Iraq is the shameful secret in our cellar

British media coverage of the horrendous Josef Fritzl incest case has frequently raised the question of whether Austria has become a 'lookaway society'. Such portrayals rest on the assumption that British society is somehow more caring and morally responsive.

But Britain's continued refusal to acknowledge the full implications of the Iraq war tells a different story. Even as Gordon Brown deliberates whether to withdraw British troops from Basra, there is a glaring discrepancy between the scale of the catastrophe generated by the invasion and the public response to it.

This is a war in which up to one million people may have died, 2m Iraqis have become refugees and another 2.77 million are internally displaced. It is a war that has cost up to three trillion dollars, some $23bn

of which have never been accounted for, in which 25,000 Iraqis are currently held without charge or trial.

These truly staggering statistics have tended to receive a muted reception in the countries most responsible. In a damning report this month, Amnesty International accused Western governments of an apathetic response to the refugee crisis.

Such indifference has been particularly striking in Britain, where the Government continues to repatriate refugees and asylum-seekers on the grounds that Iraq is a safe country. Even Iraqi translators who worked with British armed forces have only reluctantly been granted asylum, after the MoD finally overcame its reluctance to create a 'precedent' by allowing them in.

These refugees have often met with a less than hospitable reception from the country they risked their lives for. This month the Times reported that Iraqi translators housed on a Glasgow estate were being spat on and attacked by local residents. On June 8 two Iraqi refugees were arrested in a Cardiff