Eric Alira: Home is Where the Heart is
Saturday 29 August 2009By EU Reporter Correspondents
15 years ago, at the age of 24, Ali Jean Eric Alira set off for a two week holiday in Poland. Little did he then realise that within a few years he would be one of the most instantly recognisable faces in the country.
A former national of Burkina Faso, he is now an elected member of the Lower Silesia Regional Assembly in Poland, Vice-Chairman of the Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee, part-time assistant to Jacek Protasiewicz MEP and a former winner of the Polish version of the popular reality TV show ‘Bar’.
Now a proud Pole, he is keen to dispel many of the misconceptions that have arisen about a country he describes as ‘Paradise’. Integration, he says, is mostly a matter of how much an immigrant wishes to learn about a society and form close links with it. He is, indeed, a living example of successful integration.
In 1994, while studying in Austria, Alira went to Poland to visit Chocianow, near Wroclaw, the home town of his then girlfriend. He describes the Poles that he met while there as ‘overwhelmingly hospitable’ and he was helped to find work as an animator. He was later offered a job as an educator in local cultural centres. In these centres his task was to inspire visitors with his enthusiasm for Africa.
Likewise, the interest that local people showed in Africa made him feel at home and created a reciprocal enthusiasm in him for Poland. Within three months of his arrival, he was already speaking conversational Polish, a language he is now completely fluent in.
Alira is quick to reject any suggestion that Poland is a more racist country than those in Western Europe. He claims the stories that appear in the Western media about Polish racism and/or anti-Semitism are ‘wildly exaggerated’ and offers his own story as an example of how Poland is tolerant and at ease with newcomers to the country.
He adds that no country is, of course, perfect, and that Poland is not free from xenophobia or intolerance. However, he finds that Poland’s extremist parties have been given undue attention in the Western European media.
Indeed, Alira believes that Polish officials in the EU institutions and Polish MEPs are better placed to interact with developing countries than those from former colonial powers. He believes this is down to the fact that Polish people, living in what historian Norman Davies has described as ‘God’s Playground’, understand better than most other Europeans what it is like to live under colonial occupation.
Moreover, he believes that advice on economic development given by Eastern Europeans sounds a lot less didactic than that given by richer nations, given that Polish recommendations are reflected through the lens of recent experience.
The most enjoyable part of his work in the Lower Silesian Assembly and in the European Parliament is therefore working to build closer relationships between Europe, Poland and the developing world.
When asked about what should be done at a governmental level to further integrate minorities, he is adamant that the greater share of responsibility lies with individuals and communities not governments. Not enough is being done, he believes, by minority groups to support talented members of their own communities.
When the subject of the disproportionately small number of MEPs from minority backgrounds is brought up, he stresses that it is not the European Parliament’s role to pick minority candidates – rather it is up to electorates themselves.
What the European Parliament can do however, says Alira, is put pressure on national governments and pass European legislation that makes sure already existing anti-discrimination provisions are strictly enforced. In many European countries, racially motivated attacks are passed off as common assault – Alira stresses that there is a difference between the two and that the former should be prosecuted much more severely than it is at present.
The recent European elections did little however to change the ethnic makeup of the European Parliament. In the debates that surfaced after the US Presidential elections last November, over whether Europe too could produce an ‘Obama’ figure, it is perhaps forgotten how recent mass immigration is to European society. Eric Alira’s story gives lie to the myth that Europe lacks the ‘anybody can succeed’ optimism and dynamism of its transatlantic cousins. Perhaps a Parliament that is more representative of the ethnic makeup of contemporary Europe is not so far off after all.
FROM THE JULY 2009 PRINT EDITION