Will latest migrant tragedy shame EU into action?
By Imogen Foulkes, IRIN, Switzerland – On Saturday morning, The Sun, Britain’s popular right-leaning tabloid, ran a piece by one of its more provocative columnists with the headline: “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants.” The column went on to refer to migrants as “a plague of feral humans” who had turned British towns into “festering sores.”
Hours after the article appeared, news of the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean began to emerge. At least 800 migrants, including many children, had drowned after their rickety, wooden boat capsized off the coast of Libya.
One would hope the columnist, and indeed the editor who published the article, felt at least a twinge of shame. But the tone of the piece, and the fact that it elicited a good deal of favourable feedback from readers, lays out in bold the dilemma now facing the European Union over migration.
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