Author: Mark Salter

Everybody has seen footage of Budapest’s Keleti (East) station this past week by now. The crowds of exhausted refugees camped out around the station, the lines of dour-looking police stopping them get in – or out, depending on the moment. An atmosphere morphing rapidly between fear, chaos, anger and desperation. Plenty, too, will have heard Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban describing the influx of ‘Muslim’ Middle Easterners as a threat to the very foundations of ‘Christian’ European civilization. And in a frantic bid to stem the heathen hordes, they will have noted Orban’s decision to roll out an extensive new… More

This was published today in the BBC’s Magazine. I don’t think it requires further comment from me: the pictures and accompanying text tell their own story. The photographs of a three-year-old Syrian boy found dead on a beach in Turkey are among the most powerful to have emerged from Europe’s migrant crisis. But many other moving pictures have been taken over the years, illustrating the dangers of the migrants’ journey or the treatment they have received on arrival in Europe. Juan Medina / Reuters 1. Juan Medina was working as a photographer for a local paper in the Canary Islands… More

Photo: Daniet Etter/New York Times/Redux /eyevine. Syrian refugee Laith Majid cries tears of joy and relief that he and his children have made it to Europe. Here is a searing evocation of refugee life by a young Kenyan Somali poetess living in the UK. One of the poem’s couplets is widely quoted at the moment. Read the whole thing though – brillant, urgent, angry, unforgettable. Home by Warsan Shire no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster… More

I thought long and hard – and in fact wavered over – sharing the appalling, shocking images that have also featured on the front pages of international media. The tiny body we see being carried away from the beach in Bodrum by a Turkish policeman is of three year old Aylan Kurdi from Kobane, a Syrian-Turkish border town that earlier this year was the scene of fierce fighting between IS forces and Kurdish peshmerga. (And no less destructively a sustained US Afir Force bombing campaign, it should be added. Thus reportedly a third of all the bombs used over Iraq… More

The excellent openDemocracy are running the op ed piece Erik Solheim and I published jointly last week in the Hindustan Times. The article outlines a suggested priority action agenda for the new Sri Lankan government in the aftermath of the 17 August parliamentary elections that resulted in a resounding second defeat this year for former incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa (the first being in the 8 January presidential elections). President Sirisena and Secretary of State Nisha Biswal, Colombo, 26 August 2015 There have been a few important developments since the piece was originally published 10 days ago – notably with regard to… More

Alison Parker, left, and Adam Ward. Parker, who were killed on 26 August. Photograph: AP Here’s a statistic to ponder: Reportedly, more US citizens have been killed by guns since 1968 than have died on battlefields in the entire history of America. This telling statistic featured in a useful debate this weekend – reproduced below – over the ethics of media coverage of atrocities stimulated by the recent ‘live’ shooting of two US TV journalists. (I for one elected not to watch this appalling incident, but clearly many chose the opposite path.) See what you think for yourself. ———— From The… More

Currently there are so many eye-watering stories of the desperate plight of refugees from chronic instabilty and conflict in North Africa, the Middle East and beyond attempting to reach ‘Fortress Europe’ by any and every means possible. This one, a BBC News report on Syrian and Iraqi refugees attempting – and often failing – to reach Greece by boat from the Turkish coastal city of Izmir, is particularly poignant: not least for anyone who’s ever used a life-jacket for themselves, or their loved ones. ————– The city of Izmir on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast has long been known as a tourist… More

Not content with denying any responsibility for the continuing carnage in Iraq and beyond, and still dogged by acusations – notably from Desmond Tutu – of responsibility for war crimes, Tony Blair is now going the whole hog: he’s offering his services to the new Sri Lankan government. And exactly what are the ‘misconceptions about the country’ he’s offering to help the Sri Lankan authorities negate? Yes, like me you’ve probably guessed it folks: it’ll be all about war crimes allegations, chiefly those stemming from the final stages of the country’s civil war in 2009. Well at least our former… More

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe I have an op article assessing the post-electoral political landscape in Sri Lanka  in today’s Hindustan Times. It’s written jointly with Erik Solheim, lead Norwegian peace negotiator in Sri Lanka and a key interview source for my forthcoming book To End A Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka. The piece is below, and you’ll find it online here. HINDUSTAN TIMES Roadmap to reconciliation: 4 challenges for Sri Lanka after polls Erik Solheim and Mark Salter 20 August 2015 These are critical times for Sri Lanka. This week the country completed its second… More

Today, 17 August 2015 is parliamentary election day in Sri Lanka. As I write in fact, the polls have just closed (16.00 Colombo time)  and we will probvably have the first results by around midnight local time (c. 18.30 CET). Plenty more to say on the subject later, but for now here are two thought-provoking offerings: The first, the aptly titled ‘No Way, Mr. Rajapaksa’, which is the best of the eve-of-elections local media commentaries I’ve seen – not least for managing to corral T.S. Elliot into the service of a passionate argument for why the Mahinda Rajapaksa worldview belongs,… More