Lolita Derrangement Syndrome

Lolita (1962) - Infatuated by Lolita Scene (3/10) | Movieclips

 

 

 

Whatever The Justice of Their Application

“The NGO workers who are tasked with getting the people off these rickety boats in the middle of the sea have terrible stories to tell. 

 

When a boat is spotted at any time of the day or night and the workers are not on an official vessel, they have an hour or two at most to get down to the harbour. One worker says that when the migrants board the naval vessel at sea, or the harbour on land, they are told ‘You’re in Italy!’ 

 

Then the workers reassure them that they are safe. Again, apart from the Eritreans most are very happy and smile. In the countries they come from, people are suspicious of officials and especially of police, so for third parties to reassure the migrants that here in Europe the police and officials will actually work for them is a very important reassurance. One NGO worker relates that the first thing she says to the migrants when they get onto the naval vessel in the middle of the sea or into the dock at Lampedusa is simply, ‘Welcome to Europe.’ 

 

After what the migrants have been through even before the treacherous crossing from North Africa, it is hardly surprising that many of them arrive at Lampedusa exhausted and traumatised. Some will have lost a family member on the journey. 

 

In 2015 a big Nigerian man sat on the harbour ground weeping like a child and hitting it with his hand. The boat he had come in on had gone down and though he had saved one of his children, his wife and another of his sons had drowned in front of him. 

 

Yet still they come, knowing the risks, because for all the stories of sinking boats and deaths on board, most of those who set out will stay afloat, reach Italian waters and once there become European citizens. Whether they are fleeing political, religious or sectarian persecution, or whether they are after a better life in the Developed World, ALL will claim Asylum. 

 

Many will have legitimate claims and Italy has a duty to give these people asylum: under the Geneva Conventions and the EU Dublin Treaty the first country into which a migrant enters and claims asylum is the country that must assess the claim and offer protection. 

But the bitter Truth is that there is almost no way to find out Who is Who, or What is True. 

 

If the flow of applicants was not at the levels it has been for years then the finger-printing, interviews and everything else that follows could be carefully assessed. Backstories could be cross-checked and followed up on. But with the arrivals coming at this speed and in these numbers there was never any chance of this. 

 

Two other elements make all of this far worse. Many – and sometimes most – of the people arriving deliberately bring no paperwork with them because being unidentified is an advantage. 

[ In a civilised Society, they cannot deport you, repatriate you, try you, jail you or execute you when They don't know Who You Are -- ]

Amid the demands on the time of the agencies people can pretend to be other ages, other people or even from another country. 

 

When it became known that a particular group were being put to the front of the asylum queue – Syrians, for instance – then a large number of people would claim to be Syrians, even though some of those working with the refugees noticed they were neither speaking any Syrian dialect nor knew anything about the country they claimed to be from. 

This phenomenon is at least partly caused by NGOs that advocate for any and all migration into Europe as part of the ‘borderless world’ movement. As the flow of migrants grew in the 2010s, some NGO groups decided to help migrants before they even got to Europe. They provided easily accessible information on the web and on phone apps to guide would-be Europeans through the process. This included advice on where to go and what to say once there. 

Front-line workers notice that as time goes on the awareness of the migrants about what will happen to them and what they should expect becomes ever clearer. In part this is the result of word filtering back to their countries of origin from people who have successfully made the journey. But it is also because a movement exists that seeks to teach migrants how to stay in Europe whatever the justice of their application. All these groups are correct in their assumption that in the twenty-first century Italy has neither the money, time nor will to painstakingly go through every application. 

Of course, there are people who are refused asylum, at which point they can appeal the decision. But even if their appeal is turned down it is rare for anything further to happen. It is hard to find any cases of someone arriving in Italy, being refused the right to remain and then being sent back to their home country. Very occasionally someone who has been convicted of a crime in Italy is repatriated. But even then the bar is set exceptionally high. It is easier to let everyone dissolve into Italy and then into Europe than it is to hold the line of the law. The Truth is that once you survive Lampedusa’s waters you are in Europe for good. 

Of course, even those who may be lying about asylum are looking for an infinitely better life than the one they have left behind. 

 

From Lampedusa it seems easy to imagine schemes to distribute this vast and continual wave of people equitably and harmoniously across the continent. But anybody who knows even just Italy should know better than this. Aside from the tiny number of earlier and better-off migrants, most people who arrive will eventually find themselves sleeping outside the train station in Milan or in a car park in Ravenna. The lucky ones will end up working for gangs or trying to sell imitation luxury goods on the bridges of Venice or down the side streets of Naples. Whenever they see a policeman or the flash of a police car’s lights they will hurriedly gather up their counterfeit bags or wheel away their tray of imitation-brand sunglasses and hurry from the scene. 

 

They may be more protected, free and safe than they were at home, but their future can hardly be said to be bright. 

 

And Lampedusa is only one small island. During recent years boats full of migrants have also come ashore on the islands nearest to Lampedusa, including Malta and Sicily. In 2014 alone – the year before the migrant crisis ‘began’ – 170,000 people arrived this way. 

 

Officials talk of solving the problem by filling Libya’s recent government vacuum. But they forget that the flow of migrants continued even during the period when European governments (including the French) were paying bribes to Gaddafi. And they forget that the boats do not only head out from Libya, but also launch from Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria. 

 

What is more, this is in any case only one route. 

 

Over to the west of the Mediterranean is another route entirely, going up from Morocco and into Spain. Migrants have flowed across this narrowest gap between Africa and Europe, the Straits of Gibraltar, for decades. And despite Morocco having the best relations of any North African government with any European country – and therefore the best chance of doing deals to stop the smugglers – the migration to Spain has not been stopped. 

 

Indeed, during the early 1990s the movement of migrants through this route proved to be a harbinger of what was to come. In those days the going rate for the people-smugglers to traverse 10 miles of sea was $600. Then as now boats set off on a daily basis and the bodies of those who didn’t make it (often because the smugglers make migrants swim the last portion of the journey) washed up on the beaches of Spain. 

 

Then, as now, the movement was not only continuous but diverse. One report from 1992 documented that of 1,547 illegal migrants detained by the Spanish authorities in Tarifa alone over a ten-month period, there were 258 Ethiopians, 193 Liberians and 64 Somalis. 

 

As the report observed, ‘word of the new route had spread far beyond Morocco, with not only Algerians and growing numbers of sub-Saharan Africans, but also Filipinos, Chinese and even the occasional Eastern Europeans among those detained’. Among those who were fleeing, some were escaping oppression while others were simply looking for work or a better quality of life. 

 

As Santiago Varela, Spain’s then Deputy Interior Minister, said, ‘In North Africa, there is a structural problem. We don’t know how its political and economic situation will develop. And the demographic pressure is enormous.’ He was referring to a situation in which even then 70 per cent of the Moroccan population was under the age of 30 and official unemployment figures sat at 17.5 per cent. ‘You can’t yet compare our problem with that of other European countries,’ Varela said. ‘But it’s a warning of what can happen here in the future. Spain has passed very quickly from being a land of emigration to one of immigration.’ 

 

Varela was speaking after a period in which North Africans who had previously headed towards France and Belgium were instead looking to find jobs in Italy and Spain at a time when neither country required visas. The migrants could enter either country as tourists and then travel on to the rest of Europe. And part of the pull factor even then was Europe’s commitment to lower the internal borders between countries, making free movement easy once anyone was in Europe. 

 

In the 1990s efforts to clamp down on illegal entries were hampered by Morocco’s refusal to take back any non-Moroccans who had left the country. Thus, as one Spanish official noted, even if the government did manage to deter boats in his region, ‘They’ll find other ways of getting in. They’ll use bigger boats and land away from here. They’ll try Italy or Portugal. While there’s so much misery over there, they’ll keep coming.’

 

Although efforts to stem the flow of migrants has been more successful in Spain than in Italy or Greece, the flow still continues today. In the 2010s it is concentrated on the Spanish North African enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta, which remain tantalising positions for anyone seeking to make their way into Europe. Regular efforts by migrants to break down the fences and walls surrounding the enclaves mean clashes with police and frequent unrest. At the same time – and powerful though the pressures of those enclaves remain, the migrant boats still continue to head for the Spanish mainland or tiny pieces of territory like the islet of Alboran. In December 2014 in bad seas one boat of more than fifty sub-Saharan Africans headed off from near Nador in northern Morocco to the southern coast of Spain. 

 

The Cameroonian Muslim captain blamed the bad weather on a Nigerian Christian pastor who was praying on board. The captain and crew beat the pastor and threw him overboard before searching the other passengers, identifying the Christians, then beating and throwing them overboard in the same manner. This is only one more major route – one that has existed for years and where once again nothing is new but the scale. It was to this other side of the Mediterranean that the world’s attention turned in the crucial year of the crisis.

 

 

The Problem of Time

QUESTIONING OF SOLDIER O, DAY 336

LORD SAVILLE: 

A VERY SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER OF SHOTS WERE F IRED WITHIN A VERY SHORT DISTANCE OF YOU AND A NUMBER OF PEOPLE WERE KILLED AND A NUMBER OF PEOPLE WERE WOUNDED, AGAIN WITHIN A VERY SHORT DISTANCE OF YOU—

DO YOU HAVE NO RECOLLECTION AT ALL?

 

SOLDIER O: 

NO, SIR, 

IT HAS ALL FADED AND GONE.

QUESTIONING OF SOLDIER L, DAY 381 :

Q: 

AND THE NIGHTMARES THAT YOU HAVE, ARE THOSE RECURRENT NIGHTMARES?

A: 

YES, YES.

Q: 

DO THEY DISTORT REALITY FOR YOU?

A: 

I DO NOT THINK THEY DISTORT IT, THEY BRING IT OUT MORE VISIBLY, 

DETAILS I MISSED BEFORE, YOU KNOW, SOMETIMES SEEM MORE VIVID.

“During the vast Inquiry some of the riddles of Bloody Sunday were finally answered. 

And plenty more were raised.

This whole search for The truth had a disadvantage : 

The Problem of Time. 

Hearings for the Inquiry started almost three decades after the events of 1972. 

The Report finally came almost four decades after the day. 

A more thorough effort to get to The Truth could not be imagined. 

Yet thirty years on is no time to start getting to The Truth. 

A single, disturbing example relating to the Death of Barney McGuigan may demonstrate The Problem.

In her Saville evidence a woman who was a married mother of four in 1972 testified that the morning after Bloody Sunday a group of children were playing by the place where McGuigan had been shot. 

A small boy had been picking bullets out of the nearby wall. 

He came to her, she said, because he had found something “stuck to the wall." 

‘When I looked I saw that it was part of an eyelid. 

It was stuck on the side, about half a yard down from the top of the seat. 

I realised that it must have come from somebody who had been shot and so I put it into a matchbox. 

Later I gave the matchbox to A Priest who said that he would make sure that it was buried. 

I do not know the name of  The Priest.’

This might only provide one last grim detail of the shooting of Barney McGuigan. 

But even on this relatively simple and certainly memorable detail about one of the victims there is no agreement over What Had Happened or When.

Seamus Carlin testified that on the day of the march itself, after the bodies had been taken away, he saw a blue civil rights banner on the floor steeped in McGuigan’s blood, and that on top of that banner was A Matchbox. 

He testified, 

‘Someone gave me The Matchbox which contained Barney McGuigan’s lower eyelid. 

I took it away and gave it to My Brother who asked A Priest what to do with it. 

The Priest told him to put it on The Ground.’

John Patrick Friel testified that after the shooting (when The Body itself may or may not have still been there, he was not sure) ‘someone pointed out to me that Bernard McGuigan’s eyelid was stuck to the wall of Block 2. 

It was about four or five feet above the pavement, directly below the kitchen window of our flat. 

I had simply never seen anything like it. 

I will stand over this statement until the day I die. 

I definitely saw this but I am still confused as to the exact time. 

It is possible that Barney McGuigan’s body had already been removed from the spot where he died. 

This could have been shortly after my first sight of his covered body or it may even have been the next day.’

Noel Millar said that immediately after the shooting finished, and before the body was covered, ‘I could see the body of the man whom I had seen fall, whom I know to be Barney McGuigan. 

He was not covered by anything at this time. 

Someone drew my attention to the eyelid and eyelash which was stuck to the gable end wall at about head height. 

Someone asked whether anyone had a matchbox. 

I did so I lifted the eyelid off the wall with a matchstick, put it in the matchbox and placed it near Barney McGuigan’s head, on the ground.’

James Patrick McCafferty, who spent the day itself trying to tune in to army radio on the airwaves, testified that he went back down to the Bogside the day after Bloody Sunday and there ‘noticed about five feet up the wall on my right (the gable end) north wall of Block 2 of the Rossville Flats that there was a perfectly formed eyelid complete with eyelashes stuck to the wall. 

There was not a tear in the eyelid; it was so perfect.

‘The eyelid was stuck to the wall about five feet up and approximately halfway along the wall. I cannot recall precisely how far but believe it may have been a little further towards the car park end of the wall… Blood was splattered all around it.

‘I was drawn to the eyelid on the wall, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. 

A small crowd gathered around and some body got a matchbox out and put the eyelid in it. 

Personally I did not think that was the right thing to do, but we did not know what else to do. 

The box was placed on the ground on the civil rights banner which had been used the previous day but which was now saturated with blood and on the floor near the barricade… 

Since then I have learnt that the bullet that killed Mr Bernard McGuigan, the father of my school friend Charlie McGuigan, came out of his eye. 

From this I concluded that the eyelid that I found must have been Mr Bernard McGuigan’s eyelid. 

Although I have talked to Charlie about that day, I did not tell him what I saw.’

The story has a number of other variants from numerous other sources. 

Some claimed to have taken the eyelid down themselves. 

Others claimed that they were with the person who did but name different people. 

One said her daddy took it down, others a friend. 

For some it happened straight after the shooting, for others the next morning, some late the next day. 

Others claimed that they saw two eyelids. 

No two stories match and if you named all the number of people who claimed to have been the person or to have been with the person who did this small act, the list would run to more than twenty.

Were any of these people wrong? Certainly. 

Possibly all of them. 

But were they lying? Almost certainly not. 

They were Saying What They Remembered.

Perhaps one of them was the person who placed the eyelid by the body. Or perhaps whoever it was that carried out this small, stunned act of kindness has been dead for years. 

In any case very many people transferred something they had either seen or heard about and took it into their own memory. 

When The Call went out for those with evidence about the day to come forward, the day itself was a long way back in memory.

In the intervening years some people embellished or invented small parts of what they did on that day. Some consciously. Some entirely unconsciously. 

Some must have come to the Inquiry and decided that they were not willing to backtrack on a story they had been telling for years. 

Others may have told the story so often in pubs and at gatherings that the invented or elaborated memory had become a real one – as accurate a description of what was in their mind’s eye as anything that they actually saw. 

Still others may never have intended to mislead anyone. 

Some witnesses admitted that they feared their memory might have become contaminated over the years by images they saw subsequently on film or television.

If The Truth of what happened on Bloody Sunday was already messy, over the course of decades it became far messier. 

Memories had amalgamated, shifted and in some cases been remade. 

And of course for some, who had never had any intention to mislead, the subconscious and indeed the conscience played a consoling trick.

There were many people who had helped those who were dying. But under the circumstances not only was there little they could do; for most people, like the Knights of Malta first-aid volunteer tending to McGuigan, there was nothing they could do even when they wanted to. 

The guilt of those who saw neighbours, family friends and community figures killed before them, and the knowledge that at a central point in their own lives as well as in the life of their city they could not save somebody, meant that their consciences consoled them with facts – even created ones.

One man who was with a local priest who went to the aid of a dying boy said with rare candour, ‘I had the normal human instinct to stay and see what I could do to help, but another part of me was telling me to get away to safety as soon as I could. 

I think that one of the reasons that Father Daly is so remembered from that day is that he stayed with Jack Duddy while he died, and did not think about his own safety. 

I wanted to get away.’ 

That is a perfectly normal instinct. But it is a rare one to express. Extraordinary acts of bravery by ordinary people were carried out that day, Barney McGuigan’s efforts to aid a dying man among them. But most people are not heroes and have to find ways to comfort themselves in the meantime.

The case of McGuigan’s eyelid is just one relatively unimportant example. But it is a reminder of something crucial about this search for justice. Even during everyday incidents, people come up with wildly different versions of what they have seen. Place people amid deeply traumatic events, with crowds fleeing down narrow lanes, bodies lying in familiar streets and shots ricocheting in all directions, then try to recreate what people think they saw three decades later, and arriving at a truth becomes, if not impossible, then certainly extremely hard.

Yet this was exactly the task that Lord Saville and his Inquiry had been set. It was their task to sift through the evidence. It would take twelve years to try to find the complex and upsetting truths about what had happened in the space of a few minutes, one day in 1972.”

Excerpt From

Bloody Sunday

Douglas Murray

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