December 01, 2007

We must help people to go where they feel they belong… alive

Sir Christopher Caldwell in “Rioters vs state in a test of will” December 1, quotes the Socialist leader Malek Boutih saying “they are whole populations here that don’t feel they belong to this country” and informs that the bodies of the dead boys “will be flown to Morocco and Senegal, respectively, for burial”, which leaves us all with the question of why could they not have been flown there alive?

The poor in developing countries frequently face no other choice than to emigrate to richer countries in order to survive physically but many alienated and frustrated citizens of developed countries do not really have the choice to emigrate somewhere else in order to survive emotionally, and perhaps they should have.

For instance if these dead boys had had the option of selling whatever French citizen’s rights they had to a foreigner truly interested in coming to France and with that money could have financed their resettlement to Morocco or Senegal perhaps we could have solved the problems on two fronts.

Clearly it is not as easy as that but the world needs to find new and different ways to fight violence originated from deep sentiments of alienation with other means than violence.