MIGRANT CENTRES
Pope calls for end to refugee ‘prisons’
The American Jewish Committee urges Pope Francis to reconsider his 'regrettable choice of words' after he called holding centres concentration camps
Rome — Pope Francis has urged governments to get migrants and refugees out of holding centres, saying many have become "concentration camps". During a visit to a Rome basilica on Saturday, where he met migrants, Francis spoke of his trip to a camp on the Greek island of Lesbos in 2016. He said he met a Muslim refugee who told him how Islamists had slit the throat of his Christian wife because she refused to throw her crucifix on the ground. "I don’t know if he managed to leave that concentration camp, because refugee camps, many of them, are of concentration [type] because of the great number of people left there inside them," the pope said. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) later urged the pope "to reconsider his regrettable choice of words" for using the term concentration camp. "The conditions in which migrants are currently living in some European countries may well be difficult and deserve still greater international attention, but concentration camps they certainly are not,"...
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