I can’t remember the last time I’ve thought “it’s a slow news week”. We are bombarded by more and more stories on more and more platforms every day. This week, like the last few years at least, is no exception.
We understand that everybody is overwhelmed with the information, recommendations and content that blasts out from social media every day. So we want to distil the best of the web by recommending just three links every week that you absolutely must see. No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads. Here are this week’s recommendations:
1. Russian Forces Have Targeted 12 Hospitals Since 2011 (Sian Norris / Byline Times)
Senior Researcher at Action On Armed Violence Emily Griffith told Byline Times: “Our data shows that the bombing of hospitals has been a consistent and devastating feature of Russia’s air campaign in Syria since 2015. On the first day of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine, explosive weapons were used on a hospital”.
The impact of bombing hospitals goes far beyond the immediate loss of life. It is an attack on a community’s infrastructure – preventing life-saving medical treatments for long-term conditions such as cancer, as well as destroying the first-line of defence for treating conflict injuries.
2. How Greece Secretly Adopted the World’s Most Brazen—and Brutal—Way of Keeping Out Refugees (Lauren Markham / Mother Jones)
Greece is not alone. The Australian Navy has turned boats of asylum seekers back to Indonesia and Sri Lanka or forced them onto neighboring islands instead of letting them land on Australian shores. Thai authorities have dragged rickety crafts packed with asylum seekers back out to sea; in 2015, pushbacks resulted in the deaths of an estimated 370 people. Recently, armed militias in Poland have literally beaten refugees back across the border to Belarus, where families have frozen to death in the forest. A recent report by Ian Urbina in the New Yorker documented how the European Union is funding secret prisons in Libya where would-be asylum seekers are held to keep them from crossing the Mediterranean and where astounding human rights abuses take place. And at our own southern border, the US government has used Covid-19 threats and an obscure public health law called Title 42 to send asylum seekers back across the border to Mexico—or even all the way back to their home countries—without first considering their claims. Photos of mounted Border Patrol agents chasing down Haitian asylum seekers in Del Rio, Texas, fanned across the internet last fall. These were images of pushbacks in action, dressed up as law.
3. What identical twins separated at birth teach us about genetics (BBC Reel)
Image credit: Maryna Nikolaieva