So i am back in Europe for four days and today the whole concept of Europe (and its sick permutations) has been omnipresent wherever i went. In the afternoon i went to the dutch pre WSIS event ‘fill the gap 3’ organized by a couple of Dutch development NGOs in an apparent attempt to get some kind of public backing for their presence at the upcoming summit in Tunis. The whole event was dominated by a discussion around ICT, human rights and related to that the fact that the summit will take place in a country with a rather poor human rights record. Consequently one of the questions posed to the members of the final panel was something to the extend of if Europeans can demand compliance with human rights from developing countries at a time when human rights are curtailed in the same European countries.

To illustrate this the moderator pointed at the data-retention directive, that the EU council wants to get adopted in order to more effectively combat terrorism. Now is respect the work edri and its members are doing to fight this (and i am both donor to bits of freedom and a signatory of the petition against this stupid piece of legislation) but this is hardly the most drastic human rights violation (if at all) that Europe is capable of. It is something that mainly effects european citizens who at least on paper can influence this through democratic processes (and lets not forget that most people are stupid or paranoid (or both) enough to find this a perfectly fine instrument in the ‘global war on terror’).

Real human rights violation look a lot different if you ask me. How about looking up people who have done nothing wrong that coming to europe in fire unsafe cells and the threaten to shoot them when the express the desire to help their co-detainees who are burning to death in their looked cells, as reported in yesterdays volkskrant:

“We wanted to save others, but we were not permitted to do so. They pulled out guns and pointed them at us” said Afghan Momen Nouri, who had been released from cell 8 in wing K. “I heard ‘Help, Help’! A policeman replied : ‘I shoot you’.” “Then we were sitting in wing J and six or seven policemen arrived, who pointed guns at us, handcuffed us and locked us up in a cage”, said Algerian Mohammed Tahir from cell 2 in wing K. “The fire came nearer and nearer, and we heard screaming and yelling.” […] A fireman who arrived at the shift change around six o’clock, couldn’t believe his eyes. “There was a fascist atmosphere. Heavily armed men surrounded the poor bastards. It looked like Guantanamo Bay.”

Or even more cowardly getting so-called safe third countries so far that their security forces are willing to shoot people who are desperately trying to enter europe in the back. apparently this is more or less a prerequisite to receive European development help or to become a member of the European union (as seen in a less publicized incident involving turkish forces).

And then i am not even talking about yesterdays washington post report that claims that eastern European countries allow the CIA to run sekr!t torture prisons for ’terrorists’ on their soil.

Data retention might be a troublesome and stupid thing (and during the discussion someone made the very valid point that once the necessary software is written it will probably find its best customers in authoritarian regimes outside of the Europe) but it hardly is the most drastic human rights violation going on in Europe right now.

But back to the beginning of the post. The other thing that made me think of europe was the premiere of the theater piece Europe an alien by andcompany&co in the gasthuis in Amsterdam. the piece itself is quite interesting (although the first half could be a bit more dense or faster or both if you ask me) and the sound-design is really amazing (it is still running on friday and saturday night) but more importantly it made me remember a text the ‘temporary association everyone is an expert’ published as a call to the noborder camp in Strasbourg back in 2002: ‘Let’s talk about Europe’

I still think that this is one of the best texts that we have ever published and given the situation described above it has lost none of its importance.

Today i soend most of my day trying to get a schengen visa for programmer/activist from cote d’ivoire and that meant i had to make lots of phone calls to cote d’ivoire and while doing that i dialed wrong numbers a couple of times.

Now if you dial the wrong number locally people are usually pissed that you disturb them. not so in this case, each time i got connected with someone wrong, the people started me asking all kinds of questions about me or amsterdam or what i was wearing (sic!) and generally tried to keep me on the phone for as long as possible which is a pretty interesting way of wasting your time… Much better than talking to the people you really need to talk to as the staff of the belgian embassy in abidjan is extremely not-funny, inflexible, rude (they hung up on me twice) and non cooperative when it coes to getting a visa on time.

Bottom line is Yapi won’t come to what the hack, because the Dutch don’t know where their embassy is (they send him to the embassy in Ghana where he was told that instead he should have gone to the belgian embassy in abijan) and the Belgians are rude, not-funny and not felxible at all…

Kanak-Attak has started a beautiful poster campaign against the practice of expatriating immigrants with german passports when they also hold another nationality (passport). The campaign uses a slogan and the look and feel of the german television station ZDF.

Just came across an article in todays NRC [‘import-bride has to know thorbecke’] about the dutch gouvernement moves towards requiring a Dutch language and culture exam before a person is allowed to settle in the Netherlands. not that this means that by passing the exams you have the right to settle in NL, but if you have acquired the right to settle e.g because you are married to a dutch citizen or someone who has a residence permit you still neet to pass the tests or you won’t get in. (of course all of this does not applies to citizens of the eu, Switzerland, the us, canada australia and new zealand).

So you have to pass a test on dutch history and society (mainly testing stuff that dutch people have been taught in school immediately forgotten afterwards) and a language test. the language test is suposed to be completely computerized. the test will be conducted via a telephone line form special rooms in dutch embassies and consulates around the world. the computer is not only serving the questions and judging your answers (it has to asses complex things like re-narrations of short stories which as far as i can tell is quite daunting task in itself given the current state of technology). also the verdict of the computer is final there is no possibility of appealing a verdict once given. also for each attempt at the 30 minute test euro 350 has to be paid up-front by the applicant.

If i remember it correctly my last encounter with complex speech recognition technology dates back three years or so and at that point i failed to book a train ticket via the phone answering to simple questions in my mother language. that a centralized computer system can cope with 1001 accents that it is inevitably going to encounter seems to be completely unrealistic to me. so maybe we are starting to see a new form of migration management this time with ‘objective’ computer technology acting as a filter. if this becomes practice (the system does exist but its use still needs to be authorized by parliament) you can fulfill all the legal requirements for settling in the netherlands and still not be granted entry because the computer des not get your accent (or the software fails altogether or the phone line is bad or because you are chinese and cant pronunce the R and the computer wants you to pronunce ‘gras’ (speaking of dutch culture here aren’t we) but you only manage to say ‘glas’…