Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 February 7
Humanities desk | ||
---|---|---|
< February 6 | << Jan | February | Mar >> | February 8 > |
Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives |
---|
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages. |
February 7
[edit]Right to asylum as a general right to move around within the host country
[edit]Just wondering when the idea of giving asylum to refugees became conflated with letting them move around as they please. If asylum means protection from harm, it seems like that could be offered in some sort of internment camp, at least while the refugee claim is evaluated. As opposed to giving what is effectively an exception to the host country's whole immigration policy. I am not a racist and this is not a soapbox question btw, I am honestly curious. The concepts seem to be separate, and I do think it would be politically easier to sustain something like the Australian refugee system when arrival numbers are high. --79.12.135.242 (talk) 10:10, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- Our article on immigration detention may be relevant. --Viennese Waltz 10:36, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- Thanks, I hadn't seen that. It doesn't really get into the philosophy of open v closed detention though, and why closed detention is widely seen as a Bad Thing in principle. There are some examples of bad practice, and an ideal of good practice (the Tinsley model), in running detention centres. Did most countries end up settling on open detention (or even just turning a blind eye to people vanishing) simply because they couldn't process claims in a reasonable length of time, and were unwilling to put extra resources into fixing that? --79.12.135.242 (talk) 10:47, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which was the first codified international refugee law, states that "Refugees shall be treated at least like other non-nationals in relation to the right to free movement and free choice of residence within the country" - in other words, if a foreigner with a visa can travel freely within your country, so can a refugee. This has been part of refugee law since the beginning. Smurrayinchester 10:54, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, that answers my question. Thanks! --79.12.135.242 (talk) 11:07, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- Ah! BUT, that rule only applies AFTER they've been recognised as a legitimate refugee, eh? What about whilst their claim to refugee status is still being processed? Does a potential refugee, who may or may not turn out to have a legitimate claim to fearing abuse if he or she is returned "home", also enjoy these rights? How is the convention interpreted on this particular point? (Big question!) Anyone know? Eliyohub (talk) 03:30, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- The convention also states that "This Convention shall not apply to a person who is recognized by the competent authorities of the country in which he has taken residence as having the rights and obligations which are attached to the possession of the nationality of that country."
It reads to me like an escape hatch for countries to claim that a person is not a refugee.I don't know how this gets handled in a legal sense when you have countries that appear to have no intention of ever addressing the status of persons who wait in refugee camps for sometimes years. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:39, 8 February 2017 (UTC)- That doesn't seem to be what the section you quoted says at all... It seems to mean that you cannot be (e.g.) a US national (or equivalent) and claim refugee status in the US. Most people applying for refugee status in a country would not have "the rights and obligations which are attached to the possession of the nationality of that country". By me reading, this would also apply if a citizen of an EU state tried to claim refugee status in another country of the EU. Note that "country of his nationality" is used consistently for the country the refugee came from - so "the country in which he has taken residence" is presumably a different country. This would only function as an escape hatch where the refugee has fled a first country into a second country, and is seeking refugee status in a third country (who could then claim that he is effectively a national of that second country, and refuse). MChesterMC (talk) 09:44, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Indeed, I did misread it. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:57, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- So, back to my question - according to the convention, is it legal to detain someone claiming asylum pending a determination of the claim's validity? And is there any obligation to process the claim in a prompt fashion, or can it be delayed indefinitely? (I note the Australian Government's doing of the latter in certain cases, stopping all processing of certain applications, led to refugee advocates petitioning for Mandamus, saying Australia's Migration Act obliged that claims be processed. But strictly speaking, this was a matter or Australian domestic law, not the convention). Any Convention or UNHCR guidance on this question? Eliyohub (talk) 13:32, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- The UN has held that Australia's refugee practices are illegal [1], but this does not appear to have led to any consequences. From cursory google searches, this seems to be par for the course whenever a country decides to treat refugees like criminals. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:27, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- So, back to my question - according to the convention, is it legal to detain someone claiming asylum pending a determination of the claim's validity? And is there any obligation to process the claim in a prompt fashion, or can it be delayed indefinitely? (I note the Australian Government's doing of the latter in certain cases, stopping all processing of certain applications, led to refugee advocates petitioning for Mandamus, saying Australia's Migration Act obliged that claims be processed. But strictly speaking, this was a matter or Australian domestic law, not the convention). Any Convention or UNHCR guidance on this question? Eliyohub (talk) 13:32, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Indeed, I did misread it. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:57, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- That doesn't seem to be what the section you quoted says at all... It seems to mean that you cannot be (e.g.) a US national (or equivalent) and claim refugee status in the US. Most people applying for refugee status in a country would not have "the rights and obligations which are attached to the possession of the nationality of that country". By me reading, this would also apply if a citizen of an EU state tried to claim refugee status in another country of the EU. Note that "country of his nationality" is used consistently for the country the refugee came from - so "the country in which he has taken residence" is presumably a different country. This would only function as an escape hatch where the refugee has fled a first country into a second country, and is seeking refugee status in a third country (who could then claim that he is effectively a national of that second country, and refuse). MChesterMC (talk) 09:44, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- The convention also states that "This Convention shall not apply to a person who is recognized by the competent authorities of the country in which he has taken residence as having the rights and obligations which are attached to the possession of the nationality of that country."
Off-topic discussion |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
|
Tamil Tigers indoctrination methods
[edit]How does a mostly non-religious group get people to freely kill themselves for the cause? As in, blow themselves up. Or always carry a cyanide capsule to commit suicide if the danger of capture arises (and they actually used their capsules very often!). Can anyone give me some links to indoctrination propaganda and training methodology of the fighters/terrorists/whatever (not the public-consumption propaganda, that's totally different) of the Tamil Tigers? Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eelam#Suicide_attacks gives some insight into the mindset (similar to Japanese Kamikaze?), but I'd love if anyone could provide me with say, a youtube link to an indoctrination video or session, with english subtitles (as I don't know the tamil language) about "how to die freely for the cause" and screw any thoughts of fear of death.
I'm in Australia, where watching such material is legal, or at least I feel safe myself that I'm not breaking the law - I will NOT advise others. But anyone in the UK in particular should be careful, and seek legal advice before watching or possessing terrorist propaganda. So maybe our UK members should stick to answering with only analysis links of Tamil Tigers indoctrination tactics, whilst the American ones can safely link me to clips of actual training/indoctrination material. Note, if you have any doubts of the legality of anything, don't do it! This is clearly not a request for legal advice. I just want to get a picture of LTTE indoctrination tactics, and am giving a heads-up on legal issues with UK residents accessing or possessing such material (Section 58, Terrorism Act 2000 - to collect or possess "information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". Nothing similar in the U.S., where the First Amendment to the United States Constitution would almost certainly prohibit such a blanket law). The legality of my own actions is a matter for me to worry about.
And for the record, I am not Tamil, and have no intention of killing myself, or encouraging anyone else to do so. Just trying to understand this unusual group. Eliyohub (talk) 18:40, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- Note that cyanide capsules are a bit different, in that they aren't normally intended to be used. But, if you were a spy captured in Nazi Germany, you would be tortured to give up any info you had, then executed, so, once captured, it's not a choice of if you die, but just when and how. StuRat (talk) 20:12, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- The Tamil Tigers used to use their cyanide capsules the moment they feared any attempt at questioning, even non-violent attempts. When some of them attacked a target, survived, and were taken to hospital under guard, the Sri Lankan intelligence agents disguised themselves as doctors, in order to pry as to what happened in the attack. Totally non-violent. Yet many of them apparently swallowed their capsules the moment the "doctors" started asking such questions ("What happened? How did you hurt yourself?"), even absent the slightest suggestion of coercion or torture. So I don't think it was actually the same. Even non-violent and non-coercive attempts to gain info were often met with suicide. Eliyohub (talk) 20:21, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
Most specific article is Black Tigers... AnonMoos (talk) 05:02, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
Crime and Punishment death sentence
[edit]Back when I read Crime and Punishment I was surprised by the light sentence the protagonist received for committing a murder - eight years of hard labor in Siberia.
Years later in a conversation someone brought up that the N years in Siberia thing was actually a de facto death sentence. That the attrition rate was so high that prisoners weren't expected to survive, regardless of the value of N. Is this assessment accurate? What was the death rate like for a 19th century Russian prisoner in Siberia? ECS LIVA Z (talk) 19:20, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- Datapoint, but not the complete answer. Sparticus Education (which I've always taken for a reasonably good source) opines that half of the prisoners died on the way to Siberia; and that those who managed to complete their sentence were forced to continue living and working in Siberia. It's an interesting short article. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:32, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- From that article (which I agree is pretty good. It cites its sources after all) it seems that, when prisoners finished their sentence, they were "freed" as in the "You could leave anytime you want to..." But being over 1000 miles from anything resembling civilization, where are you going to go? You're in Siberia, with no transportation out, no means to earn a living, no means for survival. It's like sentencing someone to Antarctica but not transporting them back when their sentence is over. What were they going to do. "Forced to continue living and working" I took, from that article to mean "because they had no where to go and no other choice..." --Jayron32 19:36, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- More "Russians don't value life" liberal mythmaking. They didn't just drop you from a helicopter over the taiga or something. Banishment to Siberia was as much a means of settling the vast expanse as it was penalty. Not all banishment to Siberia implied hard labor. Some of it was just exile. There are still Old Believer communities who descend from peasants and revolutionaries banned to Siberia. Dostoyevsky himself returned from Siberia to Tver more or less alive and intact. I'm sure someone will be able to provide the numbers Asmrulz (talk) 20:25, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- Siberia is quite an enormous place. It's quite an overreach to assume that all forms of "exile to Siberia" are of the same form. Of course parts are quite livable - it has a population of 40 million people after all. There are ordinary (if cold) cities in Siberia, but there were also gulags. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:31, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- Indeed it is. It is half again as big as the United States, and if Siberia were an independent country it would be the largest country in the world. So of course there are large cities and urban areas and farmable land there. Just not in the places where the labor camps were. You can be in Siberia and still be 1000 miles from any major city which is also in Siberia. --Jayron32 02:22, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Much of Siberia has long hot summers, so while the winters are certainly harsh, it isn't like exiling someone to the South Pole. A person transported there during the spring, and provided with tools and materials, could perfectly well build themselves a house and grow enough food to last the winter. I don't know if this is actually how exiles were treated though. --95.249.86.81 (talk) 11:52, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Sure, so long as you have the knowledge and skills to do so. An upper-middle class bureaucrat from an urban center would find they lacked that knowledge and skills pretty quickly. The English Jamestown colony and its fate is instructive here. Hundreds of people who had no experience in growing food, constructing shelters, or otherwise maintaining their own survival were sent to a land and expected to fend for themselves. Spoiler alert: It didn't go well. --Jayron32 15:07, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Much of Siberia has long hot summers, so while the winters are certainly harsh, it isn't like exiling someone to the South Pole. A person transported there during the spring, and provided with tools and materials, could perfectly well build themselves a house and grow enough food to last the winter. I don't know if this is actually how exiles were treated though. --95.249.86.81 (talk) 11:52, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Indeed it is. It is half again as big as the United States, and if Siberia were an independent country it would be the largest country in the world. So of course there are large cities and urban areas and farmable land there. Just not in the places where the labor camps were. You can be in Siberia and still be 1000 miles from any major city which is also in Siberia. --Jayron32 02:22, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Siberia is quite an enormous place. It's quite an overreach to assume that all forms of "exile to Siberia" are of the same form. Of course parts are quite livable - it has a population of 40 million people after all. There are ordinary (if cold) cities in Siberia, but there were also gulags. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:31, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- When Poland was divided under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, many Jews on the Soviet side were sent to Siberia. Their families cried bitter tears, seeing it, understandably, as a horrific fate. One wise Rabbi said "we don't know who will be better off". Everyone thought he was crazy. Yet ironically, of those sent to Siberia, many survived. Those left behind were mass slaughtered by the Nazis, as they invaded days later. See the bizarre story at [3]. I have heard the same story multiple times from other sources, so I'm pretty confident it's true. Eliyohub (talk) 20:36, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- Well, sort of. See Jewish Autonomous Oblast which was the (albeit already designated before WWII) region of Siberia where the Jewish people were sent to. They liked it so much that today, of the 176,000 people who live there, a whopping 0.2 percent or about 350 people are Jewish. --Jayron32 02:26, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- According to the article I linked, Stalin planned to send them there, but most of the Jewish deportees did not end up there. They ended up scattered in the Gulag system. Some Jews moved there "voluntarily" under some sort of "promises" or "incentives" from Stalin. Few hung around. It's not a very hospitable place to live. Eliyohub (talk) 03:40, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Well, sort of. See Jewish Autonomous Oblast which was the (albeit already designated before WWII) region of Siberia where the Jewish people were sent to. They liked it so much that today, of the 176,000 people who live there, a whopping 0.2 percent or about 350 people are Jewish. --Jayron32 02:26, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Also perhaps relevant, included in the Wikileaks diplomatic cables was one about the modern Russian prison system. The diplomats had serious concerns as to some of the treatment of the prisoners. Yet they noted that despite all this mistreatment, prisoners on average lived longer lives than non-prisoners, where they were mostly safe from the two big Russian killers, alcoholism and traffic accidents. the last bit was the diplomats' views as to explaining this phenomenon (prisoners living longer than free Russians), but there may be other explanations. To quote from [4], very first paragraph: Health conditions in Russian prisons are poor and infection rates for contagious diseases are much higher than in the general population, but surprisingly the mortality rate for men in these prisons is only one-third the rate on the outside - a statistic that says much more about the dangers of alcoholism and road safety than it does about healthy living behind bars. So things may not always be what they seem. The same report is rife with descriptions of serious abuses in the system. Eliyohub (talk) 20:55, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- I've heard similar claims made about army duty, and not just that in Russia. In any case, if the effect is real it's incidental. I'm speaking of things which are by design Asmrulz (talk) 21:32, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
Is a man can live alone?
[edit]Is a man can live alone? --Roamnski Skionamol (talk) 21:36, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- See Hermit. They definitely exist, but every society in the world considers them to be the exception, not the norm, from what I was taught in my brief foray into psychology. Eliyohub (talk) 22:20, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- To the one person who can read this, you are alone. Enjoy the hallucinations! Someguy1221 (talk) 22:24, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- To live without any of the benefits of society, like clothes, tools,. etc., is quite difficult, especially if you exclude education. There have been a few people reportedly "raised by wolves" and such, but they likely still had some benefits from society, like stealing food from it. StuRat (talk) 22:28, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- Richard Proenneke did just fine alone for about 30 years, though he did get the odd visitor every now and again. I can heartily recommend the documentary about him, Alone in the Wilderness. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:50, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- I've seen it, and he had plenty of tools he brought with him. Had he been dropped naked in the wilderness, I doubt if he would have lasted long. StuRat (talk) 01:27, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Oh, I don't know. This was one seriously resourceful guy. I'd choose him over the survivalists in Naked and Afraid, for example. Now, if it had been Chicago ... Clarityfiend (talk) 09:04, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Just look at his construction of the cabin. He needed an axe to cut down trees and he needed a saw to cut them to length. How could he create those tools ? And how would he survive one winter without a cabin ? Perhaps if he had been in a place where the weather was better, like a tropical island, he might have had the time to create tools out of stone, before the environment killed him. Also, as our article notes, he "had supplies flown in occasionally". StuRat (talk) 16:14, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- I'm not talking about utterly impossible situations like being stark naked in the middle of winter. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:34, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
- That was my interpretation of the OP, as being a Q about whether a man could live with no other humans to help in any way, including providing him with clothes, tools, supplies, etc. . StuRat (talk) 15:28, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
- You're reading way too much into six words. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:59, 9 February 2017 (UTC)
- How odd were they? --Trovatore (talk) 23:58, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- They came in ones, never twos or fours. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:04, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- How odd were they? --Trovatore (talk) 23:58, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
- Not really sure what the OP meant. I live a vivid city, but I see people being alone, as if they're in the middle of a desert. Not talking about drugs addicts or anti-socials, but decent people like anyone of us, and not always the elderly. Some cope pretty well, others don't, some break after a number of years. I don't think people should be alone, whether in a city or on an uninhabited island. Jahoe (talk) 00:24, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- See our article about Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe; Selkirk lived alone on an island for four years, so we can conclude that he would have been able to live there indefinitely until old age or an unusual disaster (e.g. bad storm, hungry-and-fierce wild animal, misstep leading to a fatal injury) killed him, had he not been rescued. Nyttend (talk) 02:30, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Our article states that he had "a musket, a hatchet, a knife, a cooking pot, a Bible, bedding and some clothes". All items from civilization that may have aided his survival (the Bible perhaps only psychologically, unless he used the pages for kindling). StuRat (talk) 16:47, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- See also recluse.--Shantavira|feed me 09:08, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- And Hiroo Onoda, who hid on an island in the Philippines from 1945 until 1974, unaware that World War II had finished nearly thirty years earlier. Alansplodge (talk) 10:57, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
- Our article on Loneliness may or may not be relevant to the OP, the question is rather vague. Eliyohub (talk) 12:48, 8 February 2017 (UTC)