Refugees Welcome in Bulgaria

A few weeks ago I came across this graffiti in downtown Sofia, along Aleksandar Dondukov Boulevard:

Refugees welcome, deport the...?
Refugees welcome, deport the…?

I would have expected to see this in a more liberal, developed European country like Germany, France, or Sweden, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it here. Bulgaria is rather conservative, poor, and has no shortage of gripping issues inside its own borders. Nevertheless, it’s good to see at least one compassionate Bulgarian publicly expressing this viewpoint.

According to the UN’s Refugee Agency there are more displaced peoples in the world right now than at any time in human history. From their report:

[…] the number of people forcibly displaced at the end of 2014 had risen to a staggering 59.5 million compared to 51.2 million a year earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago.

Part of the solution to this problem surely involves a different strategy in the Middle East — nearly five million refugees are from Syria alone (since 2011!) — but building walls around Europe to keep out the refugees is not.

Author: Alan Orth

GNU/Linux, Indian food, and Death Metal!