Banking on Fear

Banking on Fear:

One of my friends from my home university was coming to visit me in Munich for a weekend when something unexpected happened. I went to the central station on a Thursday at midnight, to receive him and the station was filled with policemen. I was curious about the abrupt increase in security but I presumed it had to do with the late hours at night. The station was fairly empty except for the policemen and a few commuters. As the final destination for the train was Munich, all the 100-150 passengers got off the train as soon as it arrived. I was extremely excited to see my friend after such a long time and after greeting each other we proceeded to walk towards the metro when we were stopped by the police. When the two police officers approached us I was distressed and panicking. I can still recollect the exact moment he approached us and asked us for our IDs. I was taken aback because I had been waiting at the station for about half an hour and I was not questioned but as soon as my German friend arrived we were interrogated. The Police officers immediately called the office to check if our IDs were registered and as I have a Netherlands residence permit, I was anticipating that he would ask for my passport for further validation and I left it at home, but fortunately, he did not. My German is not very fluent but I can maintain a conversation and understand fairly easily so I was able to follow his instructions. After cross-checking our IDs he asked us to show our bags. My friend had a sports bag and a backpack with him and I only had a small wallet. The officer checked every nook and corner of his bags thoroughly for about 20 minutes. We were so dumbfounded during the entire time and the only thing on my mind was if I did or said something wrong at that moment the consequences could be dire. After the thorough check, he finally let us go. This whole event had me questioning if he stopped only us out of all the other 150 passengers because I have a darker complexion? The situation left me startled for following few days. It was at that moment I truly realized the power of authority.

The following day during my anthropology seminar we watched the documentary ‘The Well-Founded Fear’ recorded in the year 2000. The documentary’s title is from the definition of the term refugee where the applications fate of denial or acceptance relies on the truthfulness of existence of a well-founded of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. It reveals the application and interview procedure by following a few US asylum seeking applicants from different nations. If the application is denied after the first interview they can appeal to the court and this process is called ‘deportation trial’; the judgment in made even before the applicant gets a second chance. We had been discussing the role of power in our seminar but the documentary really puts things into perspective so much so that some parts brought me to tears. At the end of the documentary I remembered the incident that took place less than 12 hours ago at the central station and I could only imagine the extent of the multitude and intensity of fear that the applicants have to face during the selection process. They have to recollect and relieve the exact trauma they need freedom from. Is there a better alternate procedure to judge the applicants and decide their fate that doesn’t involve banking on (proof of the existence of ) their fear?