Stop ‘dehumanising asylum seekers’ says BYM
‘The use of barges to “warehouse” new arrivals is the latest expression of this dehumanisation.’
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has called on the government to ‘stop dehumanising asylum seekers’. The government ‘must recognise that of God in everyone’.
Writing on the Quakers in Britain website, BYM highlighted how six people drowned in the Channel on the night of 12 August when the small boat they were travelling in capsized and sank. Thirty-nine people were later removed from the Bibby Stockholm barge, when legionella was found in its water supply. ‘The asylum seekers had been boarded a week earlier even though contractor Landry & Kling allegedly knew the deadly bacteria was present,’ said BYM.
The Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN) said that ‘the combined effect of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act of 2023 has been to dehumanise and demonise the vast majority of asylum seekers’.
‘The use of barges to “warehouse” new arrivals is the latest expression of this dehumanisation.’
QARN urged the government to reconsider its asylum policy. ‘We call upon our government to turn aside from this trajectory and to recognise that there is that of God in all human beings and that this must be reflected in the way we treat them, especially when they throw themselves upon our mercy in their time of desperate need.’
As the Home Office recruits personnel to work at its immigration removal centres (IRCs), Quakers are involved in campaigns to prevent the planned (re)opening of two IRCs in England, Haslar and Campsfield.
BYM said that, six years ago, its Sanctuary Everywhere Manifesto warned that government policies to criminalise entry into a country ‘causes harm and deliberately increases human insecurity’.
‘Since then, the hostile environment has ratcheted up to the point where asylum seekers drown, face forced removal to Rwanda or are placed on barges unfit for human habitation,’ BYM said.
Comments
Please login to add a comment
