Three faces of refugees — humans fleeing disaster is a constant through human history

When we speak about refugees, read about them, or watch reports on the news, too often it seems the stories are about anxious crowds of desperate people fleeing across dangerous borders or crammed into the hulls and on the decks of frail, unseaworthy vessels, seeking respite and refuge.

That imagery of masses seeking a better life or one free from fear or persecution is easy to grasp. (That is, unless we are discussing that controversial Trump initiative for the supposed Afrikaner refugees from South Africa.)

Read more: As Trump dismantles US norms and institutions, Afrikaner refugee process remains unclear

However, less frequently do we focus on the traumas, fears or challenges faced by single individuals, such as when we gaze mournfully at the lifeless body of a small child washed up on an otherwise idyllic Mediterranean beach. That vision brings the reality of refugees home in a very visceral way. 

Pursuing that counterbalance to the visions of masses of refugees, here are a trio of vignettes about three very different individual circumstances. One is fictional but closely echoes the reality for many in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, including the plight of dissenting religious and political figures.

In fact, some of them ended up taking up refuge in American embassies. (Or even the much more problematic Julian Assange, ensconced in the Ecuadorian embassy in London?)

Sometimes, such refuges were for many years. Our second story concerns one of my ancestors, a young man who fled czarist Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Finally, the third incident took place right inside my consulate office in the Japanese city of Sapporo.

An opera about refugees and asylum

In 1949, Italian-American composer Gian-Carlo Menotti (best known for his Christmas season opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors) wrote a very different kind of opera, The Consul. This work depicted the Kafka-esque laws and procedures facing individuals desperate to flee authoritarian or totalitarian regimes during the Cold War. 

In its most famous aria, To This We’ve Come, the main character, Magda Sorel, appeals unsuccessfully to a (presumably American) consular officer for the documentation needed for her family to flee a repressive Eastern European regime. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekrx98zKnk0

Menotti’s opera underscored the idea for many people around the world that America was — and should remain — the sanctuary for people trying to flee repressive regimes.

Our own family’s refugee saga

Humans fleeing disaster — or just searching for greener pastures — is a constant through history, back to humanity’s ancient journey “out of Africa”.

Like every other American, I have immigration and origin stories that speak to the lives of ancestors. (Even Native Americans and those who were forced to arrive in chains are busy reconstructing or recapturing their own stories.) Immigrant tales of struggles to fit into the American tapestry are a staple of American literature. 

One of my grandfathers was born in Odesa, then part of czarist Russia. He was drafted into the Russian army in 1904 in one of those twenty-five-year enlistments imposed upon ethnic minorities. But he learnt he would soon be sent on the Trans-Siberian Railway, along with thousands of other draftees to be cannon fodder in efforts to end the Japanese siege of the Russian-held fortress of Port Arthur in China, during the Russo-Japanese War. 

But instead of dying for a Russia persecuting and killing his relatives, he quietly went awol and walked hundreds of miles to Hamburg, Germany. There, he boarded one of the ships carrying thousands of penniless immigrants bound for the New World.

In America, this now ex-Russian soldier eventually established a construction business, only to die from pneumonia during the Great Depression, leaving a young wife and seven children to survive as best they could.

Like so many millions of others, he had been able to enter the US early in the 20th century, before the 1924 imposition of steep restrictions as the yearly number of immigrants was limited to a little over 100,000 and sharply skewed towards those of Western European origin. Thereafter, claims to enter the US as refugees or claimants for asylum were similarly sharply restricted, despite real threats of persecution or death for ethnic, religious or political reasons in the 1930s, until reforms in the 1960s.

A Russian dancer in Japan dreams of asylum 

Forty years ago, when I was working in my American Consulate office and library in Sapporo, Japan, a Russian ballet dancer on a cultural exchange programme with Japan sought asylum in America, right in the middle of some of the peak years of the Cold War.

Unlike the kinds of security such offices now have, back in the 1980s, our libraries and staff offices in cities in Japan were open to the walk-in public. And so, once our dancer was able to elude his ever-watchful tour managers, he simply came into our library like anybody else. 

Yes, outside our office, there was a small police kiosk adjacent to our building’s gate, but those police were actually there to be accessible for the residents of the neighbourhood, not to screen our visitors.

We did have a retired clerk sitting at a desk at the doorway where he could inspect briefcases and bags, but his job was not to deny access to anyone unless they were clearly inebriated or obviously intent on bodily harm and carrying a deadly weapon. (Firearms are almost impossible to obtain by civilians in Japan and a traditional Japanese “katana” sword would have been impossible to hide in a backpack.)

And so, one afternoon during the Soviet dance company’s Japan tour, there was that young Russian dancer sitting in our library, quietly looking at our collection of American magazines and books about life in America. Perhaps he dreamt about starring on America’s dance stages some day. Then, about an hour after he had arrived, he asked one of our Japanese staffers to convey to her higher-ups his desire to seek asylum in America.  

The problem quickly became an issue involving the Soviet Union, Japan and the United States — creating conditions for confusion or worse — perhaps even a real international incident.

However, our library-visiting dancer was not a global star like Rudolf Nureyev or a Mikhail Baryshnikov, nor was he part of an internationally renowned company like the Bolshoi or Kirov. As a result, even if he did defect and seek asylum, it was unlikely he would be a major propaganda coup for the US if he fled the Soviet Union for America.

Looming embarrassment

But for the Soviet and Japanese tour organisers and the Soviet diplomats in Japan, a real embarrassment loomed if they lost one of their dancers, in spite of the tight, 24-hour supervision of all of the company’s members’ whereabouts.

Moreover, the Japanese were obviously concerned over the possibility their cultural exchange programme with the Soviet Union would be disrupted (or even cancelled) because of one young dancer who no longer wished to tolerate the regimentation of the Soviet cultural structures. (Or perhaps he just wanted to learn some jazz or tap dancing moves.)

Meanwhile, American and Japanese officials were concerned about the end game of this asylum appeal. Would he leave under his own volition to return home; or would Soviet diplomats or the tour operators try to enter our building to convince — or even strong-arm — our unexpected guest to leave with them? Or was there another alternative?

If he was not going to be granted asylum in America, the Japanese quickly began investigating if another nation might offer our unexpected library patron a new home. Very quickly, Finland quietly offered refuge to our guest and so he was quietly escorted from the building by Japanese officials, just before our usual closing time, and then whisked off to Tokyo for a flight to Helsinki. At least he was already used to the climate. 

But what if there had been a standoff and he had become an overnight guest in a US diplomatic facility because no solution immediately presented itself? If that had happened, all kinds of security complications would have ensued. There would have had to have been 24-hour monitoring of the visitor (including the faint possibility he was actually part of a Russian effort to gain full access to our consulate and library, even if there was scarcely a page of classified material to be found anywhere in the building).

Fortunately, the story stayed out of the media. But for a few hours, we felt as if we were in a spy thriller, with plot twists moving the story right along until the last page.

And so, three stories, each offering a different twist on the idea of refuge or asylum, each at the most individual of levels, but all of them that can offer resonances and ruminations over our own time. DM