4. ONE WAY TO START A LECTURE:

Lecture by Coskun Cöruz (President, Council of Europe Minority Youth Committees),

"Dear friends, please close your eyes for one minute and imagine that you are far, far away, somewhere in another country.... [Songs played from tape: "Homeless", words and music by Paul Simon and Joseph Sbabalala and "Under African Skies", words and music by Paul Simon]

The year is 2090. We are situated in a country somewhere on the African continent, which has in recent decades taken over the role of "first world" more and more. Since the turn of the millennium, great employment, overpopulation, ecological breakdown and political extremism have driven especially Europe and North America to a social and economical crisis. In the years following the breakdown of the old "First World's" financial and social stability all major multinational and even smaller companies have moved their headquarters as well as their industry to Africa. Here they still found the space they needed to expand and sufficiently educated employees. Whereas in Europe and the United States the political rigidity of the new extreme right had driven most inhabitants to a state of complete intellectual apathy and demotivation, resulting finally in the closing down of many of the major universities and some main educational centres.

For quite some years now, Europeans and Americans have also emigrated to Africa to find economic and social security and the political and intellectual freedom they had lost rapidly after the establishment of the new European Government under the European leadership of prime minister Le Ballpoint. So far this immigration has been accepted by the Africans, but now that unemployment and its consequences start to affect the African society, the immigrants are becoming the victims of a new racism and cultural and social injustice. This particularly affects the Europeans who, having lost their local cultures in the process of Le Ballpoint's New European policy of uniformity, are faced with problems when they move to Africa: their present cultural minority complex causes them to get intensely influenced by the African culture and social traditions, which they are often forced to take over, for the better or for worse...

If this is a mirror, each one of you has to decide for him or her self: do I like to look in it? What was (or is) the situation nowadays?"

[Coskun then went on to describe the processes of immigration and the consequences of living in multicultural societies.]

[International Christian Youth Exchange, "A Multicultural Europe as a Framework for Learning", Iceland, April 1990]