We now treat each refugee on the grounds of their race, religion or purpose of flight. We do not treat them as human beings, the British journalist Robert Fisk wrote in an article published in The Independent.
He remembers the times when the US and other “Christian” nations decided that survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide should go back to what had been their homes in “Western Armenia.”
“And many hundreds of thousands of Armenians lingered on the edge of Turkey in the hope that the victors of the First World War would return them to lands no longer controlled by their Ottoman Turkish killers,” the author writes.
He stresses that after the 1914-18 war, the international community abandoned the Armenian “right of return”. As the director of Aleppo Rescue Home wrote, “the Armenian is possessed of a wonderful gift ‘to create bread from stones’.
According to Fisk, Americans were also similarly “humane” towards Jews. The humanitarian Americans of the 19th century first “welcomed the pogromed Jews of Russia [but later] were far less keen to give sanctuary to the Jewish victims of Hitler.”
Now, according to Fisk, the same is happening with Muslim refugees, who are reluctantly received in certain countries, because of their religious affiliation.
Finally, Fisk proposes to follow the example of Fridtjof Nansen, who inspired the creation of an international travel document for refugees recognized by 54 states.
