Tourists and Refugees

Posted on by

Tourists and Refugees Cross Paths on Gran Canaria

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/it-ruins-the-vacation-feeling-tourists-and-refugees-cross-paths-on-gran-canaria-a-783962e7-8beb-4373-8423-ae209cb1775ds

Gran Canaria’s tourism industry is doing all it can to survive the coronavirus. Some luxury hotels are even hosting the increasing numbers of migrants arriving from across the ocean. It is a clash of two worlds.
Omar arrived in the port of Arguineguín, located 16 kilometers west of Playa del Inglés, three weeks ago after spending three days on the Atlantic. The Coast Guard pulled him out of the sea along with 22 others. More than 8,000 people like Omar arrived in the Canary Islands in November alone, part of the more than 20,000 for the whole year.

“We all have to die somewhere,” Omar says, adding that he wasn’t afraid during the journey. Once he arrived, he was given a black sweatsuit, the uniform of the new arrivals. He immediately changed, throwing his old clothes into the trash. He then spent a week sleeping on the ground with no running water. His clothes were constantly damp, there was never enough food and, he says, the lines in front of the few portable toilets took forever.

history politics genocide

Posted on by

The inconvenient past

https://online-lib.ru/41300/nikolay-epple_neudobnoe-proshloe-pamyat-o-gosudarstvennyh-prestupleniyah-v.html

Непогрешимая история

Почему в России оправдывают государственные преступления, объясняет филолог Николай Эппле

https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2020/10/07/87424-nepogreshimaya-istoriya

«Не допустить повторения зверств — вот в чем ответственность»

https://www.znak.com/2020-11-07/istorik_nikolay_epple_o_tom_kak_nam_izlechitsya_ot_potryaseniy_bolshevizmom

The past and the future of Russia – in the new book by Nikolay Epple

https://en.newizv.ru/news/culture/18-09-2020/the-past-and-the-future-of-russia-in-the-new-book-by-nikolai-epple

it is impossible to rely on “it will resolve itself”

Nikolay Epple scrupulously examines not only domestic attempts to overcome the totalitarian past – “thaw”, “perestroika”, current calls for “drawing the line”, masking the legitimation of power from above, or “return of names” as a real ritual of collecting a divided past from below – but also experience countries that differ from each other even in their continental affiliation. Argentina, Japan, Spain, South Africa … And, of course, Germany.

An unworked past creates a gap in the social fabric, for which there are no ready-made healing mechanisms. Just as the ghosts of deceased convicts cannot integrate into the ways of dealing with the spirits of the dead, habitual for local residents, forcing the living to withdraw from their homes, so the memory of the mass Soviet terror on a national scale cannot be built into existing memory structures. It does not form an ordinary cultural humus, but lies in an unprocessed layer, now and then “breaking through” into the reality of today“.

Maxim Trudolyubov: “The Soviet legacy is not just material for historians. This is the foundation on which the country stands”.

 

Xi JinPing China

Posted on by

https://www.facebook.com/spiegelinternational/posts/10157832430087285

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-dawn-of-the-dragon-how-xi-jinping-has-transformed-china-a-49d467ed-3bd8-4b95-882a-395200cef324

the power of the state has grown, with Xi having secured his office for life, cemented party rule and perfected the surveillance state. In the west of the country, hundreds of thousands of the Muslim Uighur population are in labor camps, and critics of the regime have fled or been silenced.

 

15 days on top of a tanker’s rudder

Posted on by

https://www.facebook.com/elpaisinenglish/posts/3352201451555964 

A teen’s journey to Spain’s Canary Islands: 15 days on top of a tanker’s rudder

A growing number of migrants are finding increasingly dangerous ways to reach the archipelago, with around 20 stowaways needing to be rescued in just four months

https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-12-09/a-teens-journey-to-spains-canary-islands-15-days-on-top-of-a-tankers-rudder.html

In the last four months, around 20 people have been rescued trying to reach the Canary Islands as stowaways on cargo ships. It is impossible to know how many have died on the way.

Prince says that the adults were seriously considering throwing themselves into the sea and swimming, even though there was nowhere to go. “We had a hammer and we were hitting the hull of the ship so the crew would get us out of there. They definitely heard us, but no one responded,” says Prince.