Archival photo of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel (Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Earlier this week, Keir Starmer spent the day exchanging smiles, pleasantries, and tips on migration from Italy’s far-right leader.
But I think he would have been far better served spending the afternoon with our volunteers in Calais – where I’m based – speaking to the real experts on migration.
Those who are experiencing it first-hand.
If our Prime Minister had spent the day on the ground here, he would have met survivors of the latest tragedy in the English Channel that happened 24 hours before his visit to Italy, when eight people died trying to cross to England.
Had he visited refugees in Calais, Starmer would have heard first-hand from those rescued during that disaster. He would have heard from men, women and children who watched their friends and family drown in the Channel.
Keir Starmer spent the day exchanging smiles, pleasantries, and tips on migration from Italy’s far-right leader (Picture: Phil Noble/PA Wire)
He would have heard from a man, who in the chaos of the rescue, lost the friend with whom he had travelled from Sudan after their homes were destroyed in the civil war.
It was a journey that took them months, and ended in tragedy.
This man was racked with the guilt that he had survived, yet his friend hadn’t.
The remnants of the boat where eight people died crossing the English Channel (Picture: BERNARD BARRON/AFP via Getty Images)
These are the conversations I have had daily with communities here in my three years delivering humanitarian aid with Care4Calais – a refugee charity working with refugees in the UK and France.
Conversations with a community who are faced with the bleakest choice; to get on a boat to cross the world’s busiest shipping lane in search of safety or face imprisonment, torture, or death back home.
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Every person I have met here has told me that if there was any other way, they wouldn’t get into a boat.
Every person I have met has had no choice but to flee their homes, leaving behind family, friends and belongings.
Every person I have met here is so much more than the journey they are on and their current need for safety. They’re a person, not a statistic.
Tents in Calais (Picture: Care4Calais)
Speaking to two people who were on the boat when the eight migrants died, they asked me why there was no safe way for them to reach the UK.
Both said they dreamed of being home with their family but that their homes were destroyed, and they had faced harassment in each country in which they arrived.
Now they had experienced the unimaginable – losing friends less than 30 miles from the UK. Heartbreakingly, they told me they had no choice but to try to make the journey again.
Inflatable dinghies believed to have been used by migrants to …read more
Source:: Metro
