Preventive Action for Refugee Producing Situations

72 Chapter 3
In addition to Suhrke's concern, humanitarian organizations and individuals
devoted to helping with the results of social change - refugees -
complain that states pursue their interests without much regard to whether
their action produces refugees and what could become of them. 134
We organized situations that generate refugees into two main categories:
First, people are made refugees, internal or external, through the actions
of those who hold political power over them. This exercise of authority
usually has ulterior motives in a political strife. The recent history of
Vietnam and Central America falls under this category. Second, the
people themselves initiate resistance to policies of their rulers. Their quest
for social change may put them at risk of persecution, torture, or even
death, as for example in Chile.
This study conceptualizes international preventive action for the first
category. Preventive action for the second category of situations seems
inappropriate because
to avert flows would be the equivalent of trying to oppose social change.
In the aggregate, this of course is impossible; in particular cases it may be
undesirable. To stifle change may freeze a repressive social order or
contribute to systemic social inequalities. 135
Civil strife, wars of liberation movements, revolutionary movements in
semi-feudal societies, and violent resistance to oppressive, totalitarian regimes
may all be necessary to bring about social or political change. No
doubt, in these situations the flight of certain activists is both crucial to
the success of the quest for change and indispensable to save their lives.
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134 Louis Wiesner said: "The U.S. Forces went on generating refugees in
Vietnam with little regard to what would become of them." Victims and
Survivors, Draft of last chapter, p. 598, forthcoming, (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1988).
135 Zolberg et al, Escape from Violence, Ch. 10, p. 10. There might be
circumstances where violent change is a necessary process toward a more
just social order. With the rationale of stressing "law and order" and
national security concerns, many regimes have been legitimizing repressive
and and arbitrary actions against their citizens (Chile, Paraguay, Greece,
German Democratic Republic, Soviet Union, Vietnam).
3.1.1.1. Flight, tolerable price to death?
Analytical Discussion 73
Is leaving the country where conditions have became unbearable for an
individual or group always inevitable? Not necessarily. Two primary factors
determine whether flight is feasible at all: the availability of refuge and the
likelihood of safe escape.
On the one hand, if people have no place to go, which is largely determined
by the governmental policies of receiver countries, they will not leave. (This
does not, however, mean that governments or other forces are influenced in
their persecution or human rights violations by whether there is a place for
their oppressed citizens to escape to or not.)
[T]he availability of a place of refuge may in some cases determine whether
persecution wül lead to the formation of a refugee flow or to some other
outcome, such as mass murder, which can be thought of as a form of extreme
persecution that does not produce refugees. 136
A case in point would be the conditions in Kampuchea under the Pol Pot
regime: though a few managed to escape into bordering Vietnam and Thailand,
the treatment of the people did not result in a massive outflow but rather in
mass murder, which is well documented.
Second, the ability to leave the country that engages in persecution
determines whether there will be an outflow or not. Even if governmental
policies of other states make available entry visas to those who seek to flee,
they may not be able to leave and avail themselves of the offer. 137
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136 Zolberg refers to the case of the European Jews during the Nazi era, and submits that
undoubtedly the original objective of the Nazis with respect to Jews in Germany, and later
within the Europe they controlled, was expulsion, and that it was the unwillingness of
liberal democracies to take in Jewish refugees that fostered the shift to the "Final Solution."
See Aristide R. Zolberg and Astri Suhrke, "International Factors in the Formation of
Refugee Movements," International Migra tion Review 20, No. 2 (1986), p. 154.
137 Examples of these cases would be Soviet Jews who had a place of refuge in either Israel or
the USA, but until a few years ago were unable to get to it According to the US Department
of State, 1987 saw some change in the Soviet handling of dis sidents. Jewish, ethnic German,
and Armenian emigration increased markedly, in contrast to the last several years. The
Department also states: "In January new Soviet regulations for travel abroad went into effect
In making family reunification the only legal basis for emigration, the regulation codified
Moscow's long-standing refusal to recognize the right to leave, a right included in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was incorporated into the Helsinki Act. U.S.
Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights and Practices for 1987,
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt Printing Office, 1988). See also Natan Sharansky,