It’s hard to look at photos of the US Border Patrol Facilities and not be horrified. Cramped and overcrowded rooms, sometimes stuffed with double the maximum capacity; people confined for well over the allowed period; children separated from their parents and thrown in rooms with strangers. And this may not be the worse yet, as a Trump administration lawyer went viral when she argued that the government was not obligated to provide basic hygiene products and beds to immigrant children detained at these facilities.Continue Reading
Holocaust
HOW THE NAZIS WIPED OUT THE ROMANI MIDDLE CLASS
By Jonathan Lee
CW genocide, ethnic violence
Between 1936 and 1945 the Nazis wiped out over 50% of Europe’s Romani people.
Whether they were choked to death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, “exterminated through labour” climbing the stairs of death at Mauthausen, or shot in a mass grave dug by their own hands in Romania – the extermination of the Gypsies of Europe was carried out with deadly efficiency.
WHY ARE WE TURNING OUR BACK ON REFUGEES?
by Chris Jarvis
Content warning: this article mentions xenophobia and racism
Last week, reporting and rhetoric on the ongoing migration crisis reached new lows. The Daily Mail, The Express and others ran inflammatory stories first casting doubt over whether or not child refugees were children after all and later calling on them to carry out dental checks on asylum seekers to ascertain their age, irrespective of the ethical abhorrence and scientific inadequacy of such a policy.
How has it come to this? How, as a society, have we got to the point where people fleeing conflict, living in makeshift camps and trying desperately to find a better life receive this as their welcome to our country, are referred to in these terms? When did we stop being a nation that offered help and support to those in need, a nation that welcomed migrants, a nation with cities built on the principles of multi-culturalism and melting pot? Don’t we have a long and proud history of granting refuge to those who need it?
(PART 2) THE OTHER SIDE: A LOOK AT EUROPE
by Zoe Harding
Well folks, these last few weeks your humble correspondent has been travelling around Eastern Europe on a hastily-booked last chance tour. I’m four cities in and thought I’d share a little of the mood on the street from Warsaw, Vienna, Prague and Budapest. Part two of this article looks at Vienna and Budapest.