Same same but different

Considering the news, I thought it would make sense to repost that story I wrote when I was in the Congo, in 2013.

Back then I was already wondering why European media and public opinion should make a difference between African kids whether they see them at war, in the refugee camps or in their own cities.

[...] 

So lets see : those kids,
in their country = innocent victims
in the humanitarian camps = assisted refugees
in europe = illegal migrants

Same same but different ?!

In my last post, I reported about my working experience in Central African refugees camps in the Congo.

After work, I used to follow the European TV shows and even if it was only a few, there were some features on Central Africa, the war I was covering with the UN Refugees Agency.

Strange feeling to be witnessing a war on field and on a screen simultaneously. I might have seen the face of a child on TV and then met the same one in real life, in a refugee camp. 

When I came back to Berlin, I could not avoid thinking that those freshly immigrated African teenagers selling dope in my street could have been this same child, some years after.

Is n't it strange how we feel sorry about the victims of the war but then our compassion tends to disappear when those victims turn into refugees and ultimately, into migrants ?

Children of war = refugee = immigrant = dope dealer in Berlin...? Yet, compassion goes decrescendo