It really is a jungle out there

It’s been alleged that Britain is proactive towards the international community and cares about all the vulnerable people out there but don’t believe it folks.  It’s a myth.

I’ve been reading about the immigration camps of Calais and about the way the residents there have been totally dehumanised by people who are supposed to care about human rights.  The people in the camps were mainly from Afghanistan and Iraq and seeing as Britain helped create the crisis then Britain, in any reasonable view, surely bears some responsibility.

It’s easy to get despondent but thank goodness for people like Green party leader, Caroline Lucas who said . . .

Rather than fulfilling their responsibilities to seekers of asylum under both EU and international law, the French and British governments are turning a blind eye to the suffering taking place on their own doorsteps. Home Secretary Alan Johnson‘s glee in the wake of this aggressive police raid is particularly disturbing.

“The plan for mass deportations of these refugees rides roughshod over the European Convention on Human Rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Geneva Convention. And given that so many facing expulsion are children, the plans may also breach the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Makes me want to weep with shame.

To paraphrase Jim Jay from this excellent article, our own Home Secretary Alan Johnson took great delight in the swift and decisive rounding up of the happy campers.  Britain is refusing to take in any of the refugees in spite of the UNHCR asking them to give asylum to some of them.  Well Johnson has to consider what the good and compassionate citizens of Britain would say if he let more needy immigrants in.  And lord knows what the Daily Mail would have to say?  I mean, those pesky and bothersome Jungle dwellers were becoming an eyesore for the civilised people of France.  And Britain was shaking with apprehension at the thought of even more scrounging, sub-humans arriving to steal our jobs and our homes, to take over our beloved NHS and overrun our schools.  I mean we can’t have them coming here and contributing to our economy and doing all the crappy jobs and bringing in their skills and knowledge and stuff can we.  That would make us look even more dumb.

Sarcasm over, great shame on Johnson for putting public and political opinion before the needs of genuine humans.  And that goes for the rest of the sorry bunch and their cold and detached attitude towards the plight of these people including families, children.  Of course France has the right to maintain public order etc. but the refugees have the right to seek  asylum and these people have not been given access to the correct asylum procedure.  The French are simply sweeping the problem from one place to another.  Someone aptly said out of the jungle and into the wasteland.

It’s to their utter shame that Western governments are not only refusing to help these refugees but are treating them like criminals.  The British and French politicians are fully aware of the horrors occurring in Afghanistan.  They know damned well about the conditions that drive people to make extremely dangerous and high-risk journeys in order to seek asylum.  Who would got to dreadfully extreme lengths if they weren’t desperate?  Who wouldn’t try to seek a better life for their families when they’ve been living in holes for successive Winters with no access to education or health care, drinking water from disease-ridden muddy rivers and constantly fleeing from brutal, Western-empowered regimes?  Who wouldn’t?

Again,  who – wouldn’t?

What do we live for if it’s not to make life less difficult for each other? George Elliot