News / ‘We do care’, say kids as isles solidarity group gets set to join convoy to Calais migrant camp
THE SHETLAND Solidarity with Refugees campaign is collecting essential equipment ahead of packing up a van and joining a UK-wide “Convoy to Calais” in aid of migrants living in camps in northern France.
Local firm Star-Rent-A-Car has donated a transit van free of charge, enabling four people from Shetland to make the trip on Saturday 18 June.
A collection of non-clothes items – including food, hygiene products, sleeping bags, maps, tarpaulins and wind-up torches – is taking place this weekend.
Donations can be dropped off at Brevik House, the former NHS HQ at 27 South Road in Lerwick, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Inger Louise Kristiansen of the Shetland Solidarity with Refugees group said islanders would be joining up with a bigger group organised by trade union Unison.
Funding from Unison’s local branch as well as Unison Scotland has helped to make the trip possible.
Kristiansen said: “There are 4,500 refugees stranded in Calais right now. The only difference between them and us is where we were born.
“We enjoy a safe, comfortable life here in Shetland and this aid might just bring a tiny bit of comfort back into their lives too.”
Primary school pupils in Yell have been making cards to be taken to Calais.
Some have written messages such as “We DO care” on the cards – a corrective to some of those who demonstrate rather less compassionate attitudes towards migrants fleeing war zones.
Kristiansen said it “speaks volumes” that the children were compelled to write such messages.
“Children see things in more simple terms and perhaps we as grown ups should take example from that, rather than the negative rhetoric that so much of the media are leading with at the moment.”
The Convoy to Calais will gather in London before staging a rally in Whitehall to protest against the UK Government’s refusal to accept more refugees.
That will include a one-hour solidarity silence at noon in Parliament Square on 18 June before the convoy sets off for Dover and then the ferry to Calais later in the afternoon.
In addition to Unison, the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, Stop the War Coalition, Stand up to Racism, Unite and various other organisations are taking part in the Convoy to Calais.
Campaigners point out that, even as hundreds more refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean, the British government is “refusing to even take parentless children from Calais, and Syrian refugees are being forced back into the jaws of the war they have fled.”
“This is practical aid but it is also a huge moving protest at the way governments across the continent are failing refugees,” the campaign’s website states. “This is the time to come together and say: stop the scapegoating, solidarity with the refugees.”
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