Forced Migration Online: Blog

The film ‘Lost Nation: Stories from the Uyghur Diaspora’ now includes an interview with Rabiya Kadeer. Ms Kadeer had been a successful business woman in China before her views on human rights issues caused her to be imprisoned by the Chinese authorities. Ms Kadeer left China in 2005 for the United States where she is now the president of both the World Uyghur Congress and Uyghur American Association, becoming the most prominent Uyghur in the world today.

In this recording Rabiya Kadeer talks about how and why she left China and her hopes for the Uyghur people in Xinjiang (East Turkistan).

• Lost Nation: Stories from the Uyghur diaspora
• Interview with Rabiya Kadeer
• Subscribe via iTunes

This podcast was recorded at a lecture organised by the Refugee Studies Centre and sponsored by Clifford Chance, the event was held on Wednesday 18th June 2008 at the offices of Clifford Chance, London. Lord Malloch-Brown, Minister of State for Africa, Asia and the UN gave the lecture which was entitled ‘Reputational Hazard: Rescuing Refugees in the Era of Illegal Immigration and Terrorism’.

• Podcast
• Subscribe via iTunes

The film ‘Forgotten in the Mountains‘ is now available to view online. The film looks at the issue of forced displacement of indigenous Papuans in (West) Papua, Indonesia.

Papuan fears for their future have recently become focused on the issue of migration from the rest of Indonesia into their homeland. Following the failure of special autonomy since 2001 to deliver health, education and infrastructure benefits to Papuan villagers, or even a small measure of indigenous autonomy in key security and political matters, Papuans have come to feel that divide and rule sums up Jakarta’s approach across the board. Jakarta has been busily creating unwanted new regencies and provinces in Papua as well as pouring booming mineral revenues into the region. But this has merely succeeded in creating a few new elite Papuan beneficiaries of Indonesia’s endemic corruption and setting Papuans against Papuans for control of this corruption. More seriously it has been the pretext and occasion for bringing even more potential settlers—both bureaucrats and soldiers—into Papua as new military commands as well as bureaucracies proliferate. The new demographic balance in Papua pits a large minority of settlers—both “old”, officially sponsored transmigrasi ones and ongoing “spontaneous” ones (mostly traders and small bisnis people from eastern Indonesia)—against an almost dwindling Papuan one, beset by discriminatory birth control policies, an unchecked HIV-AIDS pandemic and 45 years of repression and displacement.

• Forgotten in the Mountains

As part of the London International Documentary Film Festival (29th March – 5th April 2008) will be screenings of four films were screened on the topic of forced migration.

Saturday 29 March, 8.00pm Renoir Cinema

“La Americana” (The American)

Dir. Nicholas Bruckman/ Co-Dir. John Mattiuzzi, USA/Bolivia/Mexico, 2008, Special Preview

October 2000, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Carmen, a young single mother, faces a life-changing catastrophe when her nine-year-old daughter is badly injured in a bus accident.

Unable to pay the hospital bills and for specialized care, Carmen makes the dangerous journey to the US to work illegally, staying for 6 years to raise what she believes will be enough money to support her daughter for life.

But when she returns home to Bolivia she discovers her savings are nowhere near enough. Should she stay with her ailing daughter, or make the perilous journey back to the US for a second time?

A portrait of the human side of the current immigration crisis in America.

Tickets £7/£6 Curzon members
Box office: 0871 703 3991, Renoir Cinema

Saturday 5 April, 11.05pm Stevenson Theatre, British Museum

Next Station (Próxima Estación)

Director: Estela Ilárraz, 2007, Spain, 69min, UK Première

A group of Ecuadorean immigrants in Madrid. They came to Spain to work, to support their families, but they desperately want to go home.

But if they go to Ecuador to visit their families, they know they will never again be able to get back to Madrid to work.

Ya Oromia

Director: Amanda Walsh, 2006, Australia, 5min, European Première

In the overcrowded housing estates of North Melbourne lives a young African woman, an Oromo, forced to leave her beloved homeland and family in fear of persecution.

Now she is reunited with her daughters, after more than six years enforced separation. The family must adjust to living together again in a new country.

For My Children (Por Mis Hijos)

Director: Aymee Cruzaleguí, Spain, 2007, 16min, World Première

What is a woman willing to do to make a better life for her children? Norma, a Latin American immigrant in Barcelona, struggles with the pain of solitude, forced to live away from her family in order to support them.

Tickets £3.00
Box office: 0207 323 8181, British Museum

For full programme see the LIDF08 website.

• London International Documentary Film Festival
• Forced migration films on FMO