Esther the Meijer is chairwoman of the foundation ‘Drylts oer de Grins’ (Ylst – a Frisian village - among the borders). Since three years ago they organise an annual festival in Friesland in order to get attention for the eight mileniumgoals. The profit is used as a donation for the Hunger project.

Esther Meijer explains where the hunger project stands for: ‘they invest in the potential in developing countries and are creating new possibilities for the inhabitants of these countries. They developed a training program: Vision/Commitment/Action. The training is provided by the Hunger foundation but the rest will be executed by the local community itself.  There isn’t any western involvement in controlling these projects. The community itself is supposed to define the needs for improvement. The first step is to think about what they could do themselves to improve the situation. The second step is to define what kind of support the community needs from the ‘other’. The third step is action. Several committees will be formed from the community. 50 % of the committees need to consist of women. A donor can’t connect its name to the project. The investment isn’t honourful.’

‘Drylts oer de grins’ is initiated to get attention for the mileniumgoals in Friesland and to bring the Frisian inhabitants in contact with people from Africa, Asia and South-America. They organise for example, percussion workshops for children of the primary school, given by musicians from Benin. Another example is the ‘Mensenbieb’ (human liberary). Visitors of the festival were able to borrow a person at the ‘Mensenbieb’, coming from a developing country, to talk with each other for some time. Esther de Meijer is convinced that certain personal meetings contribute to a feeling of involvement in relation to poverty and other disasters, because it gets a face.

‘Drylts oer de grins’ choose to organise a festival to present the potential. According to Esther Meijer: ’Developing countries need to get rid of the image of being victims. There’s poverty in these country but these people are no losers. Such a representation is hypocrite. The western inhabitants are responsible for this poverty. We go to Africa to pick up the raw materials and we exclude them from our prosperity.’

Anja Wouters: ’I have my doubts about the format of a festival to transform the image of developing countries. The goal of the Hunger-project is legitimate, but to organise a festival to promote the project is dubious.’

Wouter Osterholt: ‘To present people from developing countries as entertainment can take a wrong turning. Within the colonial department of the world fair in 1897 in Tervuren, an African village with 267 inhabitants were exhibited. A part of these African villagers died because it was too cold and the public was ordered not to feed the Africans. If I compare the flyer of ‘Drylts oer de grins’ with the pictures of this world fair I see some similarities.’

Esther de Meijer: ‘We want to show the ‘clash of cultures’. The musicians presented on the flyer, are from Benin and living on the water. On the flyer you can see them in a boat within the Frisian landscape, playing percussion on milk cans.’

After ‘Drylts oer de grins’ we asked Marten Winters to present videos he made in collaboration with Jeanne van Heeswijk. These videos are part of a video-installation called: ’Narratives of Desire’. The videos are made in Odense, Denmark, right after the escalation of the Mohammed crisis. The video ‘I will make you happy soon’ is a portrait of Ali, an artist and a refugee from Iraq. Ali lives in Volmose, a neighbourhood mainly occupied by immigrants. Ali was once selected for both the art academy and the academy of dramatic art. He got into a dilemma. A friend was on the first place of the waiting list of the academy of dramatic arts. If all selected students were going to be in training, this friend was obligated to fight in the war. Because of this Ali decided to go to the art academy. The friend is a famous actor in Iraq nowadays. Ali applied for asylum in Denmark in 1999. He now lives in Volmose and creates ‘autobiographical’ sculptures.

The second video Marten Winters showed was ‘Driving Odense’, a portrait of Benny Busborg. He started to tell his story when Winters and Van Heeswijk landed up in his cab about the relation between immigrants and native inhabitants. In these days the Mohammed crisis was the main subject in Denmark. Winters and Van Heeswijk asked him if they could film him for one day. Benny Busborg explains his pragmatic vision on how different cultures should live together. According to him the Danish society is not a good example. He gives several examples of institutionalised racism and gets angry. According to Benny Busborg the problems are caused by the fact that people don’t know each other. ‘When people will get to know each other it becomes another story, but all immigrants are living in Volmose. It is a ghetto.’

The video portrait of Ali was presented together with one of his sculptures. This placed the video in context. The curator of the Kunsthallen Brands first refused to exhibit the sculpture and called it ‘third world art’. After some discussion she gave her permission but she excused herself during the openingsceremonie for the ugly sculpture. She emphasized that the sculpture was part of the video installation and was not meant as an autonomous sculpture.

Anja Wouters: ‘It’s permitted to dislike a art piece, even if the artist has a difficult and painful background’

Marten Winters tells about the atmosphere in Denmark after the cartoon crisis. ‘The bubble around Denmark did burst. Suddenly the question arouses: Are their any boundaries as it comes to freedom in speech? If you compare the situation you can see the parallel with the period in the Netherlands after Theo van Gogh was murdered. He structurally insulted Muslims. In my opinion we reached the boundaries of freedom of speech. This right is often used as an excuse to insult ‘the other’ and it is often defended as our most valuable achievement, but 50 years ago it was also really not done to insult Christianity publicly. The tradition of the freedom to insult each other is not that old.’

Insulting ‘the other’ on purpose is behind the limits according to Marten Winters but he struggles with the question to what extent he needs to work up respect for the religion of someone else? He thinks it’s important that there is space to disagree with each other or to misunderstand each other.

Anja Wouters: ‘It’s not always possible to overcome differences. Then you can only come to the conclusion that you don’t understand each other, but you can accept that.’

Marten Winters: ‘People in the Netherlands often think that we need to have a pleasant time together, nice and cosy. It seems that it’s almost your moral obligation to be interested in “the other” but isn’t it possible that you just ignore each other?’

Abbas: ‘What is the difference between religion and taboo?’

Douwine Boomsma-Reitsema: ‘A lot of religious people don’t come out or talk about their religion. But there’s a group of people who confront themselves with other religions. They want to try to understand “the other” and are open for self-reflection.’

Marten Winters: ‘But if you were honest the difference is quite fundamental. If you’re a Muslim you fundamentally disagree with a Christian and the other way around. Is it not just a sort of an agreement: We think fundamentally different, but we don’t kill each other?’

Chiel de Zeeuw: ‘I’m not religious and I’m not really interested in religion either, but I would like to know about the taboos of all religious people so I can, if possible, take it into account.’

Because the conversation started to focus on religious identity, we decided to continue with the presentation of Hrair Sarkissian. He’s a photographer from Damascus, Syria. He showed his project ‘Zebiba’, a series of photographs made in Cairo, Egypt of Muslim men with stains on their forehead that are caused by praying. ‘The stain is a status symbol; it proves the man is a good Muslim. Though these men are certainly no fundamentalists. If so they wouldn’t have agreed to be on a portrait,’ says Hrair Sarkissian. According to him the stain is often created on purpose. ‘In Cairo it counts as a provocation towards the authorities if a person propagates its Muslim identity. In general only the poor people propagate their Muslim identity so obvious. The phenomenon is strongly represented. You can see it everywhere on the street.’

 
Hrair Sarkissian made portraits of the men because he was intrigued by the physical appearance of the stain as a sign of being in contact with god. ‘It’s the point where contact takes shape.’ Hrair Sarkissian chooses not to show these photographs in Egypt itself. ‘It would be too much about my relationship towards the authorities and the Islam and that discussion is not relevant to me.’

Abbas: ‘In Iran they create such a stain on their forehead by touching a red-hot stone while praying.’

Hrair Sarkissian: ‘In Egypt they pray on hard plastic carpets.’

After the presentation of Hrair Sarkissian we took a short break to be followed by a presentation of Julius Wijffels. Julius Wijffels is a volunteer at the emergency shelter in Witmarsum and organised ‘de nacht van de vervanging’ (the night of the replacement) in Leeuwarden. During this ‘event’ asylum seekers were spending the night at the houses of politicians, who were representatives in the city council or at the province. ‘These politicians are taking decisions about the destiny of asylum seekers without knowing them personally.’

Marten Winters: ‘Is such a forced organised meeting necessary?’

Julius Wijffels: ‘In practice you see that getting to know each other is not coming naturally. How many foreign-born ‘citizens’ are on your birthday calendar?’

‘It’s a big responsibility to dedicate your time and energy to improve the destiny of asylum seekers. It’s not possible to take a distance whenever things seem to be turning against the goal you’re fighting for. You deal with people who’re excluded from the society. They’re depending on the effort legal citizens are willing to take in order to help them. Besides that you built up an emotional bound. Intimacy is one of the most important things you can offer. I always felt like an outsider myself, maybe that’s the reason why I feel responsible for the improvement of the destiny of asylum seekers.’

Wouter Osterholt: ‘We should have more internal outsiders in the Dutch society to guarantee involvement?’

Abbas: ‘If you don’t have any rights you are often forced to do things that aren’t good for you. At a certain moment the financial support of ‘Stichting Respons’ (a foundation for refugees) stopped quite unexpected. I lived these days in Sneek, but I needed to work in a village that was 20 km further up. I needed to go on bike back and forth and I earned €5 each day. I was sick at that time but didn’t have a choice.’

Douwine Boomsma-Reitsema is giving the last presentation of this evening. She always felt like an outsider after moving to a small village in Friesland. This was one of the reasons why she has chosen to become an active member of Amnesty International. She became part of a group and was able to canalize her energy constructively. At this moment Douwine Boomsma-Reitsema has been a member of Amnesty International for thirty years.

Amnesty exists since 1961. After the second world war, in 1948, the human rights were declared and written down. These universal human rights were signed by a lot of countries but not all of them succeeded in practice. A lawyer in England made an appeal to write letters to these countries and ask them for amnesty. Many people responded to this appeal. Besides that there were many requests to repeat the action for specific -violation of the human rights- cases. Amnesty became an international operating organisation.

According to Douwine Boomsma-Reitsema Amnesty always choose to have an independent position in relation to governmental institutes. She gives some examples how Amnesty is trying to operate independently: ‘Amnesty doesn’t receive subsidies of the government, their money comes from donors, but there’s a limit on the amount of money a donor can donate and active members are only organising actions for specific cases in other countries in order to protect them for getting in trouble with their own government.’

Douwine Boomsma-Reitsema tells us about Amnesty’s method of working: ‘Amnesty is getting information from organisations and individuals. After receiving the information, the reliability of the information will be investigated and a rapport is written. If the information is declared reliable the government of the certain country will be contacted and asked to uphold the universal human rights. At the same time Amnesty does an appeal for writing letters to the particular country addressed to its members and the press. Whenever there’s no improvement in a specific case Amnesty also organises hit and run operations by email or sms. These actions of Amnesty often contribute to someone’s release or can prevent someone’s disappearance.’

Douwine Boomsma-Reitsema gives a lot of information about Amnesty at schools and festivals. She tries to reach the younger generation, especially because the organisation of Amnesty is aging. She thinks this is caused by a lack of readiness to take action among the younger generation. ‘They’re only interested if the actions are short and wild.’