February 28, 2004
Iraqis Vote With Their Feet
Davids Medienkritik has an interesting update on the old observation that to cut through the political spin and BS on whether a society was getting freer or not, just look to see how the people vote with their feet. He assembled Iraqi refugee applications to the FRG over time. Surprise, surprise, very few wish to leave Iraq today even though they plausibly could make the case for religious repression all over the country. And given the German government's position on the US' actions in Iraq, would a pure political asylum request be turned away? It's doubtful but Iraqis aren't even trying it.
The chart in the article is below:
Update: I made a mess of things and linked to the wrong article (though the other one, an article on media bias is fine too). The link is fixed now.
Posted by TMLutas at February 28, 2004 10:41 AM