libya | Pandaemonium

TRAMPLING OVER BORDERS TO STOP THE BOATS

June 8, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on how anti-immigration policies trample over the sovereignty of poorer nations, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 4 June 2023, under the headline “The EU pays Africa’s brutal militias to lock up migrants. Britain wants to follow suit”. “Please help, today one person self dead by petrol because hopeless.” Sally Hayden received the text in October 2018. The Irish Times journalist was one of the few outsiders trusted by refugees locked up in Libya. The text was about Abdulaziz, who […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration • Tags: eu immigration policy, immigration policy, libya, robert jenrick, sally hayden, stop the boats

INSTRUMENTS TO PURSUE A CRUEL POLICY

November 16, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on EU migration policy against the background of the flashpoint on the Belarus-Poland border, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 7 November 2021, under the headline “Lukashenko is a handy villain to mask the cruelty of Fortress Europe”. A company of men in dark uniforms and balaclavas, all carrying clubs. They are battering a group of people, repeatedly clubbing them on their arms, legs and backs. They push them into a river that marks the boundary of the […]

Categories: International, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: belarus, european union, fortress europe, immigration, isaias afwerki, janjaweed, khartoum process, libya, lukashenko, niger, omar al-bashir, poland, samos two, undocumented migrants

WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE ASK, ‘BUT WHAT ELSE CAN WE DO?’

March 10, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on EU border control policy, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on free speech at universities.) It was published on 8 March 2020, under the headline ‘Detention, torture and killing … how the EU outsourced migration policy’. ‘But what else can we do?’ So asked many people after a video emerged of Greek border guards attempting to capsize a small rubber dinghy full of migrants, and firing shots towards it. The incident […]

Categories: Race & Immigration • Tags: european union, greece, immigration controls, janjaweed, lesbos, libya, migrant crisis, migrant deaths, moria, omar al-bashir, sudan, turkey

AN OUTRAGE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME

December 2, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the EU’s outsourced migration controls as the new imperialism, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on easy answers in the wake of the London Bridge attack.) It was published on 1 December 2019, under the headline ‘When refugees in Libya are being starved, Europe’s plan is working’. A hospital that finds its patients so burdensome that it denies them medical care. A homeless hostel that turfs its residents out on the […]

Categories: International, Philosophy & Ethics, Race & Immigration • Tags: africa, european union, immigration, immigration policy, janjaweed, khartoum process, libya, niger, refugees, sudan, unhcr

WHAT DETERRENCE LOOKS LIKE

July 5, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay was was first published in the Swedish newspaper Expressen, 2 July 2019. The photos of Óscar and Valeria Ramírez, migrants from El Salvador, drowned in the Rio Grande as they tried to cross into the USA, are haunting and distressing, and have sparked outrage and anger in America. Four years ago, images of the Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach similarly shocked and horrified Europe. These deaths are neither accidents nor isolated cases. They […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: alan kurdi, detention of migrants, european union, fortress europe, immigration controls, immigration policy, libya, mediterranean, migrant deaths, oscar and valeria ramirez, undocumented migrants, usa

THE VIEW FROM NORTH AFRICA

May 11, 2016 by Kenan Malik

The Konrad Adenauer Foundation has published a fascinating poll on attitudes to religion and politics in five North African countries (Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco). It reveals wide differences between the countries in political and religious attitudes – Tunisia being by far the least religious and most liberal, and Libya the most religious and conservative. There are also some depressingly familiar commonalities – particularly conspiracy theories about the creation Daech/IS. Tunisia is, of course, the only democracy among these states, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, International • Tags: algeria, egypt, islam, libya, morocco, muslims, north africa, tunisia

THE TERRORISTS THAT ARE AND THE TERRORISTS THAT AREN’T

January 16, 2012 by Kenan Malik

When is a terrorist not a terrorist? When, apparently, he is ‘our’ terrorist. Last week Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a professor at Tehran’s technical university, and deputy director of commerce at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was blown up by a bomb attached to his car. He was the fourth Iranian nuclear scientist to be killed in the past two years, part of what appears to be a concerted assassination campaign against people deemed key to Teheran’s nuclear ambitions. It is […]

Categories: War on terror • Tags: britain, iran, israel, libya, rendition, terrorism, war on terror, western policy