2084

Five

Part One

SAFETY

Chapter One

I opened my eyes. I was exhausted but alive. By my side were the battered remains of the makeshift raft, just a few bamboo poles lashed together, that had supported me for what must have been several days after the leaky fishing boat had finally disintegrated in heavy seas. I remembered that the two young boys who were on the raft with me had been swept away by a heavy wave a few days before. I had no sense of time and no idea how long the raft had been drifting or how long I had been unconscious. I must have survived the battering of the sea because I’d tied myself to the raft before I lost consciousness. I looked around; I was on a sandy beach. It was deserted. I got to my feet and, although bruised, battered, hungry and thirsty, I seemed relatively unhurt. I had no idea where I was. As a senior crew member on the boat full of refugees seeking asylum I only knew that the intended destination had been Australia. After a few days at sea the engine had packed up and the inadequate sail made any certainty about the direction we were blown in impossible to guess. There were no clues on the deserted beach, though a broken thong cast up at the waterline gave me some hope that I wasn’t far from some sort of civilization. My first need was to find some fresh water - the reservoir on the raft had only lasted a few days and I would have died with the others if those young boys had not been washed away. I owed my survival to these two innocent deaths - a melancholy thought.

Luckily, I soon found a small stream a few hundred metres from the beach and, another sign of civilization, a discarded empty plastic bottle close to the stream. The next objective was something to eat. As I struggled aimlessly along I began to realize that I was not lost in a deserted wilderness when I came upon a rubbish bin, half full of the sort of detritus people leave behind after a day at the beach. A stale half hamburger and the remnants of a bag of chips not only assuaged my hunger pangs but gave me hope that my 25 year odyssey was about to end.

I must have been about 15 when I fled Sudalia with my parents. My father had been a fisherman in the small village where I was born and I had been working on my father’s boat for several years before our village and my family became a target for the fundamentalist rebels. As the rebels gained ground against the poorly managed and corrupt government forces they took over village after village, forcing locals to work for them or to flee. My father might have stayed and toughed it out but he was afraid that I would be forced to join the rebel army as a child soldier - a modern fate worse than death for an adolescent, boy or girl, in Africa. Luckily, my father was able to sell his boat for a low price and he did have a few savings, so the journey out of the danger zone had been uncomfortable but relatively easy and safe. Europe had been the original objective, but the way to the north coast of Africa had been blocked by a series of civil wars and ethnic and religious strife so my family had drifted north and east over many months. Finally we got a boat to India, which exhausted our meagre store of savings. In the months spent living as non-people in the streets of Mumbai, I lost my mother in an outbreak of cholera. My father and I were able to blend in well with the locals who were also living hand to mouth in the streets. We soon found other Sudalians surviving, as we were, from day to day. I became a very skillful beggar. My youth and good looks were especially appealing to the newly rich Indian middle class matrons.

In the last twenty years India had overtaken America and was now, after China, the second biggest economy in the world, and it had the world’s largest and most prosperous middle class. However nothing much else seemed to have changed and there were still lots of poor and homeless people begging in order to stay alive. Sleeping out was never pleasant but at least the climate was warm and I soon got used to the hard pavements and the constant noisy crowds of the Mumbai streets. So long as I kept away from the police, and was careful not to get involved in fights and arguments over beggar stations, the police left me alone. I was such a good beggar that I could always afford to surrender a profitable spot to a potentially violent contender confident that I would find another one which I could soon make just as profitable. If my father had not become sick I would probably still be begging in the streets of India and by now perhaps would have been able to save enough for a house, wife and family. Of course, this rosy picture was largely darkened by the knowledge that I would never be able to be an Indian citizen so the more material goods I accumulated the more likely it would be that the police and the authorities would become interested in me and I might end up in jail for evading taxes or be deported as an illegal immigrant. As long as I lived a hidden life my future would be hazardous, the ‘Catch 22’ for all asylum seekers. Give yourself up and you are either deported, languish for years in a detention centre - the jail for innocents- or stay on the run with the knowledge that the price of freedom is instability, fear and uncertainty.

Despite its wealth, India had little time or sympathy for illegals like me and my father. As father’s illness worsened I used some of his savings - the profit from successful begging - to buy medicines on the black market. Whether I bought the right drugs and whether the purity and dosages were right I had no way of knowing, so father became even sicker. I could not seek medical help openly because we were not citizens and didn’t have visas. An approach to the police or a doctor or hospital would probably have obtained treatment for Dad, but it would almost certainly have meant detention or deportation for both of us. Finally, in desperation, one evening I took a taxi to the nearest Hospital, left father in the cab while I called an orderly and then, as a stretcher was being wheeled out, I slipped away in the dark. That was the last time I saw my father and that was 22 years ago. I tried to find out how he was by visiting the Hospital but at the reception desk, the clerk became suspicious when I would not give my name or show any documentation - an identity card or a visa was mandatory when approaching authority on any matter it seemed. I continued to beg for a while until I heard on the beggar’s grape vine that the police were looking for me, having been alerted by the Hospital that there was a probable illegal migrant begging in the city. I had to move on.

My savings were practically exhausted, so I was not able to buy a berth on a people-smuggler’s boat to Indonesia. My early experience as a fisherman on my father’s boat in Sudalia was enough to get me a job and, more importantly, a free passage as a crew member. This boat had an uneventful journey to Java where I was delighted to find that the profession of begging was almost as fruitful as it had been in Mumbai. I soon found a colony of illegal Sudalian refugees and quickly settled down to a life on the streets of Jakarta. Although the Indonesians were also pretty rich they were not quite as charitable as the Indians, but a reasonable living was achievable. Every now and then the police would raid the streets picking up the beggars at random. Those who had papers would be released after a night in jail, but if they caught an illegal, or just someone who had lost his papers, they were beaten and deported or, if deportation was impossible, sent to a detention facility.

Theoretically, once in detention it was possible to apply for asylum which meant at first getting a resident’s permit with all the rights of a citizen except the right to vote and then ultimately full citizenship itself. This was a throwback to the early years of the century when the United Nations was still a force in the world and laid down rules that all member States were supposed to uphold. Unluckily, in 2050, the old so-called emerging nations (Nigeria, Brazil, Indonesia, India, Korea) and the states that made up the new Islamic Federation (Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Algeria) broke away from the UN when the so-called first nations refused to drop their veto powers. So far, the uneasy truce backed up by the fact that all the nations have stockpiles of nuclear weapons, has held, but those worldwide rules, even when they are still in existence legally, are simply ignored by individual states when they are seen to be inconvenient. As the UN has no intrinsic power and none of the present rump of members (USA, Europe, China and Russia) has the capacity or the will to enforce its decrees, world co-operation remains stalemated. There are, of course, still sporadic conflicts all over the globe and these conflicts and the periodic famines, floods and droughts continue to create vast numbers of refugees, fleeing persecution or starvation Without a champion, even one as feeble as the UN used to be, we refugees are not only homeless and stateless we are universally hated everywhere we go. A refugee is the perfect scapegoat for a government struggling economically or facing a scandal or seeking re-election. Unsolved murders, increases in break-ins or violent crime are blamed automatically on the unseen evil underclass of illegal asylum seekers. In a way, refugees have replaced Jews as the object of hate for all the covert racists in the world. It seems that people just have to have some group - racial, religious, cultural - it doesn’t matter which - to blame for everything that goes wrong. In this environment anything is better than being captured and sent to a detention centre - a sentence in most cases for life. Even the most tenuous existence as an independent beggar on the streets is preferable, I thought, to the permanent surrender of personal freedom, implicit in a detention centre.

One unlucky day the inevitable happened. I was momentarily distracted by a fight between two beggars on the opposite street corner and didn’t see the police patrol car until it was too late to run and hide. I tried to bluff it out, using my best Indonesian, saying that I was an Indonesian citizen but had left my papers home by mistake and would take them into the police station the following morning. The younger policeman was inclined to accept my explanation but the Sergeant said ‘see if he has any money.’ I had only just started begging that morning and only had a few rupiah on me. ‘That’s not nearly enough’ grumbled the sergeant ‘it won’t even pay for a cup of tea. We’ll have to take him in’. At the police station I knew my fate was inevitable as I didn’t have the money to buy off the police or a friend who could do it for me. Deportation to Sudalia was not an option as I had only been a child when I left my village and had no family or friends still there. ‘Don’t worry’ said the younger cop ‘I have persuaded the Sergeant to agree not to impose the standard beating if you agree to go without fuss to our very best and newest detention camp. You’re lucky that a vacancy has just become available’ Despite many years on the streets, or perhaps because of them, I still had some trust in the goodness of human nature, so I took the assurance that I would be going to a reasonably pleasant place. Naively, I still thought that I would only have a short stay in detention before I found a country that would grant me asylum.

Chapter Two

I found myself on the prison bus, suitably barred and guarded, with two other refugees also lucky winners of places in this new ‘state of the art’ facility, optimistically called ‘Camp Safety’. The Camp was several hours drive away from Jakarta in the middle of the jungle. The road was new but it seemed to be a road to nowhere. We only saw one truck and one other car during the whole journey. When I asked one of the guards about this, he replied that the road had been built three years earlier and it only went as far as the Camp. Apparently no-one, other than the Camp staff, lived in the area which had been virgin jungle before the Camp was built. After years living on the streets of crowded cities, I wasn’t sure how I would cope with the impending isolation. ‘Don’t worry’ said the guard ‘there are twenty thousand refugees living in the Camp, it is a large self- contained community. You’ll be very well looked after’. The first sight of the Camp was not encouraging - it was a walled area with watch towers, manned by armed guards, just like an old fashioned jail, but over its gate was the reassuring name ‘Camp Safety’. One guard said to the other ‘I don’t know why they bother with all that security. Anyone who escapes from the facility won’t have anywhere nearby to go and the jungle would be almost certain death.’ I began to understand the appropriateness of the Camp’s name. It was not only an indication that the inmates were safe from external harm but also that the State would be safe from the refugees once they were incarcerated in Camp Safety.

At the entrance, under the banner containing the camp name, was the Camp motto: ‘Harmony + Hygiene + Humility = Happiness’. Interesting, but ambiguous, I thought. Once through the gates things looked better. The rows of huts were modern and well-spaced and each had its own sanitation unit. There were a hundred people in each hut. The men’s huts were at one end of the site separated from the women’s area by an electric fence. I soon became aware of something unusual about the Camp demographics. Not only were there no married couples, all the men were segregated from the women and there were no children at all in the Camp. There were young people of both sexes from about 17 years up, middle aged men and women and even some old people, but no children.

At first I didn’t really notice this peculiarity as I was fully occupied in settling into my allotted hut and taking the mandatory week-long induction program. When I asked one of the old timers - the Camp had been open for three years - I got a rather unsatisfactory response. ‘This is a Camp especially for unaccompanied adults’. Well, that was obvious but no-one seemed to know what happened to refugees with families or to unaccompanied children, with many of whom I had shared the streets of Jakarta and Mumbai. The young kids had been easy prey during the police raids as they stood out clearly from the rest of the street dwellers. In fact I had become friends with one or two of them and had been worried about their fate when they were captured. I was told they had other camps especially for families and children. It all seemed a bit odd, as those camps would have to be for unaccompanied children only, as presumably all the mothers, fathers and other adult relatives were housed in segregated camps like this one. This was a case of out of sight out of mind as no-one in my hut or any of the other inmates I talked to seemed to know or care much about what went on outside the Camp. They were mostly young single men, but those who had fled with partners, even parents or children, seemed to accept with a sad stoicism that they would be unlikely ever to see their families again. The guards in the bus were quite helpful in providing information but they were not residents of Camp Safety so all they knew was the delivery procedure. The permanent staff were mainly guards, called ‘carers’, as cleaning, cooking and maintenance was done by the detainees and the ‘carers were forbidden to communicate with us about anything other than camp routines. All questions, except requests about orders or directions, were simply ignored. If anyone approached a carer he would simply walk away. The Warden and the Camp medical staff could only be seen by appointment and the reason for the appointment had to be given before an audience was granted. In all my years at the Camp, I never had an audience with the Warden and on the few occasions when I was sick the doctor and the nursing staff were competent and professional but, like the carers they were tight lipped and refused to enter into any conversation with me. After a while, I just accepted that questions not directly related to a specific activities would be ignored, so I stopped asking them.

The sexes were not officially segregated. There were occasional concerts or dances put on by the Camp staff, where both sexes were present though gathered at opposite ends of the room, only meeting face to face when dancing together. Personal or intimate contact was monitored and discouraged. I became aware that if two people were seen to be getting too close one of them, sometimes the man sometimes the woman, would disappear and their spot in their hut would be filled. People would often try to find out where their friend had gone but they were simply told that she or he had been transferred to another camp and that no-one in Camp Safety knew which camp that was. The young sympathetic cop had been right about one aspect, I had come to a very tight community indeed. Of course, human nature being what it is, there was some clandestine contact between men and women. At the monthly closely supervised dances where partner choice was pre-selected, assignations would sometimes be arranged even though often the subsequent meeting was only a fleeting contact at opposite sides of the separating fence to talk and touch fingertips. This could be a painful activity as the gaps in the electric fence were only just big enough for an average finger to pass through. The only other opportunities available were for those of us whose jobs brought us into contact with a member of the opposite sex. Sometimes a cleaner or a maintenance worker could arrange a meeting outside the watchful eyes of the carers. There were one or two places where brief and risky moments for love making were possible. I knew this to be the case because a couple was caught in the act and both of them disappeared from the Camp immediately. Nothing was said, they just disappeared. Presumably, they were sent to separate camps, or so we hoped. Certainly neither of them was ever heard from again. This was hardly surprising as there was no mail out or in allowed for us and there were no telephones allowed in the Camp, except in the Admin Block which was permanently out of bounds to us.

Not only were there no children at the Camp, but no babies were ever born there even though there were thousands of women of child bearing age. Almost inevitably, I became attracted to a Sudalian girl who had a job similar to mine in the kitchen. We were very careful to keep our relationship secret only talking when we were not overlooked. We were both too timid to attempt to do much more than talk and occasionally hug and kiss very briefly but gradually, as I felt sure that she was really a refugee and not a camp spy, I was able to talk more freely. We discussed the compulsory sterilization program I had been told about during the induction sessions. Her comment was a horrifying one. ‘During the induction week all new females are sterilized by one simple injection which, they say permanently prevents conception and the effect is irreversible. Some of the women resist the procedure even though it is painless,’ she said ‘but eventually give in when they were threatened with a lifelong prison sentence’. Shocked, I thought what a horrible and inhumane but simple long term solution to the growing worldwide refugee problem especially if, as I suspected, this inoculation policy was widespread. Simple - yes, but certainly horrific. The idea that this was apparently considered to be a benign method of breeding out refugees sent shivers up my spine. Could there be such a thing as benign genocide?

After one very close call, when we were nearly spotted holding hands by a passing carer, our unconsummated affair tapered off. Knowing that she was sterile seemed to render the snatched and dangerous moments of thwarted passion futile, unproductive and too risky. For me, the friendship continued but the passion abated. After all, neither of us wanted to be sent away to some unknown destination like so many others at the Camp. We settled for the safety of occasional uncomplicated contact. Eventually she was transferred. I was sad but not devastated as I still believed that she would have been transferred to another camp, perhaps a better on. This optimistic belief soon changed to a strong suspicion that the word ‘transfer’ was a euphemism for elimination. We refugees gradually became accustomed to making friends only for them to disappear without a word or a trace so, over time, we built up a sort of callousness about relationships; always expecting and preparing for their inevitable loss. Like the hardened refugee I had become, I grieved briefly and then got on with the business of my own survival.

It was some time before I realized that the Camp was not only physically a closed and entirely self-contained unit, with its only external contacts being the twice weekly delivery of food and other goods and the occasional arrival of new refugees or forced departure of those considered to be inappropriate, it was also completely isolated from the rest of the world as far as information was concerned. No phones and no mail were only the most obvious omissions in an era of rapid and universal communication. There were no computers available for us, there were no newspapers or magazines - online or hard copies. The internet, wi-fi, E-books,