- Politician claims Jersey’s Chief Minister ‘put to shame’ by Guernsey counterpart for failing to take a strong stance on helping to resolve the migrant crisis,
- Jersey campaigners are considering demonstrating in the Royal Square to highlight the need for the States to make a statement on the migrant crisis
- Should Jersey do more to help the migrants in Calais? See the results of a JEP poll below
- Comment: Read what the JEP thinks
THE Chief Minister has been ‘put to shame’ by his Guernsey counterpart for failing to take a strong stance on helping to resolve the migrant crisis, a backbench politician has said.
Deputy Sam Mézec has heavily criticised Senator Ian Gorst for not speaking out about the refugee crisis sweeping Europe, after Guernsey’s Chief Minister, Jonathan Le Tocq, last week pledged to meet with campaigners to resolve a ‘matter of public interest’.
Following Mr Le Tocq’s statement, Deputy Sam Mézec has accused Senator Gorst of lacking compassion by not taking a leadership position sooner and that he must now take action ‘to retain any dignity’.
Meanwhile, Jersey campaigners have said they are considering demonstrating in the Royal Square to highlight the need for the States to make a statement on the migrant crisis, which continues to intensify – as thousands of migrants risk their lives to flee from war-torn countries to seek asylum in western Europe.
Deputy Mézec, who is chairman of the Reform Jersey political party, said: ‘The Chief Minister of Guernsey is putting our Chief Minister to shame.
‘If we are to retain any dignity our Chief Minister has got to take a leadership position and make a strong statement.’
In a statement Senator Gorst said: ‘The plight of thousands of people fleeing desperate situations is distressing and I am sure we all want to see a long-term solution to this crisis.
‘Jersey has a long history of responding generously to humanitarian need and I’m sure this situation will be no different.’
He added: ‘Jersey does not have its own procedures for asylum seekers but is a signatory to the relevant conventions and protocols.’
Unlike the UK, Jersey and Guernsey do not have written procedures to accept asylum seekers.
Both islands have an agreement with the British Home Office that they will obtain assistance and advice with any asylum applications that they receive.
But despite the policies, Deputy Mézec said that it had not stopped Mr Le Tocq from expressing his own compassionate viewpoint – something that he says Senator Gorst has failed to do.
‘Having listened to Guernsey’s Chief Minister, I think he came across with the correct balance between compassion and pragmatism,’ Deputy Mézec said.
‘The situation is difficult because of our connection with the UK and the conventions, but he made a clear commitment to work with the appropriate campaigners, while Senator Gorst has said nothing about meeting with our local campaign groups.’
The Deputy added: ‘He only communicates with business organisations and Jersey Finance and that is why Jersey is on the verge of a strike.
‘We have no idea what is going through his head – he needs to take the initiative.’
Deputy Mézec’s call for Senator Gorst to outline the Island’s position in relation to the crisis has been backed by schoolteacher Bram Wanrooij, who set up Jersey Calais Refugee Aid Group to give relief to migrants living in camps in the French port.
Mr Wanrooij, who together with several volunteers recently made a trip to the ‘jungle camp’ to give aid to the refugees living there, said that the group was now considering demonstrating in the Royal Square to get the attention of the Island’s politicians.
‘I don’t think the government can get away with saying this is not our problem,’ he said.
‘Regardless of our position with the UK, I think it would be very powerful to come out with a clear statement outlining our position on a moral level.
‘We should not be scared of saying, “this is what we think should be happening”.
‘Then we would be taking a firm position and putting pressure on the UK.’
THE States reconvenes tomorrow for the first sitting after the summer recess and already a spat is being teed up over the terrible migrant crisis in Europe.
Reform Jersey, led by Deputy Sam Mézec, is to quiz Chief Minister Ian Gorst about Jersey’s response during question time.
Reform Party questions will follow the Deputy’s comments today accusing Senator Gorst of failing to take a strong position compared to his Guernsey counterpart, Deputy Jonathan Le Tocq.
Jersey must play its part in helping those displaced by war.
However, Members of the States will be doing little to help if parliamentary debate sinks into entrenched positions through unhelpful name-calling.
Any response to this latest humanitarian crisis must be properly thought through and timely. Policy hurried through with a rush of blood often finds the wrong target.
Ministers must provide strong leadership on this issue of global significance, but let’s work together and get it right.
To suggest that some care more than others is unhelpful and probably counterproductive.
By Bram Wanrooij
THE ‘Jungle’ refugee camp at Calais brings a world of inequality right to our doorstep. An unaware tourist might be feasting on moules frites for lunch and then suddenly encounter this site of concentrated desperation, fenced off by huge constructions of barbed wire and surveillance technology.
Three thousand people have settled here, sheltered in plastic rubbish bags and lacking the bare necessities of human life. Public pressure has led the French authorities to provide some running water – six taps in total, one for every 500 people. Britain has recently committed itself to a £7 million investment – to the fortified fence that is.
I visited the camp last week and as I wandered the dirt paths and glanced into the makeshift tents, I was welcomed by smiles and even invited in by a friendly Sudanese man who had made his way across the Mediterranean to Greece. He had journeyed onwards to Italy and Germany before finally coming to France. ‘I have family in the UK, I speak English and they like the Sudanese there,’ he said. ‘The English were guests in my country for a long time. We have relations,’ referring to the English colonial adventures in the Sudan. He told me he has made 14 attempts to get onto Channel Tunnel trains and has been on the run for ten years. I heard similar stories everywhere and I saw people with injuries caused by jumping onto trains or lorries. Most of the men I spoke to will surely try again.
In spite of their fate, people here cling on to hope. They have made it this far, which in itself is a testimony to the strength of their will-power, determination and endurance. To me, they symbolise something about the human capacity to survive.
The migration of peoples is something of all ages. But the number of refugees now entering Europe sounds almost biblical. In 2015, 340,000 refugees entered Europe, compared with 123,500 in the same period last year. Since July 2014 almost a million people have applied for asylum in the EU. More people are on the move in Europe than at any time since the Second World War. The influx of refugees is quickly becoming one of the defining challenges of our time.
Civil wars, dictatorships and destitute poverty are driving people away from the dry south to the wet north. Of those reaching Europe in 2015, 62 per cent were from Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan. Another ten per cent were from Darfur, Iraq, Somalia and Nigeria, all places torn apart by civil strife.
Let’s be honest, it was imperial Europe that shaped the inequalities of the modern world in the first place. The Industrial Revolution that created our wealth was financed by money made from the largest (forced) displacement of peoples in history: the transatlantic slave trade. We then colonised most of our planet and used the profits to develop our modern nation states. More recently, Western intervention tore apart Iraq, killing over a million people in the process and setting in motion the Syrian civil war, a conflict the UN has called ‘the greatest humanitarian disaster of our time’. When we consider this history of plunder, a vast influx of impoverished migrants is hardly surprising.
But with immigration comes fear of immigration. Politicians who tighten up security measures are merely opting for short-term political ‘solutions’, limited by their terms in office. Like climate change, the growing refugee flows are a long-term challenge. More fencing and dogs will not keep desperate people out. These measures are for public consumption, to satisfy an increasingly uneasy electorate which is being beaten down by austerity and frightened by statements from David Cameron referring to the Calais refugees as a ‘swarm’. To frame the debate on refugees around security evades the real questions and pushes the humanitarian aspects into the background. Furthermore, it dehumanises human beings who have often fled from unimaginable horrors.
We Europeans have experienced these horrors, too. We have been refugees. In the 1930s Jews were in desperate need of safety and compassion. Did we turn them away? Jersey women and children were sent to the UK on the eve of the Nazi invasion of the Channel Islands. They were taken in and thus spared the brutalities of occupation.
And did we not welcome the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the communist dictatorships? One of the lessons of 1989 is that walls don’t work. Determination and desperation will always bring them down.
Can times of crisis bring out the best in people? Jersey has certainly responded to the Calais crisis. More than 200 Islanders responded to a Facebook appeal by the Jersey Calais Refugee Aid Group on the first day. Tents, clothes and foodstuffs have been donated and will be brought to Calais to be distributed to men, women and children by the volunteers on the ground. This is also how Europe has responded. Can we look beyond the barbed wire and own up to our history?
