To drown or not to drown? – a “finely balanced decision”, says MEP
The scandal of the government’s new policy to let the Mediterranean boat people drown (see my earlier blog: http://wp.me/p2Ygy5-b4 ) continued last night on Channel 4 News. The previous policy of supporting rescue operations in the Mediterranean, the government has decided, had only encouraged people to board ramshackle boats to find safety in Europe when, if they knew there would be nobody to rescue them if they got into life-threatening difficulties, they would stay where they were. So rescue had to stop and the boat people had to learn the lesson.
Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan defended the new policy and looked only momentarily uncomfortable when Jon Snow remarked that letting people drown “seems to be an intolerable decision”.
“Well”, said Hannan, “it’s a finely balanced one.”
So it is, Daniel, so it is.
My friend Robert Marcus was shocked at the whole idea and compared it to “withdrawing support from the fire brigade as its continuing existence encourages people to be careless with matches.”
Exactly.
Not that the boat people themselves are being careless. The Refugee Council’s Maurice Wren said on the same programme:
“People will move, they will find a way to find safety or they will make every attempt to find safety. And the point we make is that when you’re standing on the quayside in Tripoli, about to board a rickety, overcrowded boat, that’s a rational decision for many people, because it’s their best chance of safety.”
On the “finely balanced decision”, Hannan also said that he couldn’t “imagine what it’s like to take that decision, and the burden of responsibility … I’m very glad I’m not the person having to do it.”
Really? Earlier, Snow had asked him whether, if the policy came up in the European Parliament, he would vote for it. Hannen avoided the question. But he clearly would vote for it. Which, in my book, would make him responsible. You can’t avoid it, Daniel, that old “burden of responsibility”.
The Lady’s not for rescue
People fleeing persecution who find themselves crossing the Mediterranean in crowded, unstable boats often don’t make it. They drown.
As a result of the Lampedusa tragedy in 2013, when 500 people died, the Italian authorities launched a search and rescue operation called Mare Nostrum, which scans the Mediterranean for boats in trouble and rescues as many people as it can. The scheme involves the participation of the Italian navy and, since Lampedusa, has managed to save at least 150,000 lives.
The operation is now being closed down. According to The Guardian:
“The Italian authorities have said their operation, which involves a significant part of the Italian navy, is unsustainable. Despite its best efforts, more than 2,500 people are known to have drowned or gone missing in the Mediterranean since the start of the year.”[1]
It will not be replaced by anything remotely like it being set up by the European Union or any member state – in effect there will just be a border-control operation.
The saving of 150,000 lives must be considered a worthwhile achievement by any normal standards – but not according to Lady Anelay, minister of state at the Foreign Office. The UK, she announced (“quietly”, according to The Guardian) would not support any future search and rescue operations. Her Ladyship believes that any such operation in these waters represents an “unintended ‘pull factor’” on people which encourages them to board ramshackle boats to Europe’s shores when they otherwise wouldn’t do so.
They don’t need rescue, according to Lady Anelay. They need discipline and punishment. Apparently, drowning them will teach them a lesson and discourage others. What she said was this: if the UK were to fund a new search and rescue operation it would encourage “more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing”. This would lead “to more tragic and unnecessary deaths”. Presumably the deaths that will be caused by the government’s no-rescue policy will be untragic and necessary to good order. Discipline and punish. If you drown in your attempt to flee persecution in your own country don’t go whining to her Ladyship. She’s warned you what to expect.
And the government wants new immigrants and citizens to adopt “British values”? Well, if Lady Anelay’s announcement is an expression of those values, it has to be said that all the Mediterranean boat people and all the new immigrants and new citizens in the UK are better than that.
Read The Guardian’s dossier on the Mediterranean migrants: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/20/-sp-migrants-tales-asylum-sea-mediterranean
[1] The Guardian, Monday 27 October 2014.
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