‘Slaves for sale’? – Visual performances of protest and vanishing global solidarity

It may be that the presence of US President Trump was the talk of the town in Davos. Or French President Macron with his meandering speech that included to put Europe on the map (again?) as a force for global good. But there was another encounter that related back to the phase in history when ‘Europe’ might have wanted to civilise the world but in fact created colonial oppression and facilitated for example the slave trade (and its justification). The picture in Davos that harked back to those themes was the handshake between Rwandan President Kagame and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Apparently, or so a lot of headlines suggested, that handshake sealed a deal for Rwanda to take in African refugees that Israel wants to get rid off – at a payment of US$ 5000 per head to the Rwandan government.

Both sides have long denied that there is a deal in place, and now confirm procedures will comply with international law – which in itself is not possible as Israeli refugee policy has contravened such law repeatedly over the last decade. Also, Eritrean and Sudanese refugees have been flown to Rwanda (and Uganda) from Israel before, quasi voluntarily and enticed by a payment of US$ 3500 per person, and often experienced violence, blackmail and extortion after their arrival.

When the Israeli parliament approved a new deportation law in December 2017 that included more restrictions on refugees and migrants living in Israel, and threatened future imprisonment for those who do not leave ‘voluntarily’, protests against the new policy gathered pace and extended to parts of Israeli society who in the past were not engaged in the question of African refugees in the country.

In parallel, protests by refugees and migrants themselves increased and took various forms – most dramatically perhaps in a recent protest by Eritrean refugees that made it into most international media outlets: the ‘Slaves for sale’ performance, here reproduced in a screen shot from the Morning Star.

screenshot Morning Star

On the one hand, this protest is a powerful performance of injustice, and a powerful symbol that harks back to one of the great injustices suffered by African people in particular in history, but does the narrative hold? And does it help or rather hinder wider conceptions of global solidarity?

Looked at from a more historical lens, the situation the mainly but not exclusively Eritrean and Sudan refugees in Israel find themselves in is in no way new or unique. It is yet another expression of the fact that universal human rights lack enforcement in actual political space as perhaps most famously Hannah Arendt has commented on.

When I first saw the pictures of the ‘Slaves for sale’ protest, I felt a strong sense of unease, for a number of reasons. Suddenly, all the decades of work on agency in forced migration seemed blown out of the window. We are presented with by implication innocent victims with no say over their future who simply wait to be sold on. We do not know how they came to be in this situation – presumably they came to Israel against their free will already? There have been reports that Eritreans in particular were abducted in Sudan by Bedouin tribes in the past, sold on and somehow ended up in Israel against their will. It might be that some of those who protested here experienced that fate. In my own research among Eritrean refugees in Israel, all people I encountered in Tel Aviv came there by choice – often a choice between a number of not very enticing possibilities, but a choice nevertheless. And even at a time when the Israeli border with Sinai was still open, but Eritrean networks in Israel warned their compatriots not to come, many still did do so – aware of the dangers of kidnapping in Sinai, aware of the fact that the wider Israeli public and many leading politicians were rather hostile to their arrival.

This could only mean, the narrative by activists proclaimed, that conditions in Eritrea were so bad that even those dangers did not deter people, conveniently ignoring the fact that once people had actually left Eritrea, they had agency on their migration trajectory. And here is a second reading of the ‘Slave-protest’ in the competition for maximum global exposure: Eritrean refugees and activists have advanced the narrative of ‘slavery’ they are being exposed to in their country of origin, in a similar vain as Darfurian activists come with the narrative of genocide. For both tropes, evidence on the ground or the lack of it has little relevance, but these tropes allow prime position in the global hierarchy of suffering.

Yes, the Israeli regime of deportation and detention, and the fact that it is almost impossible to even launch an asylum claim let alone become recognised, are all serious flaws of International Laws Israel has signed up to in principle. There are many ways to engage with these unjust policies on the ground – as increasing sections of Israeli society are doing – and try to fork out actual political space for the rights of those who came as asylum seekers or migrants to Israel, to practice solidarity with all who deserve it, be they from Darfur, Eritrea, Nigeria, Cameron or elsewhere.

I doubt that symbolic hyperbole like in the performance of slavery is going to achieve that – aside from its arguably rather un-historical analogy. We live in a visual world of fast moving pictures and imaginaries. We might be captivated by a particular noteworthy performance such as in the ‘Slaves for sale’ staging of refugee plight, visible in the fact that the picture appeared in many international media, not quite as widespread as the picture of Aylan Kurdi at the time, but following a similar logic.

But attention moves on, as not least the case of Aylan Kurdi has demonstrated – and to raise wider awareness again in the future needs to rely on even more hyperbolic performances. This will do little for ensuring the rights of all those stranded within countries or at international borders, and who in everyday struggles simply try to get on with their lives – or to go back to Hannah Arendt, to secure universal rights in actual political space, and move a step closer towards global solidarity.