Sometimes, a tragic image or story seems to change the course of history. In September 2015, a haunting photo of three-year-old Alan Kurdi on a Turkish beach shocked the whole of Europe. For at least a few weeks, it seems that the public’s fear of his death may push the EU to take a more humanitarian approach to asylum. But in recent years, it has become tougher, reaching nasty agreements with dictatorships such as Turkey and failed countries such as Libya to keep refugees out regardless of their human rights violations. Detention center.
The tragedy has spread to our own coast, and more and more desperate people are trying to cross the English Channel in inflatable rubber boats, which is the busiest route in the world.Twenty-seven people Drowned last Thursday, Including a pregnant woman and three children.Their story, like Mariam Nuri Mohamed AminA 24-year-old Kurdish woman who fled Iraq to the UK to join her fiancé has just begun to make her mark. However, they have little hope of changing the political reaction.
What happened in the strait was a humanitarian crisis, as most people from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan-most of whom were eligible for asylum-tried to reach Britain.However, the British asylum system is not a crisis of any kind because of the number of people seeking asylum in the UK. Significantly reduced Compared with the peak period in the early 2000s, Much lower Than in Germany or France.This is not a new phenomenon at all: people are always fleeing conflicts and torture around the world, sometimes out of despair and taking horrendous risks, because Tim Adams reports in France today.
The new thing is that political leaders around the world are increasingly willing to ignore their obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, especially in the UK, but also in countries such as Australia. The primary factor driving the British response is not to reduce the loss of life in the English Channel, but to reduce the number of people applying for asylum after arriving in the UK.
When people fleeing conflict are trying to cross the English Channel — or indeed the Mediterranean, the best way to reduce the number of deaths is to open up roads Europe, Thereby reducing the demand for human smuggling activities by criminal gangs. Those European-centric views may be hard to believe, but most refugees don’t want to come to Europe—they want to stay near their homes, hoping to return someday. Almost nine out of ten refugees in the world live in low-income countries adjacent to their home countries. Allowing safe passage and a more generous system allows people to apply for resettlement, which will help weaken the business model of human smugglers.
But this is in conflict with the government’s apparent desire to keep the number of people receiving asylum in the UK at an unfeasible low level.Last year, more than 13,000 refugees were protected: this is equivalent to 20 people only Every parliamentary district. The UK can easily provide protection for more people.But as Observer Explained last weekBecause this did not fit the political image they wanted to cultivate, Boris Johnson and Pritty Patel turned their focus to stopping people from crossing the border by making Britain more hostile to asylum seekers and reorganizing our asylum system. The spirit and text of the 1951 Convention.
For asylum seekers, the UK is already a very hostile place: they are not allowed to work, are often placed in poor conditions, and are forced to live on less than £5.50 a day. The government tried to make things more difficult by opening up a two-tier system, thereby further weakening the 1951 Convention rights of asylum seekers who arrived in the UK through means other than the official resettlement plan-a perfectly legal action-will be further eroded . This is completely contrary to a key principle of the Convention, which is that people with legal asylum applications should be heard fairly regardless of how they arrive in a country.Other government “deterrence” proposals currently under consideration by Parliament include other measures Break up international refugees And maritime law, including the dangerous forcible return of ships to France and the handling of asylum seekers at sea.
Johnson’s fight with French President Emmanuel Macron perfectly sums up the terrible state of the government’s response. France was wrong to exclude Britain from the important meeting of the Straits Crisis.However, by angering Macron, by publishing A inflammatory letter on social media A series of unreasonable demands were made to France, and Johnson exposed his true colors. He is a person who prioritizes getting exaggerated headlines in compassionate media, rather than trying to cooperate with our neighbors to avoid further human tragedies.
Rich countries have moral obligations to people fleeing conflicts and disasters, but they have not fulfilled these obligations collectively. This is also in their own interest: simply burying, closing the border and looking at them differently will dangerously undermine global security. The United Kingdom is one of the founding signatories of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which stipulates international solidarity and cooperation, otherwise it would be impossible to take a humanitarian approach to refugees. What shames our country is that today it is one of the countries taking the lead in tearing it up.
