Compassion not barbed wire should greet migrants: Nobel winner
CANTERBURY, ENGLAND, OCT 7 (REUTERS) -
Europe should greet migrants with compassion rather than barbed wire and the British government is “rather nasty” about those who seek asylum, said Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, who won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.
Born in Zanzibar, now Tanzania, Gurnah moved to Britain as a student in 1968. His novels, the first published in 1987, have repeatedly portrayed displaced people outsiders who are coming to terms with an identity in constant flux.
He said he felt the British government seemed nasty about those seeking asylum.
“Currently, it seems the government is rather nasty about people seeking asylum or people seeking admittance into this country,” Gurnah, 73, told Reuters.
“It seems such a surprise to them that people coming from difficult places would want to come to a country that is prosperous.
Why would they be surprised? Who wouldn’t want to come to a country that is more prosperous? There is a kind of meanness in this response.”