WAR certainly exposes hypocrisy.
Last week the Queen Mother unveiled a monument to the "heroic" citizens of London who lived through the "blitz" in the second world war.
But nowathe citizens of Belgrade have to be shown to be deserving of a similar "blitz", which is constantly being stepped up.
For the government's own reasons we are told the truth about what it is like to be a refugee: driven from one's home, witnessing murder, experiencing torture or brutality, left without possessions, afraid and traumatised.
The response to this is the massive public support for refugees from Kosova. One Scottish paper had the headline in Albanian "You are welcome here". People have stood at airports with welcome banners.
Suddenly the phrase "bogus asylum seekers" seems to have disappeared from the lips of politicians who used to start every speech with it.
The word has gone out to clear the remaining Kosovans out of the detention centres and prisons, although there are still two in Campsfield who, the government claims, can't prove they are Kosovans.
The new voucher system will not apply to these refugees. They will be allowed benefits, and the right to work. The government has even talked of allowing 1000 per week into Britain, even though they will have been in another country before coming to Britain (Albania or Macedonia). Whilst the experience of the Kosovans since the bombing started has been terrible beyond belief, it is no different from what refugees have experienced in other parts of the world, or what Kosovans experienced before the bombEarlier in the year, when we demonstrated outside Campsfield in support of large numbers of Kosovans amongst other refugees inside, the government used every kind of excuse to try to discredit them, saying they were really Albanians. Now they admit that Milosevic's troops have been driving them out of their homes for a long period of time, and that is why NATO was "forced" to ACTE What about the Kurds, whose villages have been destroyed, and whose relatives have been massacred? Or the Nigerians opposed to the multinationals who work with the military? Or the Palestinians, Timorese, Tamils, Algerians and others, who are fleeing regimes supported and armed by NATO governments?
If their stories were told, like the Kosovans, they would be seen to be human beings as well, in need of support and sustenance, and not detention and deportation.
Refugees are nearly always the victims of war and dictatorial regimes. They deserve to be seen and treated as the Kosovans arriving in Britain now, and not as the new asylum bill proposes.
They are not guilty of crimes and therefore do not deserve to be locked up. [This is an edited version of an letter written for The Campsfield Monitor]