Since the First World War, countless lives
have been shattered by conflict.
People across the globe have had to leave
their homes and make journeys to settle somewhere else.
This is still happening today.
Currently,
the United Nations estimates that over 79
million people globally have been forced from
their homes by conflict and persecution.
But what drives this displacement?
Why do
people leave their homes?
IWM has always looked at the causes, course,
and consequences of conflict, and one of the
most devastating consequences is the mass
displacement of people from their homes.
Just before we get into the video a reminder
to like and subscribe to the Imperial War
Museums YouTube channel for more videos just
like this every two weeks.
One of the main reasons people are forced
to leave their homes is the destruction, the
devastation and threat to life caused by modern
warfare.
Cities, amenities and homes are destroyed
and when this happens so are people’s livelihoods,
their memories, their sense of security.
So
when countries, cities and neighbourhoods
become battlefields, sometimes the only real
option is to leave and seek safety elsewhere.
During the First World War and Second World
Wars many parts of Belgium and France were
completely destroyed in the fighting and that
created a huge amount of refugees.
In fact
during the First World War, over 250,000 Belgians
refugees came to Britain the largest influx
of refugees in British history.
In some instances, this destruction can be
used as propaganda to encourage shock, compassion
and outrage.
During the First World War recruitment
posters like these would often show mothers
and children fleeing burning villages, encouraging
men to enlist to save them.
One of the most common causes of displacement
is persecution.
In fact, the modern definition
of a refugee, devised by the United Nations
after the Second World War, is a person who
has fled their home country " through a well-founded
fear of persecution due to their race, religion,
nationality, social group, or political opinion".
The sheer fact that your next-door neighbours
are suddenly hurling abuse at you, when people
won't serve you in the shops, you go to the
police and they do is hurl abuse at you as
well.
This threat of violence, or the understanding
that it's going to be dangerous in the future,
it's enough to force the decision to leave.
Before and during the Second World War the
Nazis persecuted Jewish people.
They closed
their businesses, they barred them from parks,
cinemas and restaurants and they burned their
synagogues.
This is a pattern repeated again
and again over time.
In Bosnia, people were threatened, abused
and violated by opposing ethnic groups.
Paramilitary
groups forced people to leave their homes,
often making them pay large sums of money
or hand over all their property before they
were driven out or worse.
In 1995 more than
8,000 male Bosniaks were murdered at Srebrenica.
"Tens of thousands fled Srebrenica ahead of
a Serb advance, leaving everything they owned
behind them".
Social breakdown resulting from conflict leads
lots of people to leave.
When society has
broken down, there's no government, there's
no police.
You haven't got any utilities,
so no electricity, gas or water.
The hospitals
are full, there is no medicine.
All these
mount up and the dangers and the deprivation
prove overwhelming.
Sometimes the only course
of action is to get out and seek safety somewhere
else.
Conflicts can not only destroy homes but societies,
and that can change the culture too.
Afghanistan
has endured decades of conflict and that is
reflected in the country’s crafts.
After
the Soviet invasion in 1979, carpet makers
created ‘war rugs’ which combined modern
war imagery with traditional weaving techniques.
This one shows a Russian Kalashnikov rifle
and is believed to have been made by Afghan
refugees who were living in Pakistan.
Likewise,
this picture was made a little more recently
by an Afghan teenager who moved to the UK
as a refugee.
Afghanistan is in the middle
surrounded by aggressors, with these arrows
coming from Russia, Pakistan, the US and UK.
In the bottom right they have written, ‘BUSH
& BLAIR PLEASE STOP IT, IT HURTS.’
Sometimes people are simply forced out of
their homes, they literally don’t get a
choice on whether they go or not.
And it is
seen as a part of a strategic tool of modern
war.
Whether it's a country, or a state or
just ethnic groups within a country, they
try and impose their will on people by terrorising
them or limiting their rights, burning their
homes and driving them out.
But it's also
ethnic cleansing, so anyone who doesn't fit
because of their religion or their race get
forced from their home.
During the Second World War people were forced
into concentration camps or taken from their
homes to work as slave labour in Japanese
and German occupied areas.
For those fortunate
enough to escape the gas chambers, working
conditions were still appalling.
In fact,
more slave labourers died building Germany’s
V1 and V2 rockets than were ever actually
killed by the warhead.
Across history, people have been systematically
tortured, raped and murdered in order to overwhelm
and dominate them.
During the war in Bosnia,
paramilitary groups were formed for the express
purpose of creating ethnically homogenous
areas or nations through ethnic cleansing.
So the destruction of property, persecution,
and social breakdown all cause people to make
the very difficult decision to leave their
homes.
Other times people don’t even get
the choice.
The tools of war and oppression
change, the places where it happens vary,
people may choose to take different things
with them.
But the impact is always the same
- the catastrophic upheaval of ordinary lives,
and the loss of home.
Thank you for watching.
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If you want to learn more about the
Refugees: Forced to Flee exhibition or the
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