I cried this morning.
In the past few days many people have had their eyes opened to the plight of refugees fleeing from persecution and wars in several countries. Horrific pictures of dead children washed ashore after the boats their families were trying to escape in sank, whole families wiped out in minutes because they decided that an unseaworthy boat was a risk worth taking because the alternative was to stay in their home and risk an almost certain death.
It wasn't those pictures that made me cry, it wasn't the stories about these families that made me cry, it wasn't even reading more and more about the situations that these people are fleeing from that made me cry.
It was the comments some people were making in response to the above is what made me cry. "send them back", "we can't take them, we're full", "let them drown", "shoot them", "torpedo the boats".
WHAT THE FUCK??
I can't believe how many rational people I've come across lately who genuinely think it's ok to talk about human beings like that. I've unfriended people on Facebook, blocked people on Twitter more in the past week than I ever have before. If you are reading this and follow me on Twitter or Facebook and think the comments I've copied above are ok or agree with them, please do me a favour and block me and fuck off under whatever rock you crawled out from under.
We are all well aware of propaganda being widely used across Europe prior to the second world war by the Nazis to spread hatred towards Jewish people and other minorities in order to justify segregating them and moving them into camps inciting violence against them. It took years for many people so see through their actions and realise what was happening, that they had appeared respectable and genuine in their acts to get rid of "undesirable" people. So why are so many people generations later still being so blind towards the way they are manipulated by the press, by politicians and others who use propaganda to make people think the way that they want to, to make them believe what they are saying is the truth without them needing to question their motives?
So why are we heading down that road again? Why have we allowed ourselves to be brainwashed into believing that these people are probably terrorists who are only trying to get to Britain and other countries to kill us? Why do so many people believe that they're only after a comfortable life in Britain and that our benefits system will give them a life of luxury? Anyone who believes the latter obviously hasn't tried to survive for long on benefits, it's certainly no life of luxury!
Some countries seem to have more compassion than others. Germany is being held up as the front runner is taking in refugees, especially from Syria. Perhaps they are the country that learnt the most long term about moving on from the second world war and never want that sort of persecution to happen again.
Take a look around you and see what you really have. I work, I'm a single mum and at times it's a struggle to feed and clothe my family well. Bills pile up, I struggle with debts but I have a roof over my head. My kids are safe from persecution, they have an education and a FREE health service to call on for everything from a minor infection to a life threatening illness. My kids aren't scared, they're not likely to be kidnapped, raped or killed at any minute. I don't spend my days worrying that I may have to pick them up one day and spend a week walking a port miles away to get on board a boat that's dangerous just to possibly survive to adulthood.
The British press and government have focused on the camps at Calais, referring to everyone in them as immigrants and not as refugees, making people think that they are there by choice, they could turn around and go back to where they came from. They show healthy men trying to get into wagons, condemning their actions, focusing on the inconvenience it's causing British people and ignoring the fact that they are doing things that is very risky and has a good chance of leading to their death.
Thousands of people are dying and millions of people are sitting back and turning a blind eye. Take a good look online, don't just ignore the stories because you don't want to or because you think it's all happening a long way away and has nothing to do with you. People are dying because of where they were born, because of the family they were born into, because of the religion they follow. It's happened before, it'll happen again but we can show more compassion and help.
It's taken my hours to write this. So many thoughts, I rambled a lot, deleted an awful lot and rewrote the rest several times. I had to miss out a lot of my thoughts or this would have been ten times the length it is now. Sorry for any typos or anything that's a bit jumbled, I'm all ranted out now and need a coffee.
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