(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Pto Skibotn asylum reception, Igor and Natalia made a home burn with their own home fire apparatus.
This is the introduction to Verdens Gang's preview of NRK Brennpunkt's documentary "Visa, vodka and videotape" – a title that possibly plays on the film title "Sex, lie and videotape". The Brennpunkt documentary was broadcast on Tuesday on NRK.
What we were, so to speak, promised through VG and NRK's own trailers, was precisely a film about two young people who – probably without reason – wriggled through an asylum stay in Norway, who partyed every day on home-burned vodka, who forged their papers and who complained about the Norwegian winter clothes they were given.
What we saw on Tuesday night was a film about two young hopeful people who wanted to get away from a Ukraine where political contacts mean everything, and individuals too little.
Igor and Natalia left Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, according to their own statement because Igor had been threatened when he headed an election commission in his home country. They set the course for Norway, because friends had told them that Norway was a democratic country that received those who needed help in a good way. Both were educated lawyers, and should have all the prerequisites to belong to Ukraine's upper middle class. From experience, however, the middle class is the one who only suffers when robbery and corruption take over – that is; the part of the middle class that does not become part of the upper class of the robbery.
The two had a video camera with them, and with it they documented the trip to and their stay in Norway. It also documented that the two, according to themselves on the advice of a lawyer, forged their identities. And that they made home-roasted vodka at the asylum reception in Skibotn. But first and foremost, they documented the love story of two young people who, driven by the despair of living in a country that does not quite get out of the backwaters of post-communism – or driven by threats of violence – saw new hope in a place almost without people, almost without sunlight, almost without anything to do: Skibotn in Troms.
To be sent to one (our readers in Skibotn excuse me) for big city people so god-forsaken place, without any perspective on the duration of their stay, should take hope from most. For Igor and Natalia, it didn't. Rather, on the contrary, they seemed very happy with the thought of the chances of a new life. Despite being lawyers in their home country. And could hardly hope for anything but a cleaning job in Norway. Happiness Hunters? Not much to indicate.
At the asylum reception center, actually a tourist hotel, in Skibotn, Igor and Natalia mostly did what people from the Christian cultural circle do when they are placed in a hotel in a godforsaken place: They party. You see it at every high mountain hotel in Norway. Even all those who are actually going to make "plans for the company's strategic development and internationalization", or discuss "new ministerial guidelines for the processing of asylum cases, etc." do something completely different: They are super and partying. No wonder those who are just waiting are doing the same.
That the liquor was burnt is not exactly legal. But I doubt they were the only people in Skibotn who burned their spirits themselves. Isn't that the reason for ejection?
Nor should it be to falsify their travel documents. In the Norwegian Immigration Administration and in the Norwegian immigration debate, however, the image is maintained that if you falsify the documents you have something to hide, and if you have something to hide then you are not entitled to asylum. But fake documents don't change a millimeter of what Igor and Natalia experienced in their homeland.
Focus' documentary in no way lived up to the "expectations" created by the preview. On the contrary, it was a balanced, moving portrait of two young people. What the creator of the program thought about the two, about their self-documented life in Norway or their right to asylum was not possible to know. This is how a good documentary should also be.
Minister of Local Government Erna Solberg is nevertheless quickly out in VG and states that "asylum surfers" must be deprived of goods. Whether it is the winter clothes they were given, and which appeared to be ridiculously slow for two young, urban lawyers from the million-strong city of Kiev, which she wants to remove, or whether there are restrictions on yeast and sugar sales in Skibotn she wants to introduce, is unclear.
The Minister of Local Government nevertheless makes it clear – and we have suspected this for a long time – that it should not be fun, hopeful or pleasant to be an asylum seeker in Norway. It must be damn sad, like a Hollywood tear-jerker. And then you react just as strongly to the happy couple, as you do when someone in the cinema bursts out laughing just when the tear press reaches its peak. Burning one's own alcohol and celebrating a birthday with laughter and dancing is outright sabotage against the asylum institute's sadness.
One question to ask after Tuesday's documentary is why two successful people from Ukraine throw away their old lives and go to Norway. Why they do not give up and turn when they end up at asylum reception in Skibotn and probably hear that Norway is not as helpful as they thought. Is it due to the home mortgage, which could just as well be made in Kiev? Or could it actually be that the escape was necessary and the homebrew just a comfort?
However, Natalia asked the important question when she saw the video footage of herself in a Troms landscape without people: Why don't you want people to Norway? There is so much space, and so few people?
But we do not want to. At least not if they falsify their papers, and if they cannot with a hundred percent certainty can document political persecution. It's about not taking any chances.
And burn the booze, we'll do it ourselves.
