A debate is raging in the UK about our responses to refugees crossing the Channel from France.
Our government, already not known for humanity or compassion, has begun to propose that boats carrying people seeking refuge should be turned back in the Channel. Our Prime Minister says (I'm not clear how he knows) that 57% of British people would favour such a course of action.
Yesterday, my Facebook newsfeed alerted me to a new comment from my friend Celia on a post about this topic, on the page of the political commentator Guido Fawkes. I had a look at the thread in question where, disappointingly, I discovered Celia to be something of a lone voice expressing dissent to any such response. Most of the people who had taken the trouble to comment showed no kindness, no empathy, and no understanding. They spoke of the refugees being on "a gravy train", and imagined them to be people coming to our shores in search of having everything provided for them rather than providing for themselves in their countries of origin. I know, I know — breathtakingly under-informed, but what can you do? If someone has watched his father murdered, his mother raped and beaten until she died, his sister gang-raped, and then has fled from the violence awaiting him, is that being "on a gravy train"? Have they seen the photographs of prisoners who have been beaten with clubs and electric cords, and kicked half to death? Don't they realise what these people are fleeing from?
So I considered what our Prime Minister and the 57% — ably represented on Guido Fawkes's page, and presumably the same individuals who voted for Brexit — might have in mind.
I wonder if you have ever watched the programmes on television about the RNLI — our national lifeboat service, a charity staffed by volunteers, not a government organisation. It might be reasonable to assume an island nation would have a government that felt moved to station a rescue service around its coast; but, no, it is a charity.
I find these television programmes gripping. The brave and cheerful volunteers go out in all weathers, on towering and terrifying seas, to help people stranded or in difficulties. Sometimes the situations have arisen in the lives of fishermen or experienced sailors, whose craft have run into trouble of one kind or another. Sometimes holiday makers haven't understood about rip currents or places where the tides come in very rapidly and you can be cut off. Sometimes a person falls from a trail along the cliffs. Quite often people in very informal vessels — inflatables for playing at the edge of the sea — are taken out by the tide and can't get back; this easily happens to children and teenagers. And sometimes thrill-seekers try their luck at surfing in wild tides and stormy weather, when going out to sea is one thing but getting back to shore quite another.
The RNLI goes out to help them all. They are usually alerted to the presence of people in distress by members of the public, and launch the lifeboat to go in search of those needing to be rescued. Often visibility is poor — it may be stormy and raining, and dusk may be falling. It may be dark.
How do the 57% propose the RNLI volunteers are to discern which inflatable craft contains refugees to be "turned back", and which are the 57%'s sons and nephews and grandchildren out for a lark that went wrong? What, is it a matter of skin colour? Oh? Simply racist, then? Or are they hoping the RNLI volunteers will conduct an interview, maybe with a form to fill in, in a storm amid crashing breakers on the open sea?
Our methods of processing and selection for asylum seekers in this country is already harrowing and triggering for those who come here hoping to find safe haven. If the 57% care to inform themselves, they will find no evidence of anyone having an easy time. This is no gravy train.
But to put on the RNLI volunteers a burden of turning back from their mission of rescue, of abandoning men, women, children and babies to death (who might turn out to have been British holiday-makers after all, because how can you tell), is a spectacular blend of cruelty and stupidity that quite takes my breath away.
What my friend Celia said on Guido Fawkes's page was that, if it's true 57% of British people are in favour of such a course of action, then she's ashamed to be British.
And I'm with Celia.
9 comments:
A friend was telling me that her daughter was on a beach somewhere on the south coast when a boat came ashore with refugees on board. Apparently people on the beach were shouting “Go home”, “We don’t want you here” and “Go back where you came from”. What a welcome to our country. I find this total lack of compassion and inability to empathise profoundly depressing.
Anne
Yes.
Our government is far from kind. True refugees struggle and others seem to skip through loopholes. There is one case of a family who had integrated into an outback community and they had a child born here. This family suffered under the hands of the authorities. They ended up being interned on Christmas Island which is very isolated and they were the only residents except for guards. Eventually one of the little girls became very ill and had to be flown back to Perth for treatment. They are still very restricted.
My point here is that the residents of their new Australian home town wanted the family there. They petitioned and fought so hard. But to no avail.
My only complaint is that certain groups of people do not make a real attempt to become part of Australian society. If I go into the next suburb over it is difficult to find English menus, pricing and even street signage is not in English. Not good. I could rant on as I have had to help my neighbour deal with English. She refuses to learn much and uses a mobile phone ap for her communication. When her husband died there were some horrible moments.
I can perfectly understand wanting or needing to leave some countries. Horrific things happen each and every minute. It doesn't take long for human to lose humanity. There need to be safe places everywhere.
I wonder if integration is more difficult if relocation was a necessity not a choice? If I try to imagine myself as a refugee, I'd be okay in France or Germany where I can already speak their language (not very well, but I could get by), but I think if I moved to Russia or Rumania or Africa I might be isolated and afraid to mix, and just stay at home and not talk to anyone — frankly, that pretty much describes me in England!!
Yet still they come. The refugees must be seeing something good.
In France it is illegal to be "an illegal" whereas in England it is not.
The government does not have control even over those who come with visas, as overseas students. Many disappear once their course has ended. There are no statistics on the whereabouts of foreign students.
I think that's why the government uses bullying tactics. Bullies are always afraid.
Many of these people chose to come here. Most are not genuine refugees. I can understand the difficulties but the fact that street signs are not in English riles me. It would be different if the language was that of our First Nations people. Now that would be very difficult as there are so many languages...
Hi Jane —
I suppose if you have been tortured or beaten or raped, or your home has been bombed, and you speak English and have family members here, from a distance England may appear good; and I think, relatively speaking, it is.
Though we are not always quick to acknowledge our part in creating the problems people seek to escape.
Hi Suzan — waving!
As a nation, we need to take some accountability for the state of global affairs, both politically and environmentally, which has contributed to the rise in refugees.
Last year there was a YouTube video of an African mother on a flimsy inflatable boat searching with horror for her baby who had fallen overboard. It was so heart rending I could barely watch yet I felt it my duty to be a witness if for nothing else than to hold her in my prayers. Yet the comment section was full of hatred, judgement and down right heartless cruelty. It completely stunned me. I sometimes don’t know what we’ve become.
The horror of what some people have to live through is almost unimaginable. I salute you for staying with that dreadful experience on video and praying for that poor woman and her child. How would one ever recover from such an event?
When I think of these things, and then of my daily life — calm and uneventful, quiet and secluded, in a safe home living with gentle and considerate people, with enough money for nice things to eat and suitable clothes to wear, I am amazed and full of gratitude.
If we have all these things, the least we can do is share with people who are struggling,, who are afraid and hungry and cold, who have nothing and are in a strange land.
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