Sinking Humanity into the Sea
Years and Years and Human Rights

by Pınar Çetinkaya 

The world is our common shelter in which everybody has a right to live and cannot be banished only because of their differences such as ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability or religion. These diversities make the world a more colourful place with unique features and they should be embraced by all of us to build a more liveable home for humanity. To expect that everybody is supposed to have the same identity has historically brought about a great number of world disasters that are mainly based on discrimination. Years and Years is a dystopian television series that depicts a future world in which authoritarian regimes are on the rise, democracy is being undermined by the military and these regimes all over the world, and these regimes attack diversity.

The series tells the story of an upper-class English family, Lyons, and their economic, political, social survival in the middle of the changing world. Daniel, who is a gay character and a member of Lyons, works in Manchester as a housing officer and cares for Ukrainian refugees who escaped from the military intervention of Russia. In the housing area, he meets Victor, who was denounced by his family to the police because he is gay. After Russia intervened in Ukraine, homosexuality was forbidden and if it is found out, all gay people are detained and tortured by police and sometimes killed. Because of this predicament, Viktor has to flee to Britain, where there is no discrimination against gay people, in order to survive and stay alive.

However, following Brexit, the United Kingdom changed its immigration policies, so Viktor’s application was not found suitable to settle in England and he was sent back to Ukraine despite his risk of being killed. Since coups d’état have harmed democracy, European countries, meanwhile, have become more authoritarian, with human rights being the first to suffer. Once countries such as France and Spain were democratic and the protectors of human rights, turning into places in which there is not an acceptance of sexual orientation or refugees regardless of what political side has the power. Because there is no haven for gays outside of England, Daniel has to choose the only and most dangerous way to bring Viktor over to England: crossing the ocean illegally on an inflatable boat. Unfortunately, he is drowned in the same way that thousands of refugees, mostly Syrian, who had to cross the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea to reach Europe, perished in sinking boats.

When democracy is replaced by authoritarian regimes, people lose their freedom and rights because of attacks on diversity and their lives, as has been the case in Years and Years. Human rights ensure that people can live in peace and are not subjected to discrimination. Victor and Daniel show that the discriminatory world does not only attack rights but also eliminates individuals one by one just because of their differences in quite tragic ways and these incidents cause unforgettable social wounds in the public memory.

Years and Years. Davies, T. Russel. 2019.