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To: The Daily Mail owners, editors and management

The Daily Mail - refugees are not rats!

Remove the cartoon depicting refugees as rats. Offer a full apology and concede how similar this cartoon is to those used by the Nazis regarding Jews. Take a more considered, less reactionary approach to the refugee crisis in future.

Why is this important?

As the refugee crisis worsens worldwide, it is increasingly important not to dehumanise the people fleeing from the kind of atrocities we in the West fear the most. With this is mind, the Daily Mail's cartoon showing droves of terrorists and rats rushing over the European border is not only callous and completely inappropriate, it risks further inciting an extremely volatile situation. The cartoon directly echoes cartoons published by the Nazis regarding Jews fleeing Germany in 1939, and fuels the fires of Islamophobia that will turn more and more previously unaffiliated people to IS.

It is vital not to have the Paris attack and the European response to the refugee crisis feed into the narrative IS is trying to create. There is no global war against Muslims but IS would certainly like there to be, as they believe they would be turned to as the last resort. Every closed door to human suffering, every shut border and every attack on an innocent refugee or Muslim someone in the West makes will only increase their support.

This is why the Daily Mail's cartoon is so dangerous. It dehumanises people which leads to the above events. It binds refugees, Muslims and terrorists together with absolutely no human component, no empathy for the people escaping situations we can only hope never to experience. The same people attacking Paris are the people the refugees are trying to escape from.

Not all refugees are terrorists
Not all Muslims are terrorists.
IS does not represent Islam.
All refugees are people, not rats.

Nazi cartoon source: https://s.bsd.net/38degrees/main/page/-/CBY/1939-newspaper.jpg

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Updates

2016-11-09 09:06:25 +0000

5,000 signatures reached

2015-11-18 16:52:20 +0000

1,000 signatures reached

2015-11-18 13:55:32 +0000

500 signatures reached

2015-11-18 12:51:37 +0000

100 signatures reached

2015-11-18 12:47:18 +0000

50 signatures reached

2015-11-18 12:44:25 +0000

25 signatures reached

2015-11-18 10:17:02 +0000

10 signatures reached