From this morning's Today programme on BBC Radio 4:
Katya Adler (BBC Europe editor): It feels at the end of this year like a Europe closing in on itself. Also emotionally and politically, because the effect of this chaotic manner that refugees and others have flooded across Europe, the feeling that millions more are coming, the terrorist attacks, it has led a lot of people to look at migrants with suspicion - especially since at least two of the gunmen in Paris appear to have come back into Europe by pretending to be refugees. Also an awareness that most of these attackers are Europeans.
So people are beginning to look...particularly in Paris, I was just now again...at women wearing veils or men who look North African with suspicion. So Islamophobia is on the rise.
And there is a growing attraction for political parties of the far-right who seem to have easy answers - keep out the foreigner, close down your borders.
Of course it is not as simple as that.
Mishal Husain: No.
She's changed her tune hasn't she? Are beams of reality breaking through the obscuring layers of politically correct cloud?
ReplyDeleteIt is most definitely NOT BBC policy to admit that any of the Paris Jihadis had refugee status.