Refugee Tales IV
Edited by David Herd & Anna Pincus
Comma Press £9.99

“We were aware of what was going on outside, we heard about coronavirus…lockdown…we said ‘So now everyone in the whole world is in prison, it’s just that our prison is a bit smaller!’”

There is, however, an essential difference. The evidence from all 14 of these “Tales” from detained refugees demonstrates that detention centres, unlike HM prisons, exist in a virtual lawless world with no fixed sentences, offering little or no hope.
 
The Windrush scandal has recently woken public attention to the nature of the Tory government’s notorious “hostile environment,” but the figures speak for themselves.

In 1973, 95 people were indefinitely detained, rising in 2020 to 23,073.

These life stories are recounted either personally or, in order to protect the safety of the teller, by writers with intimate knowledge of the plight of those who, for whatever reasons, need to escape from their homeland to the supposed haven of Britain.

Those who complain that charity begins at home should recognise, as Philippe Sands’ Yemeni correspondent suffers, the problems causing the ever-growing exodus are often the results of proxy wars being fought with weaponry supplied by the country from which they seek freedom.

As many different circumstances are revealed, various common themes emerge. Endless waiting and the meaninglessness of time are a central part of the refugee experience. Over all is the basic human need to establish identity, in other words freedom.

None asks for sympathy, only understanding.

* The phrase “Man's inhumanity to man” appears in the Robert Burns’s 1784 poem Man Was Made To Mourn: A Dirge.