Wipe out this stain on Scotland’s character 

Editorial 
Monday, 6th August 2001
The Scotsman

CONSIDER a tale of two contrasting societies. In the one, the state has ruthlessly
persecuted a minority-language people during 15 years of civil war which has left 3,500
villages destroyed - bombed and torched by the army - and 37,000 people dead. All because
they sought home rule. Of the original 12 million members of this minority, three million
have fled their homeland, often abroad. The fighting largely ended in 1999, but the state
concerned has been repeatedly rebuked for human rights violations. Only in May, the
European Court decreed this state was guilty of another 14 serious separate violations of
human rights. 

 Now think of somewhere closer to home. A small, democratic nation proud that it has just
revived its own parliament for domestic affairs but is still happy to share a common
sovereignty with a larger neighbour. A rich place where there have never been so many jobs.
The contrast with the other place could not be more stark, and it would not surprise most of
us if refugees from the first state sought refuge in the second. But the reality has proved
infinitely more cruel. 

 The first country is Turkey, and its persecuted minority are the Kurds. The second land is,
of course, Scotland. Yesterday, just after midnight, a 22-year-old Kurdish asylum-seeker
from Turkey seeking haven in Scotland was brutally stabbed to death on a Glasgow street, in
what police say may be a racially motivated attack. This is no isolated incident concerning
refugees, though it is the first fatality. Since the beginning of this year there has been at least
56 other violent incidents involving the tiny number of asylum-seekers in Scotland. Their
number has risen steadily with the growth number of refugees seeking asylum in Glasgow.
From around 1,350 at the turn of the year, there are now more than 5,000 refugees, about 45
per cent of those concentrated in Sighthill and Springburn. 

 What could possibly have happened to give these refugees, many from such devastated
societies as Kurdistan, such a hellish reception? A reception which is increasingly a stain on
Scotland’s character? The answer is first that Britain’s politicians, Labour and Conservative,
have adopted a response to the tidal wave of refugees fleeing civil war and unemployment
which borders on the xenophobic. If Turkey’s jails can be criticised, so can Britain’s stuffing
of its unwanted visitors into tension-filled areas of urban deprivation. And if ignorant
violence meets Glasgow’s asylum-seekers, this is in part a response to the hysterical
atmosphere engendered by politicians unwilling to risk unpopularity by urging the
integration of these refugees. 

 The asylum-seekers will continue to come to Britain because of its stark contrast with their
own nations. They will come in lorries, under trains, and even risk their lives trying to cross
the Channel on inflatable beds because the alternative in their homelands is a thousand times
worse. Instead of pretending they will not come and locking them up when they do, or
concentrating them in ghettos in our poorest urban areas, we need to adopt a more positive
approach. We should start to welcome those with skills and enterprise to help grow our
economy and help create jobs for all our citizens. Or else we will see more blood on Scottish
streets.