Friday 20 April

Sorry everyone, for my lack of updates.

Afghani-Stan is writing his second letter to Allah, as a last desperate attempt to get some sort of reply. He's even gonna include his little step-brother Uzbeki-Stan in it. (For those of you who don't know; Uzbeki-Stan is a quadruplet ; his brothers are Turkmeni-Stan, Tajiki-Stan and Kyrgyz-Stan. Their mother, called Soviet Union, died in the labour, in December 1991.)

Allah is already working on his reply, although Afghani-Stan doesn't know about it yet. I hope to let you read all about it, although I'm pretty sure that no one understands it anyway.

For now, let me tell you about the IND. IND is the Dutch abbreviotion for Immigration- and Naturalization Service; the word "service" seems a little misplaced to me though. The IND is the institution that decides if people from other countries can get a 'license' to start a life in the Netherlands. (These people are usually refugees.)

Since certain people think that the Netherlands are "full" and can't take in much more refugees, the IND has the task to send as many people as possible back to their own countries. There is an official list of countries that are "safe" for people to live in, and people from those countries usually don't get a 'license' to start a life in the Netherlands. So far it seems like there is no problem, but there is... which is the fact that this list is, in some cases, total crap.

As you might have thought already, I never really liked the IND. I never thought of them with too much sympathy. Until I read an article in a newspaper-magazine about 5 or 6 weeks ago. This article was about the IND, and had some 'interviews' with IND people (it was basically meant to defend the IND; to fight back against the negative thoughts that I, and many other with me, had about this organization). Ever since I read this article, my opinion about the IND has changed... at first I didn't think of them with too much sympathy, but now, I totally hate their guts.

One woman is telling the story about a woman from Guinee (the country in West Africa, north of Sierra Leone and Liberia). I don't know the story of this woman by heart, but sending her back would most likely mean that within a few weeks she would die, or at least suffer more than the average inhabitant of a western country will ever have to suffer. And then this woman who works at the IND, is telling the journalists that she had to send that woman back to Guinee, and she is telling it at a tone like "it's not a nice job, but someone has to do it."

Of course. These IND-people are just doing their job. And that's exactly the problem. It would be so much better if everyone would refuse to get jobs like that.

But, there are two problems there. One is that in this country, a career has become a goal itself, instead of an instrument to achieve a goal (making money). The other problem, is that lots of people here are so INDoctrinated with the idea that the Netherlands are "full", that apparently they rather want refugees to suffer in their home countries, which lots of West-Europeans have never even heard of, than seeing those refugees get a house here and enrich our culture.

But, the IND-people are just doing their job. With a mentality of "Wir haben es nicht gewüst." (Sorry for possible spelling errors; German is not exactly my favourite language.) "Wir haben es nicht gewüst", freely translated "We didn't know", was the mentality of lots of citizens in World War II: Jews were taken from their homes to concentration camps, but their very own neighbours "didn't know." At least that's what they liked to say.

Regarding the deportations of jews in World War II, it's not hard to imagine that people would say this. If they would protest against Hitler's regime in any way, they'd probably end up just like those jews. So die Menschen wer "das nicht gewüst haben" (who "didn't know about it"), had a pretty good excuse for staying silent.

But we, present citizens of the Netherlands, don't. Nowadays, we are allowed to critisize our government's policy without any repercussions. So it's about time someone does something. I think I'm gonna have to look up some information now, and hopefully there will soon be another incident around the IND that will give me an occasion to at least send a letter to a newspaper or something.

Today, this website. Tomorrow, the newspaper. The day after tomorrow, the Netherlands. The day after that,... waking up from the dream? Yeah, probably. But it's worth a try.