Started from the Bottom: 5 Famous refugees that defied the odds
BY GEORGIA CASIMIR
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,”
- Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
In 1883, Emma Lazarus described the Statue of Liberty as the “Mother of Exiles”, a portrayal of American attitudes to immigration that perhaps does not ring as true today. In fact, under Trump’s administration, the USA has become vehemently anti-immigration, with their numbers for taking in refugees falling to a cap of 18,000 in 2019. This is particularly shocking when compared with the fact that they have historically taken in “more refugees each year than all other countries combined,” and it is this same anti-immigration mindset which is becoming more common in the UK.
With Priti Patel’s “crackdown” on immigration and a recent surge in media coverage of refugees crossing the Channel, current attitudes towards refugees are growing increasingly negative. 3 in 10 Brits think that refugees are given too much help. This is despite the fact that the UK has the largest number of asylum applications from unaccompanied children in Europe, with children making up over 3,000 applicants. We seem to have forgotten the value of refugees and immigrants, and that we understand a society not by looking at its most prosperous, but at how it treats its most vulnerable.
As my own response to this, I created a list of refugees that I find particularly inspiring, as a reminder to those in parliament of the inherent potential within everyone, regardless of their beginnings. Perhaps they can learn a thing or two from these refugees, who didn’t have the ease of an Eton – Oxford – Downing Street pipeline.
MALALA YOUSAFZI
Pakistan
Aged 11, Malala began her journey as an activist when she started a blog about living under the Taliban in the region of Swat in Pakistan. When she was shot in the head in 2012 for her activism, aged 15, and lived to tell the tale, she became a world-famous voice for international justice and equality. She took refuge in the UK but still missed her home, as she details in her latest book We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World. If there ever was a role model for young girls everywhere, I really do think it would be Malala Yousafzi.
KARL MARX
Germany
Love him or hate him, Karl Marx has been an incredibly influential figure throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and into the 21st. He was born in Germany in 1818 but became stateless in 1843 due to his communist writings. As a refugee, he fled to London, where he continued to write some of his most polemic work, including the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. So, to all of my fellow students going through their champagne socialist phase, you’ve got this communist refugee to thank for disappointing your parents.
ALEK WEK
Sudan
Born in Sudan in 1977, Alek Wek and her family fled to the UK in 1985 to escape the civil war. Aged 14, she enrolled at the London College of Fashion and was scouted four years later to become a one of the most influential supermodels of the 90s, bringing black supermodels to the forefront of fashion and offering some much-needed representation. She is a strong advocate for support of refugees around the world, and since 2002 has been an advisor to the US Committee for Refugees Advisory Council, as well as an Ambassador for Doctors Without Borders in Sudan.
FREDDIE MERCURY
Zanzibar
An absolute national treasure, Freddie Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara, was born in 1946 in Zanzibar to Parsi-Indian parents. When he was 18, he and his family escaped the Zanzibar Revolution and were refugees in England. He became the lead singer of Queen in 1970, and was responsible for some of the most banging tunes in the English language, and in turn some of the most horrific singing of Bohemian Rhapsody by students on club nights that the world has ever seen. Mercury was also a leading figure for the LGBTQ+ community, and after his death from AIDS in 1991, the remaining members of Queen created The Mercury Phoenix Trust in his honour, which has since raised £17m for AIDS and HIV research.
RASHMI THAKRAR
Uganda
Rashmi Thakrar was born in 1946 in Uganda to Gujarati parents, and would grow up to be the owner of the multi-million-pound company, Tilda Rice. He and his family left Uganda during the Ugandan-Asian expulsion of 1972 and moved to the UK. He has since been recognised with bringing basmati rice (the best rice, in my humble opinion) to the west. His son, Shamil Thakrar, set up Dishoom, a chain of Irani-café style restaurants, that “pays homage to the Irani cafes and the food of all Bombay”.
These five people represent a tiny portion of refugees who have experienced such huge trauma, and yet have managed to achieve such great things. However, they also represent an even smaller portion of those refugees who are heroes in their own right, or simply trying to survive and find a better life for themselves and their family, whose existences are ignored, dehumanised and slandered.
It shouldn’t take a story about celebrities, or a horrifying photo of a war-torn country to make the public care about refugees. It should be a natural, empathetic response, from one human to another, to recognise and try to help their struggle, or at the very least, not try to belittle it.
This year’s FUZE is in aid of two charities: ArtRefuge and Black South West Network.
