Read The Guardian Article in Full Here
By Daniel Howden
Separating those fleeing conflict into ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ is immoral and a betrayal of European values
How should we regard the two faces of Europe’s refugee response? In the week when the European Union welcomed nearly two million refugees from Ukraine, do we also need to watch graphic footage of a young African being battered for climbing a European border fence? Yes, we do.
As Europe rediscovers compassion for refugees, we should watch this video on loop. It shows a defenseless young man in tattered clothes gingerly descending a six-meter fence. Waiting for him at the bottom are half a dozen Spanish border police, in helmets and body armor and wielding batons. The first blow is struck before he reaches the ground. The images that follow, of a crowd of uniformed white men viciously beating a black man, are all the more disturbing because they are so familiar.
Spain’s Melilla, one of two small exclaves of EU land on the African continent, has long been the strongest distillation of fortress Europe. Melilla’s ring-fenced honey pot of golf courses, casinos and corruption have provided these images before. But now it is especially important to look at them and think hard.
A generation of people across Europe have spent the last several days wondering where they would go, what they would take with them if a larger war erupted. The distance and sense of otherness that helped us ignore the war in Syria or the collapse of Afghanistan have not been on offer in Ukraine.
There are compelling reasons why the war in Ukraine has prompted Europe’s rediscovery of compassion. As a British army veteran and volunteer in Ukraine said, “it’s a black-and-white war”, or, as others point out, Ukraine is a country next door. There are questions of culture and then, of course, there is race.
