Deported to Sri Lanka

I hadn't intended to write a postcard style posting from here in Sri Lanka but something hapenned on the plane that I have never seen before and thought it worth sharing.

Getting to the back of the plane, where I'd booked my regular window seat, I noticed that there was already a gaggle of people in that area.

Then I realised someone was already seated in the aisle seat next to me- bugger thought I, there goes any chance of sleep. But things weren't quite as they seemed. For this gaggle of people were immigration officers forcibly deporting a Sri Lankan man back here. And he didn't like it one bit.

Sat there in handcuffs surrounded by burly men plus one woman he cut a forlorn figure as the air stewardesses tried to pretend it wasn't hapenning. As we all got off the plane, a mix of those coming here to work and holidaymakers, the unhappy party at the back stayed exactly where they were presumably waiting for everyone to get off first before they took their prisoner out.

And the moral of this story is .... well there isn't one. But just imagine how we all take what we have for granted while for some people when they seek a better life for themselves and their families, they are met with a wall of resistance. Would the Daily Mail brigade be quite so hard line about foreigners if they stopped to consider their own fate if they had been born into poverty?

Who knows, but it made me think anyway.