(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — On Thursday’s Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme, Conservative MP for Monmouth, David Davies, stunned listeners by calling for British troops to enter the migrant camps in the French port of Calais and move people “back to Africa or the Middle East.”
After his comments were called repugnant and sparked outrage online, Davies went on to suggest migrants should be shipped to ‘’humane camps” and that the U.K must cut benefits while “people are put back in a kind and humane fashion.”
With more desperate attempts to reach Britain through Calais this week, mainstream press headlines are still screaming about “thousands” of Migrants “storming” and “besieging” the Channel tunnel. The media’s overuse of the term “migrants” rather than people with names and identities continues to deliberately dehumanise people—many of whom have a legal right to claim asylum.
Davies’ comments run parallel to David Cameron disgracefully branding those trying to enter the U.K. as “a swarm” and right-wing UKIP leader Nigel Farage also demanding British troops are drafted to Calais. With his spurious claims that it’s ‘’only a matter of time before a British holidaymaker dies at the hands of the crisis,” it’s unlikely Farage meant to infer British lives matter more than the eight people who died this year taking ever-greater risks to enter the U.K.—but that’s how it sounded.
Earlier in July, another mind-blowing display of ignorance from Immigration Minister James Brokenshire saw him inform the House of Lords that the majority risking their lives on the Mediterranean Sea are “economic migrants – who are not fleeing persecution but are seeking a better life.’’ It was a truly startling statement considering the largest numbers of migrants are from Syria and Eritrea, two of the world’s major refugee producing countries.
Children, pregnant women, and those fleeing for their lives are housed in fortress-like conditions in Calais. A short Guardian documentary (embedded below) made in 2014 reveals the true horror of the makeshift camps, which have no sanitation or running water. Many migrants make daily desperate attempts to escape, known as ‘’trying,’’ that involve sneaking on board vehicles and hitching rides to escape the misery.
Few in power seem to have sufficient humanity to put themselves in the position of the migrants—and pulling up the drawbridge is just one element of an increasingly inhumane reaction to a diabolical situation. The reactions of European leaders together with increasing swaths of the public appear to be nothing more than figuring out how to keep people out rather than how to help them.
We may think it’s just the corridors of Whitehall and the media who are guilty of dehumanisation, but it’s not. One only has to glance at the comment threads of articles in the press to see the fruits of the propaganda and scaremongering. Some commenters claim “it’s time for violence” while calling for the use of water cannons and machine guns in the tunnel.
Despite some rational thinking from Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, who expressed concern that a humanitarian issue is being treated as a security one, the focus remains on the symptoms instead of the disease.
In a world where governments start, fund and back wars, then yell at those displaced as a result, do not be too disheartened–after all, Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to do “everything he can” to stop peoples’ holidays being disrupted by the chaos.