August 3Aug 3 32 minutes ago, unicorn said: While I agree that not all discrimination rises to the level of persecution, all persecution ultimately stems from discrimination. If a particular demographic group cannot, as a matter of practice, reasonably live in his country, he's being persecuted. This thread is partly boiing down to semantics. In which case, I cannot agree with the above statement. What precisely does "cannot reasonably live in his country" mean, I wonder? "Reasonably" is an infinitely variable term. I could band together with others and say without acommodation equivalent to a two-star hotel room, a cooked breakfast and a jobs that paid enough for me and my family to get by and put something aside for retirement, in Switzerland we are being persecuted. But that is definitely not persecution. If I have no work and no matter how hard I try I cannot find work, I could say I am being persecuted. But even that is not persecution. In China youth unemployment is at record levels. Are they as a group being discriminated against and are they therefore being persecuted because they have no income on which to live? That would be hard to justify IMHO. We can say that homosexuals are persecuted in certain countries just as we can say vast groups of Christians are persucuted in Nigeria and the Sudan. But how are other countries going to react to that persecution? Are other coutries responsible for all of it?
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