MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long
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‘Man's Inhumanity to Man*’
Narratives from detained refugees who exist in a virtual lawless world with no fixed sentences
INCOMPREHENSION: Protesters outside the Crowne Plaza London hotel in Heathrow which is being used as accommodation for asylum seekers
PAUL DONOVAN recommends three new books that explore the human relationship with nature
Doomed adolescents, when the missing person is you, classic whodunnit, and an anti-capitalist eco-thriller
WILL STONE takes a ticket to indie disco heaven, but misses the rarely performed tunes
Reviews of new releases by Jens Lekman, Big Thief, and Christian McBride Big Band
TOM PIERSCIONEK recommends a remarkable series of interviews with those few and brave Israeli citizens who refuse to do military service
Refugee Tales IV
Edited by David Herd & Anna Pincus
Comma Press £9.99
“We were aware of what was going on outside, we heard about coronavirus…lockdown…we said ‘So now everyone in the whole world is in prison, it’s just that our prison is a bit smaller!’”
There is, however, an essential difference. The evidence from all 14 of these “Tales” from detained refugees demonstrates that detention centres, unlike HM prisons, exist in a virtual lawless world with no fixed sentences, offering little or no hope.
The Windrush scandal has recently woken public attention to the nature of the Tory government’s notorious “hostile environment,” but the figures speak for themselves.
In 1973, 95 people were indefinitely detained, rising in 2020 to 23,073.
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