Nobel literary winner: UK govt lacks compassion for refugees

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Nobel literature laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah has criticized the “lack of compassion” of governments, including Britain’s, that treat migrants as a problem or a threat. Gurnah arrived in England from Zanzibar as an 18-year-old refugee in the 1960. On Thursday the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature for novels that depict the “effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee.” Gurnah said Friday that not enough had changed. He said migrants today faced the “sme old ugliness in the newspapers, the mistreatment, the lack of compassion from the government.” He said migrants “are not coming with nothing. They are coming with youth, with energy, with potential.”