A video highlighting blatant racism and disregard for the suffering of refugees by certain people within British society is circulating, and it’s shocking. At least, it will be for all of you outside the UK; those of us who live here are becoming quite used to it (although I can say from experience that it never gets any easier).
The clip from AP+ features hideously insensitive tweets and comments by members of the public. They are taken from leading right-wing UK newspaper The Daily Mail, as well as a vile neo-Fascist (they say ‘patriotic’) Facebook page called Britain First (we prefer the hilarious spoof version). The topic is the angle of the Daily Mail’s coverage on the plight of Syrian refugees, and how their suffering is causing great inconvenience to the British holidaymakers who flock to the Greek islands for their summer break. The newspaper referred to the island of Kos as a ‘disgusting hell-hole’, due to the fact that it has become a landing point for families escaping war-torn countries like Syria and Iraq on their way to find sanctuary in Europe.
Comments and tweets on this story need to be seen to be believed, but they can be summarized like this: let’s close our borders, send immigrants back to their ‘own countries’ by force, and attack the boats carrying refugees so that they can’t claim asylum here. One pitiful excuse for a human being even suggested that the British Army uses the refugees as ‘target practice’, and these kinds of vile comments are by no means isolated. This is a section of British society that some of us are ashamed to even acknowledge, but they form part of a cruel reality the whole world should know about.
If this makes your blood boil, you might want to check out yesterday’s feature on tragic little Aylan, the Syrian toddler whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach, sparking anger across the world. Would he, and millions of others, still be safe in Syria if it weren’t for Western imperialism and the illegal oil wars launched by Britain, the USA and their allies? Read more on that here, and please share this video to shame these fascist pigs!
This article (Despicable: British Tourists Complain Of Refugees ‘Ruining Their Holidays’ In Greece) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com.
