VIP Class Notes (Raph)[S]

Vocabulary

Siege (n): 1- the surrounding of a place by an armed force in order to defeat those defending it:
E.g.: The siege of Mafeking lasted for eight months.
E.g.: The soldiers laid siege to (= started a siege of) the city.
E.g.: The castle was under siege for months.

Original:

I watched a video called “Europe’s most fortified border is in Africa”. The name of the land is Malilla, and it’s a border of Spain and Morocco. And actually Malilla is an enclave of Spain, so technically if you step in the land of Malilla you are in Europe, which guarantees that you can be protected by European laws. There are lot of people, most of them are refugees, lived in makeshift camps close to the border. They try to gather a lot of people, then build a big group, then they can try to cross the border. They have different incentives to do so. Some of them came from the country which suffer from wars. Some of them just want to go to Malilla because they can’t find jobs in their homelands. The most interesting thing is the authority treat the refugees in different way, based on their nationalities. For example, refugees from Syria can get high possibility to go to Malilla, but it would be difficult for other countries’ refugees to cross the border legally. I think it’s dangerous to distinguish the refugees on wether they came from the wars which we can read on the newspaper, instead of carefully checking whether they need help and protection.

Edited:

I recently watched a video called “Europe’s most fortified border is in Africa”. The video talks about a piece of land called Malilla,  a small town on the border between Spain and Morocco. Malilla is actually an enclave of Spain within Moroccan territory, so technically if you step there you are in Europe, which guarantees that you can be protected by European laws. There are lot of people, most of them are refugees, who live in makeshift camps close to the border. They try to gather a big group of people, so they can try to cross the border. They have different incentives to do so. Some of them come from war-torn countries; some just want to go to Malilla because they can’t find jobs in their homelands. The most interesting thing is that the authorities treat the refugees in different ways, based on their nationalities. For example, refugees from Syria have a high possibility to go to Malilla, but it would be difficult for refugees from other countries to cross the border legally. I think it’s dangerous to distinguish refugees based solely on wether they come from countries that are experiencing highly-publicized wars , instead of carefully checking whether actually they need help and protection.

Pronunciation

Siege: /siːdʒ/