Hypocrisy

Our governments tell us that the Taliban is such a threat to the people of Afghanistan that air-strikes in villages where they are hiding are justified – in fact they are really for their own good. They also say that the Taliban is such a threat to the peoples of the western world that sending our young people to fight and die in a far off inhospitable country is justified – if fact it is a humanitarian duty.

But when some of those same victims of the Taliban, filled with stories of the peaceful and prosperous West, actually come here, and risk so much in the journey to do so, our governments don’t want them. They are treated like criminals and end up in detention centres to be ‘processed’ - or living like hobos in canvas shanty towns like something our of Steinbeck’s novels.

And then our governments break up these unofficial camps and herd them into official state-run ‘camps’ that may look neater but are actually far more sinister. From there the ‘processing’ will inevitably result in some children being separated from their families and some people being returned to the very places they are fleeing from.

Yesterday’s pitiful scenes of the French riot police breaking up the refugee camp near Calais are in reality just another piece of ‘collateral damage’ from the War On Terror.