Meeting for Sufferings: Concern for refugees
An Area Meeting minute prompted reflection
East Kent Area Meeting sent a minute to Sufferings regarding the need for a ‘policy on safe ways of allowing refugees to reach Europe to claim asylum’.
The subject was introduced by Helen Drewery, general secretary of Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW). She said that there is a refugee crisis with the ‘largest number of forced migrants since world war two. There are more than fifty million in the world.’ UNHCR says: ‘Europe is living through a maritime refugee crisis of historic proportions… Most are seeking safety from war and persecution. This crisis is not going away – it is fed by global inequality and injustice and is likely to get worse with the impact of climate change, so it is also about global sustainability.’
Helen said that QPSW ‘doesn’t currently have the specific expertise and involvement itself to develop policy on this subject’. She referred to the Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) as the place that could work on the policy on ways to allow forced migrants entry to Europe.
She added: ‘The most important action we can take as individuals is to challenge the rhetoric wherever we come across it – a rhetoric which creates the climate in which politicians feel able to take harsh action against immigrants without being challenged. This climate needs to be challenged urgently. Historical parallels with the 1930s are recognised by members of the Jewish community who are calling for Britain to take in Syrian refugees.’
The Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN), an informal group of Friends all over the country, has the most expertise in this area. QARN alerted QPSW to a paper by the Conference of European Churches (CEC) on this issue. The paper sets out a number of the complexities involved in helping the migrants.
The Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva is involved in the issue of protection at sea.
One Friend noted that ‘most people don’t want to leave their homes and their countries’ but subsistence farming is being replaced by larger farms run by companies.
Another Friend commented that we must unravel complexity and not ‘underestimate what we are up against’. She had sent the papers sent out by Sufferings to her MP who had passed them to the Foreign Office. They, in turn, ‘rebutted every proposal’. She continued: ‘We have a testimony to peace and peace hasn’t broken out yet. Friends, I think we are in for the long haul.’
A Friend suggested that we get on the list for ‘action alerts’ from QCEA so that we can take part and that we keep up-to-date by reading their blog.
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