice. We are the humanitarians. We raise our voices to speak our truth. We self- fundraise. We are the ones to claim our land back and our rights against our own countries’ corrupt systems and the global colonialist powers. As the genius and wisdom of Audre Lorde once said:

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”

It is the time where we children of these lands, claim back the space and decolonize the movement of decolonization from the hands of the headmasters of colonization.

Article Written by Sara Sannouh

Disclaimer: All statements and views are my own and do not reflect the positioning of any organization I am affiliated with

Sunny Sundays, Eucalyptus and Catacombs

It is sunny Sunday in Beirut 1994.

Two little heads in swimsuits, flowery dresses and sandals jumped into the back seat of the white Renault 12 parked glamorously in al Itihad building in Tarik al Jdide. Mother, with her chestnut proud bun, lit a cigarette and settled behind the wheel after pouring water into her cherished vehicle. She was waiting, patiently, unlike her, for the neighbor to move their car blocking the alleyway. I thought it was patience; but I deduct now that she was just waiting for her the Renault to warm up. One minute down the line, she hammered the klaxon until the whole building pumped out of their windows Sunday 9AM.

 A small background note.

No one was to mess with Mother. The last time her car was blocked, a police patrol arrived for the second floor neighbor. They arrested him for a couple of hours until his uncle, who happened to be her dentist, interfered. She dropped her rights, they released the guy and she got free dental care for a year for our family.

Our Renault 12 didn’t have to wait much. By the time she finished her cigarette, the passage was cleared.

On the road, my eyes devoured each moving object and landscape. If I closed them, I could still describe the tiniest detail of each stray dog who roamed in the small alleys of postwar Beirut. The mixed smell of blood and sea infiltrated my nostrils and gave me a weird feeling of nostalgic nausea.

I still get it sometimes next to the new water front built on seaside Beirut leading to Beit el Katayeb. Other times, I feel it up my throat, on Madfoun road next to the old railway trail, and occasionally on Sundays when heading back from South on Damour road.  

On the daily sea passage that we took with my mama, I had memorized by heart each pacing scenery, although the same daily, but I was still able to be amazed each time by the unsettling dull layers of abandoned concrete and landmarks that the war had left.  A few eucalyptus trees remained standing tall near the corniche. Savoring their odor until she filled up her lungs, euphorically, mother would lower the windows every day and retell us the same story:

 “When I was 10 years old, I used to ride the tram with my grandmother, Primo seats, and all of this corniche was planted with eucalyptus trees. There were no buildings, just hills of trees.” She would inhale now the last puff of her cigarette, throw the butt out of the window and start singing batwanessbik chorus of a great artist whom I despised her music back then, Warda al jaza2iria. Mother repeated the cassette from side to side, smoking one bafra after another, smiling, yet with tears running from behind her black wayfarer.

I hated Warda and the eucalyptus trees, for a long time. Her voice and the smell of the eucalyptus stung to my memory along with the agonizing sceneries of the corniche and reminded me of the horrendous pains that broke my heart at the age of 10.

It was when we reached Raouche’s intersection that the oxygen was sucked out of my lungs.

During that same year, I developed asthma.

Children my age and younger were scattered on the street, screaming with laughter and fear. I remember them barefoot, gluing their bodies to the cars’ windows, asking for breadcrumbs and niggles, with pink candy floss in their tiny hands. Their hair looked different than mine; I envied them and stood in awe in front of the magic sunbeams coloring their heads. I memorized their faces from one Sunday to another and imagined their lives and stories. I had built with them a one way silent affectionate bond that they never discovered, but that stayed with me in my dreams and books and which paved my career twenty years later. My mother used to speed up when we passed them by and lock the windows, as if she was afraid they would steal her children’s colored sandals or maybe their seats at school. I begged her so many times we invite these children with us even if for a day to spend it at the beach. Most of the time she stood silent, turned off the radio and shut “my nonsense”. The next Sunday she would bring them manaeech or knefe from her favorite Halleb branch.

This memory inked my skin at a very early age with a growing feeling of helplessness that just got hollower with every child I saw on the street. From one decade to another. From one country to another. From one post to another. The bitterness remained. The awkwardness dominated. Helpless I felt on every crossroad.

Children are not made for wars nor made for injustice. Children in shelter. Children on the street. Children during wars. Children on the verge of famine. Children at home abused. Children behind bars. Yet we are unable to stop their pain, the bombs, the stigma or the fear.

Four years ago I had the chance to reconcile with Beirut postwar years and build a two way relationship with the children whom Warda and eucalyptus trees once constructed a wall between us. I came to discover that my unilateral relationship with them and the stigma I fabricated was nothing but a faded fiction. Children on the street are stronger than me and you. The brave labourers, who still roam today Raouche, Corniche al Mazraa, Hamra and other Beirut 2020 streets, are highly resilient heroes fighting the system on our behalf.

We have little to offer them as long as we are not waving a revolution in the justice and social system.

Many children succeeded in escaping the streets and going back to school with supportive communities’ efforts. Some were removed from abusive environments with the aid of social workers. Others were offered safe spaces to just be, play and find moments of peace and pure joy. Others were reunited with their beloved families across seas.

The lives of some children on the street changed for the better, and they have grown their resilience to defend themselves and pave a new future. They were able to create their own safe haven where no abuse nor fear can infiltrate.

As a community, we might fight and single out abusers on an individual level, we can impact lives of hundreds maybe. But how many perpetrators in reality are we able to bring to justice in postwar Beirut and in 2020 Beirut? What about the abuser who is a system and not an individual? Are we able to fight it? Able to fight corruption, cultural stigma and racism? Are we the ones who would stand along street children and fight their struggle side by side?

It is sunny Sunday in Beirut 2020.

Since two weeks, a general mobilization order was issued by the government in an attempt to contain Corona virus ravaging the country. It is 12 noon. An unprecedented silent is hovering over the city. It is a first time in my 35 years that I see this popular area deserted. After a few minutes, a first car passed by. It stopped at the red light. Two girls, barely aged 8 years old, covering their face with scarves and still giggling, ran to the car parked at the intersection. The man ignored them at first. After a few knockings on his window, galvanized, he lowered the glass and screamed at the girls from the top of his lungs, as if he was blaming them for all the calamities of the universe. He extended his hand to grab one of them, to terrorize her maybe, or to unload his cumulative frustration, or probably to project on her his anger from his wife, maybe his mistress, perhaps his beloved country or maybe God. He then controlled his internalized oppression at the last minute, remembering, from behind his N95 mask, that the girl might contaminate him. The children mortified by the man’s aggressiveness started crying, and ran each in a direction.

Everyone left and I stayed there watching from my balcony the cruel system. Aside from the daily harassment and struggle children on the street face, now lay a whole new array of risks.

These children would struggle to abide by curfews and lockdowns. For many they found refuge in day centers and shelters, where they had a meal, a space to play, learn and be safe. Now they have closed down. The homes that the children go back to at night might mean sometimes an unsafe environment where higher level of abuse and violence could take place. The streets are heavily policed or empty leaving ways for aggressors to attack.

We have little to offer them as long as we are not waving a revolution in the justice and social system.

It is Dark Friday night in Beirut. It feels cold and lonely. While everyone is sleeping and confined, a shoe shiner spirit frees itself from the bottom of the building shaft in Tallet al khayat. That same abyss where his body laid breathless, silent, unjustly, a few months back. His soul, garnished with his apotropaic amulet around his neck, found peace today and flew high in the sky, away from our Beirut’s suffocating catacombs.

Our exotic poverty

 

There are some things that are just “unpleasant” for our eyes to see; a tasteless painting, a muddy weather, a pile of rubbish, a man taking a shit, maybe a starving child, a woman skinning a man alive or just ugly slams surrounding our cities. Our retinas are sensitive and can only absorb a measured amount of light and images over a certain period of time. They were programmed throughout centuries to become selective. Some invasive footage should be filtered automatically and directed into the spam folder not to damage our very core existence. And when our security system fails, when small cockroaches manage to crawl through our high walls of defense, we are faced with the inevitable decisions of either killing them or beautifying them.

This is not a technical cinema review of the movie Capharnaüm; I am not a professional of art nor a critic. This is simply an observation and a bold personal opinion from a woman working in the humanitarian development field.

The movie obtained the Jury’s prize in Cannes and then the applause of major international and national public figures including humanitarian aid workers in the field of protection.

I was intrigued to watch it ever since the trailer was out; I had mixed feelings of content and excitement. Finally the topic of street connected children was brought up to light. Maybe now came the time where art was a medium to expose the misery of working children and impact new policies.

I watched the movie. It was emotional. It depicted ugly Beirut’s slams. It charmed the public with the wide shots of despair flowing on the big screen. Tears were rolling down the faces of all watchers in the theater. All enraging censored topics fled through the big screen: early marriage, child labor, domestic workers, drug abuse… For a moment I was happily surprised. Yes we were close enough to sensitize the population around core topics and violations we are very frustrated about. But again that was a close call, a missed opportunity I would even say, or a bullet in the heart maybe.

Poverty was described in its rudeness in this movie, true; yet still with a taste of blaming the poor and with a total dismissal of government policies that are in fact the root cause of the misery. The movie ends with the main message that was disseminated bit by bit throughout the film: the abused neglected child in the end sues his parents in court for bringing him to life.

I am sorry Nadine, it is not family planning and birth control that will put an end to the poverty and injustice cycles. No, we do not have the right to tell poor people to stop giving birth and that is the ultimate solution for a worldwide crisis that has been running for centuries. Our own system is perpetrating abuse and violence upon its citizens in so many shameless and sly faces. We have been taught by western societies and ideologies that making less children will make us less poor; the cause of inequality resides in multiplying in numbers. But in reality, we do not have a surplus of population in our lands. Our ex colonized territories are vast and rich in resources that could last us for centuries. Eduardo Galeano exposed this in his book “Open veins of Latin America” in 1970; giving the examples of “Brazil (that) has thirty-eight times fewer inhabitants per square mile than Belgium, Paraguay has forty-nine times fewer than England”. He explained how the west has “nightmares about millions of children advancing like locusts over the horizon from the third world(…); (they tend) to justify the very unequal income distribution between countries and social classes, to convince the poor that poverty is the result of the children they don’t avoid having, and to damn the rebellious advance of the masses”[1].

The family who is portrayed in this movie having so many children, did not chose to be poor nor did the parents chose to be stateless. They have been born in a country that stole their identity, their existence and their free will. We are very busy judging and smudging irritating scenes that hurt our eyes and soft emotions by blaming the weak and sucking every inch of dignity from a powerless society.

The children acting in the movie are not acting; they are in reality working on the streets of Beirut following a crisis that destroyed their country. As only resources for the families after they have lost all their savings, they found themselves obliged to be the breadwinners. By acting in this movie, and reliving the harsh situation of the street, aren’t we exposing these fragile beings to additional trauma they have been already subjected to over years and years? Is it even ethical to use the real pain of a child to create art? This might be debatable. Zain the child, the main actor, was successfully resettled to Norway after the release of the movie. It is a happy outcome for Zain. But what about Cedra? What about the other thousands children who are working in harsh conditions whether on the street or a stone quarry? What about Mohannad, Bashar, Zouhour and the rest? Where are these children? Probably still roving the streets at night or abused by the system in construction sites,   being stereotyped and stripped of their innocence and every bit of life. Around 5 % of Syrian refugees residing in Lebanon were resettled since the start of the crisis. I do not think we need a movie where the child relives his traumas to ensure his safe successful exit strategy from this damned country.  It is good news for Zain maybe, but this only highlights the fragility of a humanitarian system that is majorly moved and mobilized through media pressure.

As for the Hollywood scenes in the movie, they remain a production of Hollywood and do not reflect reality. Domestic workers are piled up in dozens like sardines’ cans and expelled from our country following ill treatment. They are not heroically treated in the airport but rather humiliated under a racist sponsorship system.

Spectators walking out of the movie had red eyes but also anger towards the poor and their ignorance. The blame was channelled right there, whipping underprivileged souls and digging deeper their graves. I want people to be angry, to feel frustrated and remove the selective parental guidance from in front of their eyes and let the ugly cockroaches creep into their minds, and taste the bitterness our societies live in. I want them to be angry at the real monster that is eating us alive from centuries onwards. I need them to raise their voices and push for policies’ change. Even us, humanitarian aid workers are doing it in the wrong way. An awareness session around family planning conducted for the refugees is not the key to stop the poverty cycle. Lobbying and pressuring for policy change is the key to give the masses their innate rights. We need first to be convinced that these are our natural rights; to be born, to use the resources of our lands, to move freely between continents and oceans without being criminalized, to have access to basic rights and development opportunities, to laugh, to couple, to have children without being sanctioned.

The wide screen shots with eye bird view of the Beirut slams are artistic, eccentric and could serve as a beautified painting fighting injustice in the galleries. But is this what we need today?

Do we need a more sophisticated art that serve the intellectual, the elite and Oscars’ venues? Are we still painting poverty so we make it softer for our eyes to see it and accept it? Same goes for the Ouzville project; an art project initiated in 2017 where Lebanese and international artists painted giant murals over the walls of the neglected buildings in Ouzai. What is the goal from behind this cultural initiative? Is the purpose to spread colourful and kitsch designs on the slams surrounding the airport? This family featured in the movie or a similar one would be probably living there in the Ouzai suburbs. They will wake up tomorrow more hopeful in the morning, surrounded by blue green and yellow rainbows.  Mr. Ambassador will be inspired while landing on Rafic Hariri’s airport this evening. Aren’t we making all of this better for our own eyes to dismiss the core painful fate of the families who are living there?

I find this very dangerous if not cruel, covering up our pains charmingly and falling into a comfortably numb status. A staged crime against humanity, against our own salvation. We have been trapped since colonization’s centuries and we are tightening the ropes around our necks stronger each day, stronger each day, stronger each day.

Written by Sara Sannouh

[1] “Open Veins of Latin America”-1970- Eduardo Galeano- page 6

Phot credits:

https://wsimag.com/architecture-and-design/26711-ouzville

Cannes. A “Capharnaüm” della libanese Labaki il Premio della Giuria ecumenica

Today…I mourn

think or feel

“Make a positive difference in people lives!

Heal the pain, remedy the scars!

Fight inequality & draw a warm smile on oppressed children faces, suffering from injustice!

Live for a cause worth living for!”

These were my claims when I did this drastic change of career. I decided to step out of the advertising world, the “mad men” world. I chose to stop shaping consumers choices & withdraw my sedative drugs from their blood.  I decided to repair what is left from their minds, their emotions & address the” human” in both of us.

Why do I feel today that I am too late?

I always ask everyone to open their minds, think, and analyze the facts before acting randomly & adhering to any public opinion. Now it is me who is dropping this cognitive capacity.

We study, analyze, argue & come up with theories to have a democratic, fair global public sphere. I finish the class feeling enthusiastic, happy, excited to raise the challenge & proud for being a part of this revolutionary stream of thoughts. Then, I wake up the next day, with drastic news, my country on top of newspapers headlines, followed by a call from my mother over the Atlantic reassuring me that everyone is safe. Everything falls apart. Once again I find myself helpless, sad, guilty, and angry but this time for believing the illusion of the existence of a fair world. I curse the global stream along with the nationalism that lost any meaning.

Today I decide not to think.

Today I sit in silence. I close my eyes. I feel their pain. I feel our pain.

Today I mourn.