The response to the Nepalese earthquake shows the extent to which immigrants are hated in this country. The government and the people of this country have responded magnificently to the crisis in Nepal. This however has highlighted that more people agree with the likes of Katie Hopkins that the migrants in the Mediterranean are sub-human than we may realise.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a huge human tragedy happening in Nepal and the UK should use every means it has to help the efforts there.
This picture from Giles Howard shows how deeply the Nepalese earthquake has hit our society in Britain
What is disturbing however is the unwillingness of the government and the people to recognise the terror going on in the Mediterranean. The situation in Nepal will allow the mainstream media to ignore the migrant crisis once more.
People like Katie Hopkins call those fleeing devastating war, poverty and persecution “cockroaches” – the same person who has such a privileged lifestyle that she could afford to turn down a six-figure-salary job from Alan Sugar.
Nobody works harder than the migrants trying to cross the small sea to Europe.
To raise £1,000 to in third-world countries while also keeping yourself and your family alive must be nigh on impossible. To then have the guts and determination to make a journey that will give you only half a chance of survival is Superman in nature.
Yet these people face only hatred when they get here, being tarred with the same brush by scaremongers such as the Daily Mail and Nigel Farage. The former claims that 500,000 ISIS terrorists are on their way over to Britain and Farage delivered this speech of anti-migrant rhetoric after multiple tragedies in the last month have led to hundreds of deaths.
WATCH: Farage Warns of Real and Genuine ISIS Threat From Mediterranean Crisis – Breitbart http://t.co/6805Q3v0A2 via
— John Bickley ()
The government’s stance is even more barbaric when all we are ever told by David Cameron is that we must work hard to elevate our standard of living, that the only way to overcome our economic woes is to work, and then work some more.
But only if you are privileged enough to live in Europe. It is a rhetoric repeated almost all over the continent.
List of all migrants who died in the Mediterranean laid down on the floor of the European Parliament.
— Sofia Bettiza ()
Men, women and children from the poorest parts of this planet are not coming to Europe to steal your job. They are fleeing conditions that, for us, are completely unimaginable. We should be welcoming them with open arms, not allowing them to die in their thousands.
There is no “pull factor”. It is a myth, a lie, that has been shown up by the rise in attempted crossings since the Italian rescue operation Mare Nostrum was cancelled at the end of 2014. These people are not scum of the Earth. They are people suffering from a backlog of errors from European countries that spans centuries.
Nepal, to an extent, has been relatively untouched by the West and has a long, ancestral culture attached to the Himalayas that still exists today. In contrast, the culture, resources and people of Africa have been ravaged for generations by the West. Colonialism has not disappeared. The developed world funds wars over resources all over the continent.
El naufragio europeo, una vez más http://t.co/q2exonOY2j Por investigador de (Viñeta: Ricardo)
— EL MUNDO ()
Maybe it is easier to affect the situation in Nepal. It is easy to pay a fiver online to the Red Cross or Oxfam and we’re happy to do it.
But take a miniscule raise in tax to boost foreign aid? To help foreigners? You’re having a laugh.
That opens up a whole can of worms, but we are less than a week from a general election. We have never had a better opportunity to tell politicians that this is important.
Migrant-bashing has become so endemic in our society that we have literally stopped seeing them as human beings. The negligence shown by the EU toward these people is barbaric. Do not let the events in Nepal allow you to be distracted from the murder on our doorstop.
This was actually an incredibly well written, eye opening and poignant article. While I don’t think we should dismiss what is happening in Nepal (not that the author has explicitly said this either), I agree entirely with the sentiment. If only more people thought like this.
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What would you have Europe do?
This isn’t a problem that ‘foreign aid’ can fix, because many of these people are fleeing the governments to whom the aid would be paid.
An effective large scale search and rescue programme would cost hundreds of millions of Euros a year to maintain. That’s not pocket change.
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Taking your figure of 100,000,000 (euros) a year
There are >500,000,000 people living within the EU
Are you suggesting that people would object to spending 50 cents a year (About 37p a year) to stop 1000s of drowning people?
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It’s hundreds (plural) of millions before you include the cost of dealing with the hundreds of thousands of migrants such a programme would bring into the EU. Given the EU’s propensity for bureaucracy, that probably puts such an initiative into the billions of Euros per year
We should be focussed on finding a solution to the Libya crisis, which is the launching point for these boats, not trying to scour the Med looking for them afterwards. Op Mare Nostrum didn’t save every boat, thousands still died, and it cost Italy over 100m Euros to fail.
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I have no problem with what people do with their own money. But don’t spend my families taxes on immigrants fleeing barbaric nations offering nothing to where they seek to end up.
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So would you have told the Jewish people in Europe fleeing the nazis to piss off because they had no clear cut employment plans once they reached the country? Or that feeding them and looking after them was another expense in an already overstretched war economy? Being hated and hunted down for whatever reason is something that many of us in the UK have never experienced. Its not about if we can afford it, it is about some basic human decency and compassion, something that many humans seem to have forgotten, being replaced by fearmongering and more hate. Get of your fat pimply arse, stop wanking off to pictures of Nigel Farage and try to be a better human you selfish prick.
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If there was that (or any) number of people drowned fleeing a (e.g.) sinking ship – there would be an international outcry. Because the “M” word is mentioned no-one cares. It’s actually disgraceful
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No one would be suggesting that European taxpayers foot a yearly 10 figure bill to prevent such things happening in the future though.
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Do you even know what foreign aid is spent on, Joel Foreman?
How is ‘colonialism’ the reason why these people want to come to Europe?
What about the muslim boat migrants that pushed christians overboard? Should we let those in?
Do you really think that we can save most of the migrants crossing from drowning? If we keep saving them and bringing them to Europe then that will encourage yet more to come, and more will drown.
Most of these migrants aren’t even refugees, they’re economic migrants and, much as you might see it as unfair, we can’t just take in vast swathes of unskilled immigrants that will put a strain on our housing, infrastructure, health service and welfare. Life isn’t fair, but not everything is the fault of the evil white man, have some self-respect.
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Nice regurgitated UKIP-style argument in your comment there, please explain how refugees from Syria (a war zone) and Libya (a war zone – partly because of us – Did you know 10% of Libya’s population has fled the country, mostly to Algeria) are coming over here for economic reasons?
The people fleeing don’t know how dangerous the crossing is, believe it or not the boat owners don’t tell them! When the passengers saw the boat that capsized killing 700, they tried to turn around but were still forced on. Letting people die won’t stop anyone.
“What about the muslim boat migrants that pushed christians overboard? Should we let those in?” – Well I’d like to see them jailed personally, I don’t see why we have to let a boat full of innocent men, women and children drown because a few criminals that happened to be on the boat.
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There are many solutions to the Mediterranean crisis, none of them perfect, but leaving people to die isn’t helping anybody
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Whether or not it is UKIP style is irrelevant, it is unfortunately the truth
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‘Regurgitated UKIP style argument’ – Classy from the leftists as per usual. Many of these migrants aren’t even from Libya, they are from countries such as Ghana and Nigeria. If they were purely trying to get to Europe to flee a war zone, why do many of them state that they want to get to western European countries such as Germany, Holland and the UK? Should the general UK population be punished because of our government’s intervention in Libya? Everyone in the world who wants to live in Western Europe simply can’t, it’s that simple.
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Of course that people need to be saved from drowning. But we also need to tackle the causes of this exile of people from countries like Syria, Libya and Iraq.
I don’t think foreign aid helps at all. To whom would this money be paid? ISIS, Bashar al-Assad, corrupt governments and dictatorships across the world. Most of it would never reach the people who need it.
The solution is rather obvious. Put armies there. There is a lot of spending on armies that are effectively always idle. ISIS would be defeated in a few weeks if the West had the will to do so. Then stabilize the place, but not like the failures you had in Iraq or Afghanistan. They don’t need more soldiers and weapons. What they need is this: independent judges and prosecutors. Once there is a working justice system there you can offer as much aid as you want with minimum risk.
Colonialism, despite your criticism, gave birth to a few societies that are now fairly secure and thriving or have a lot of potential. Guess what all these thriving post-colonial countries have in common that the abusive West left them with?
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I know where you’re coming from…..but putting our armies there would lead to a 2003 Iraq style problem
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The 2003 Iraq problem is that it wasn’t done neither smartly nor correctly. The whole ‘weapons of mass destruction’ lie was such a foolish thing to do. As if you needed a pretext to overthrow a dictatorship. And again, there is the double standard issue. Ok, you all hate ISIS but your’re perfectly happy with supporting Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan.
Some idiots are simply too powerful to deal with. Like Saudi Arabia to which the West sells weapons. Or Putin who has nuclear weapons. But ISIS (which is the root of this migrant problem) are a bunch of weak, disorganized guys which should be defeated easily.
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Erm…western military intervention is what has caused this problem to occur in the first place. We helped to overthrow the Libyan government and then left the Libyans to get on with it. The resulting chaos is what allows the criminal gangs to operate.
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The ‘Libyan government’ was the dictator murderer Gaddafi. And if you read my comment carefully you’ll see that I’m not suggesting Obama’s air-strikes-and-drone-kills approach. Failed states like Libya need soldiers on the ground to become stable.
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Oh, so you want us to invade another sovereign country with significant oil reserves. What could possibly go wrong?
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What could be worse than what is now there?
Joke article so typical of the soft lefty liberal hand-wringers!!!
Basic economics pal once again the lefties having not a clue where the money is going to come from. The state does not have a bottomless pit! Learned nothing from the last labour government clearly.
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Hear hear, If you want to fix the world, give your time and money to charity, but it is not the job of western governments to empty the pockets of their citizens to try and fix every global problem.
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im nepalese and my parents and other nepalese parents are also the migrant that was “bashed” like you say and when i came to UK i witnessed many racism towards me and other nepalese. our parents have worked hard to send money back to nepal or to settle in UK. so when a bad disaster happened in our country the nepalese members in this university did everything in our power to help raise money and send it back in 2-3 day giving up our times for study and assignments. you are right that the nepalese earthquake may be the main talk in the news but dont use the efforts and committment from nepalese people to help nepal such as the event in our university and the picture above as an example for the reason for ignoring the issue you are raising. why dont you use the use of media control by news broadcasters as an example.
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“Nepal, to an extent, has been relatively untouched by the West and has a long, ancestral culture attached to the Himalayas that still exists today”
How are you just pulling up facts from think air? Relatively untouched? It was a protectorate of Britain for 100 years and has been an ally ever since.
The British Armed Forces has been recruiting from Nepal for 200 years and continues to do so to this day.
Your article is not only full of utterly erroneous statements but also ones that are highly ignorant, dismissive and insulting when it comes to British colonialism in Nepal.
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