Your designer perfume covers the metallic, disgustingly rich scent of blood.
What exactly are refugee camps supposed to be? Hope, relief and maybe even joy. Babies held by their mothers who lovingly hum melodies lost to war, children fly kites, running around to fly theirs higher. The reality of these camps cast a horrifying shadow over these expectations. There is never enough. Enough food, water, beds, tents for anyone. These refugees, they do not live, but they are not dead. They are the line between life and death. Refugee camps are operated under bureaucratic systems. Identity is ripped away and disposed of. Names are replaced with designated numbers. You are not a person, you are a figure.
You must be grateful you're alive, nothing else. Hope? Joy? How can these even cross the minds of the unfortunate souls tied down to these places when their lives have been stripped down to the barest form- survival. Joy is but a distant memory that moves away farther and farther for each day of fight for those who wake simply to survive. Refugee camps are not home to hope and wishes for a better new day, they're akin run down shops by the beach selling lifeless shells, once considered human.
Refugee camps, concentration camps and warzones are necropolitical structures. Necropolitics refers to a socio-political use of power to impose decisions on who may live or die. These structures are referred to as “death worlds”, because that is unequivocally what they are. People are subject to such harsh, unimaginable conditions that living seems but a distant memory, something that happened but can no longer. Lives are lost before the light has ceased. And nobody bats an eye. Because death worlds are grey zones where death is the standard.
These structures exist due to dehumanization. Those in power justify their actions as in their eyes, the damned are damn bugs. Insects that are simple inconveniences to be disposed of. While to the public, they are outsiders. Refugees are “those” people. Whatever happens to “them” are outside events. We believe such things will never happen to us, because, well, we aren't them. We are made to believe we are somehow different from them. Everything based around these people, these structures, work to separate.
The linguistics of these areas also lighten their reality. When told someone died yesterday, the regular person shakes their head and moves on. But when told that a mother of two was murdered yesterday over something completely trivial, it brings out more of a visceral reaction. This is the exact tactic used to cover up the reality of these areas. Alongside the classic necropolitical tactic of indirect death, i.e., creating circumstances where survival is the least plausible outcome, then treating the effects of those circumstances as something uncontrollable, allowing those in power to dodge accountability seamlessly. Countless people lose their lives due to ‘unforeseen circumstances’, while in reality, they’ve been killed, indirectly or even directly. But the public is only told a number of people passed away at a camp.
We are not told about the mother who escaped war with her child to find any kind of help, or the innocent bystander who got abducted and imprisoned because of his beliefs. So, we never question it. We let it continue. Dehumanization is a shape shifting creature, acting as a noose for the condemned and a blindfold for the privileged.
We are only able to see them in such a dimmed light of humanity because of the slow but steady eradication of empathy in modern society. Its disappearance is no simple matter of times changing, it is a play orchestrated by the same composers that create the melody of war with the
sound of military drones and gunfire. We are taught to feel for those who look like us, those who believe in the same things as us, speak the same language as us. Everyone is told it does not matter because it is not happening to them or their people, so they have nothing to worry about. “No need to feel empathetic for someone you don't even know!” This rhetoric is so powerful because it breeds a complacent society while ensuring those who speak out look out of place.
People consumed by this mindset execute every excuse with near-perfect apathy to justify it. They will never know; the more they ignore the suffering of people they do not relate to, the closer they themselves get to oppression. Who will protect them when their people are next? The people who ingrained this mindset in the masses will never teach them the consequences of it. After all, they are the ones benefiting from it. We as a society are designed to never even think of the possibility that one day it may be ‘our’ people. As a divided and complacent society is the end goal for the power consumed entities, the general public never considering the possibility of being victimized is a step in the right direction. How could they ever know the truth? Groomed to ignore, forced to never look past what is shown.
The form of empathy that is taught to the public at present adds to this. It is nothing but a repackaged form of prejudice. You can feel empathetic for your people, but not those people. It's perfect for those who set up this system of apathy and ignorance. They are the only ones winning from it. Separation will never save us.
The scent of bloodshed will never reach the ones responsible for it, though it leaks in through their front door, they can afford to cover the smell with overpriced cologne and burnt cigars. Everyone else will be outside, wondering if they had acknowledged and protected the condemned, would things have turned out differently? Necropolitics will only exempt a person as long as they can afford the privilege to turn a blind eye to reality. When ignorance continues winning, who will be the next statistic?
