Am I my brothers’ keeper?
Efa Wulle reflects on the government’s response to the refugee crisis and challenges the argument for continued air strikes
In the past few weeks we have seen unprecedented pictures of tens of thousands of people from the Middle East trying to reach safe destinations. The UK government’s response seems to have suddenly changed from building fences, employing soldiers and weapons to ‘generously’ taking in 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years. The media language has changed from ‘waves of economic migrants’ to ‘refugees from the Syrian civil war’, where women are abused and people are systematically oppressed by ‘the Assad regime’. This tone is familiar from the war in Afghanistan. The ‘solution’ previously rejected by parliament – to join the US bombing of first ‘the regime’ and then ‘ISIS’ (the government’s opponents) with the support of bought mercenaries – is now back on the table.
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