Teesside charity reacts to the deaths of 27 people in the English Channel
The Trustees of the Mary Thompson Fund are shocked and angered to hear of the dozens of deaths in the Channel, of people who were attempting to apply for asylum in the UK.
Pete Widlinski, the chair of the fund said “This is shocking news and our hearts go out to the family and friends of these innocent refugees who were seeking safety on our shores. They are not criminals nor are they ‘illegal’. They were attempting to exercise their international right to claim asylum in the UK.”
Along with almost all the countries of the world, the UK is a signatory to the United Nations refugee convention with the explicit understanding and agreement to allow anyone who believes they are a refugee under the Convention, to claim asylum in this country. The UK have to consider each asylum claim on its own individual merits.
France has just over 100,000 asylum claims each year: almost 3 times the number of UK asylum claims.
The charity says the government has failed to tackle the criminal gangs who exploit these desperate, innocent people, and have wasted £50 million of UK tax payers money on the ridiculous assumption that the Channel crossings can be stopped by patrolling French beaches, while refusing to allow a safe, legal route to claim asylum in the UK.
“The government’s failure to abide by the spirit of the Refugee Convention, was bound to result in such tragic drownings” added Pete, “We believe the £50 million pounds promised to the French authorities to patrol almost 100 miles of coastline should have been spent on a state of the art UK immigration centre in France, where people can go to lodge their UK asylum claim, with funded and independent legal advisors and refugee NGOs providing a wraparound service of support. Following an asylum claim being submitted, a safe passage to the UK to further pursue the claim should be arranged – no more trafficking gangs, no more dangerous crossings, no more deaths and a humane response to this global human crisis.”