27th October 2020 - Death in the English Channel
At approximately 9.30 am on the 27th of October 2020, a boat carrying 20 asylum seekers capsized off the coast of France near Dunkirk. It is the tragedy we have all feared. Currently, 4 people have died including 2 children aged 5 and 8, with another still missing. Those that were rescued were taken to hospitals in Calais and Dunkirk, their condition is still not known. It is expected the number of people who have lost their lives will rise and the search and rescue efforts continue. Every one of these people had hopes and dreams and a whole life ahead of them.
Almost a year to the day since 39 Vietnamese people were found suffocated in the back of a refrigerated lorry in Essex.
Almost a year ago to the day that a boat of close to 300 people sank off the coast of Lesvos in Greece, 242 people survived and it is thought that 74 people lost their lives.
Let me be clear, this is not the work fo traffickers, or smugglers or ‘callous criminals’ this predictable tragedy has happened as a direct result of European, and most specifically as a result of UK migration policy. There is no way to claim asylum in the UK without physically setting foot on our so precious soil. Just this year, the government closed the Dubs route designed to give children safe passage to the UK. And now the only legal route left available to children and a very small number of adults – family reunion – will end in less than 10 weeks’ time unless the government acts now.
So far this year, 6 people have drowned attempting to reach the UK in search of sanctuary, and those are the people we know about. There is no conscious effort made by either French or British authorities to either protect life or account for those that are lost. They show a blatant disregard for both those seeking refuge and for the responsibility they have for protecting them.
A message to Boris Johnson and Priti Patel, there is blood on your hands. We have consistently, clearly and supported by years of evidence made it abundantly clear that they only way to prevent this loss of life, this waste of a future is to create safe and legal routes to asylum in the UK. Blocking boats, and arresting smugglers will not work.
When one smuggler is removed, another 5 appear in their place, I know this to be true as during my time in France I assisted in having the most violent of them removed from the camp. It does not work, where there are precarious living conditions and police harassment, people will do anything they can to reach safety.
This situation is not going to go away, people will not stop making this journey either by lorry or by boat until both their countries have become safe to live in and we ensure there is a way for the small number of people wishing to come here to do so safely.
People do not legally have to claim in the first safe country they arrive in. But further to this let’s define safe? Is safe being without any financial support in Greece or unable to find employment in Italy? Or is it safe to wait for weeks on the streets of France while accommodation is found for you, repeatedly hounded by the police. Or is safe living in a strange country without your family, when your only surviving family member lives in the UK? Or is safe when you speak English because you were an interpreter for the British military in Iraq or Afghanistan and want to live in a country where you can speak the language and work using your skills? I ask you, really think about what you would do in any one of these situations and I question that you would make a different choice?
Whether or not you have empathy or understanding as to why people make these perilous journeys. The loss of life, surely must make you realise that something has to change until people are able to register their asylum claim for the UK in France. This will continue to happen. People will continue to die, smugglers will continue to make money by exploiting vulnerable people and politicians will continue to tell you that this is not their fault.
Priti Patel said yesterday that she would do everything in her power to stop ‘callous criminals’ exploiting vulnerable people. Perhaps she could begin by looking at the behaviour, policies and practices of the home office who use the lives of vulnerable people as pawns in a political game. There are serious legal questions to be answered regarding how the UK’s polices contribute or cause this loss of life.
Earlier this year, the UK re-negotiated its Anglo-Franco border deal with the France, handing over a further £30 million to protect our border. It is the policies of the UK, that force people into making such dangerous decisions, putting their lives in the hands of smugglers. There is a tragic inevitability to the events of yesterday. It is clear that the measures used and considered by UK Government in order to ensure that this route is’ non-viable’ are not working, they never have and they never will. Nothing they have done in the past five years, has stopped from being forced to make these dangerous journeys, whether it be in lorries or in boats.
Thousands of people are dying at Europe’s borders and this must end.
#safepassage #legalroutes #refugees #asylumseekers #englishchannel