News / Election: consensus on migrant crisis
CONCERTED international action is required to prevent any more of the tragic mass drownings which have seen hundreds of people die in the Mediterranean in recent days.
That is the message from all five candidates competing to win the Orkney and Shetland seat at next month’s UK general election.
On Tuesday a coalition of 19 charities wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron urging the UK to play its part in ensuring a fully resourced search-and-rescue mission is re-established.
There has been mounting criticism of the EU’s decision last year to scale back search and rescue operations for refugees fleeing from troubled nations including Syria and Libya.
On Thursday, UK leader David Cameron is due to attend an emergency summit of European leaders to discuss a “comprehensive plan” in the wake of tragedies including the deaths of around 700 migrants off Lampedusa last weekend.
Shetland News asked each of the five Northern Isles candidates to offer their take on the crisis.
Labour candidate Gerry McGarvey said the EU’s search and rescue operation “must restart immediately – we can’t wait for yet another tragedy”.
“The world cannot turn its back on those who are suffering in the most desperate of circumstances,” he said. “How many more people need to die before the UK Government and other EU nations take their responsibilities seriously?
“This is a matter of life and death, and life is too precious to be compromised by economics or a highly dubious ethical stance.
“The idea that we should let people drown so that others can learn from their example is confused logic of the most dangerous kind.”
McGarvey added: “It hasn’t worked and has only resulted in more people drowning. It’s immoral to walk on by whilst some of the most vulnerable people in the world drown in search of a better life.”
Liberal Democrat candidate Alistair Carmichael said his party would also press for immediate EU reviews of both search and rescue and anti-trafficking programmes.
“Few people seeing the television pictures of the last few days could fail to have been shocked by what we have seen,” he said.
“Ultimately, concerted international action will be needed to tackle people trafficking but an immediate response is also needed.
“If reinstating regular patrols will reduce the numbers of deaths then we should reinstate search and rescue in the Mediterranean. I would go so far as to say that they should be reinstated immediately while the issue is being re-assessed. This is an issue of basic human dignity.”
SNP candidate Danus Skene also condemned a situation which had seen over 1,000 “desperate people” drown, having been crammed into “dangerous and inadequate boats”, in the past seven days.
“These 1,000 people had names and personalities, loves and histories. Can you imagine the frantic response there would be if three substantial planeloads of tourists or businesspeople had come down?
“Yet what our media give us about these tragedies is a number, a comment about the problems of mass migration and a vague smear against the Italians for not handling it all better.”
Skene called for the EU and NATO to coordinate “intensive” naval patrols, while he also wants to see direct action to hunt down and arrest the traffickers – and support to Italy and Malta in managing the reception of those coming off the boats.
He added that wealthy European countries needed to “foster the building of societies and economies in the countries of origin of these people so that they are not compelled to seek the desperate solution to their problems that they do”.
Organisations such as the British Refugee Council and Amnesty International have criticised the UK for failing to offer asylum visas to those seeking to escape conflict.
Tory candidate Donald Cameron said the “horrific scenes from the Mediterranean, which many of us have witnessed over the last few days, are deeply tragic”.
“As the Prime Minister said on Monday, we have to deal with the instability in the countries concerned, as well as go after the human traffickers and the criminals that are running this trade,” he said.
“David Cameron also said that search and rescue can only be one part of the response: we should use all the resources we have, including our aid budget, to play a role in trying to stabilise countries and trying to stop people from travelling.”
UKIP’s Robert Smith said the Mediterranean catastrophe was a “dire indictment” against the foreign policy of US president Barack Obama and the “European liberal elite”.
“Their infantile meddling they dubbed ‘The Arab Spring’ has seen – as widely predicted – the rise of extremism across the Middle East and beyond,” Smith said.
“The resultant desperate struggle to escape from the murderous hordes is now being played out on the southern shores of Europe.
“The international community should be doing everything in its power to help these desperate people and everything in its power to stabilise the countries from whence they fled. Anything less is barbaric.”
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