A touching look at the human side of the headlines as the historic French town of Calais becomes the reluctant host to thousands of refugees fleeing war and terror in Africa and the Middle East. People had set out for the UK; instead languish here in tents and make-shift huts where their journey reaches a dead end. Unable to cross the British border legally, many take extreme risks for a chance to make the crossing as stowaways. Local police wage a constant battle to prevent the refugees from getting into the tunnel while the local population is becoming increasingly polarized on the issue.
Today 60 million human beings are displaced from war and extreme poverty. Many European countries are responding to the crisis with racist hysteria, polices and police state measures. Abby Martin exposes the facts that are left out of the mainstream reporting: the role of criminal wars, disastrous neoliberal economics and why mass displacement is a permanent feature under this system.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassadors and high profile supporters help define the difference between the terms "refugee" and "migrant". These words are being splashed across media headlines because of the ongoing European Refugee Crisis. The film features actors Cate Blanchett, Colin Firth, David Morrissey, Douglas Booth, Kristin Davis, John Abraham and Patrick Stewart, singers Barbara Hendricks and Rokia Traore, writer Neil Gaiman, model Helena Christensen and comedian/tv host Craig Ferguson.
On the site of former Nazi concentration camp Dachau, outbuildings that used to belong to the complex's herb garden are now being used to house refugees. Once a place of fear and death, children can now be seen playing on the site where inmates were forced to spend hours toiling in the cold and rain to cultivate plants intended for use in medicine.
The garden complex does not belong to the official memorial site, but is being used by the city authorities to house the homeless and asylum seekers whose applications have been recognised, giving them a home to start their new lives in Germany.
While images of Hungarian riot police officers firing tear gas and water cannons at migrants along the Serbian border on Wednesday appalled human rights activists, the mayor of one small town in the south of Hungary remains concerned that his nation might still seem too welcoming to those fleeing war or poverty.
To remedy this, Laszlo Toroczkai, an ultranationalist with a flair for the dramatic, released a personal “Message to illegal immigrants from Hungary” on Facebookand YouTube late Wednesday, threatening them with arrest and displaying his town’s security hardware in a video edited in the style of a big-budget action movie.
One of the most notable reactions to the growing refugee crisis has been the incredible response by soccer fans. But not in Israel, where racist chants and placards tell a different and more hostile story.
The world of sport, particularly soccer, has really made a huge welcome effort across Western and Northern Europe.
In Germany, several leading soccer teams came onto their pitches wielding banners that read: “Refugees Welcome.” Their fans followed suit, dropping banners across their stadiums that welcomes refugees. The same could be seen in England, where fans dropped banners, too. Premiership team Arsenal donated ticket sales to charities supporting refugees, and right down at local team level, fans were not only dropping banners in welcome, but preparing welcome packages of food, clothing and other essentials.
However, Israeli soccer fans took a quite different approach to the matter. Fans of the Tel Aviv team, the Maccabis, dropped a banner over the weekend which read: “Refugees Not Welcome.”
Israel is disintegrating under the weight of its own fascism, while the world is watching. It cannot be long until either the world takes action, or yet another breathtaking injustice is perpetrated.
