The Rt Hon David Cameron MP

Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA
Your Excellency,
The Flaw In The British Governments Approach To The European Refugee Crisis:
Migrants Are Not Ants & Refugees Are Not Bees
Please find attached my thoughts on the British Governments approach to the current
European refugee crisis. I would be grateful if you could give consideration to some of the
issues raised.
If you need further clarification, please let me know.
Your obedient servant

Ahmed Sule
suleaos@gmail.com
August 2015
Cc
Rt Hon Theresa May
Rt Hon Philip Hammond
Members of House of Parliament
UN Refugee Agency
Conservative Party

The Flaw In The British Governments Approach To The European Refugee Crisis:
Migrants Are Not Ants & Refugees Are Not Bees
Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the world witnessed a refugee crisis, which
involved millions of people throughout Europe fleeing their home countries due to fear and
persecution. The spread of communism also triggered another wave of exodus. Britain and a
few other nations played a crucial role in resettling millions of refugees into different parts of
Europe. Seventy years later, the world is witnessing another refugee crisis. Hundreds of
thousand of refugees from countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and Eritrea are fleeing
war and persecution for the safe terrain of Europe via the Mediterranean Sea and the
Balkans. However, unlike 70 years ago, the British Government has turned its back on the
refugees.
The genesis of the governments apathy towards the current refugee crisis can be traced to
the Great Recession. As a result of the financialisation of the British economy, Britain was one
of the countries hardest hit by the Great recession as unemployment skyrocketed, tax
revenues fell and millions of people lost their houses. In response to the crisis, the British
Government embarked on one of the toughest austerity programme in recent memory. The
poorest segment of British society bore the brunt of the austerity programme. With the
financial crisis biting deeper and resources becoming scarcer, the tide began to turn against
not only the poor, but also against foreigners in the land. An anti immigrant sentiment was
birthed. The government, right wing parties, the media and the general public became hostile
to immigrants especially those from poorer countries, who were blamed for ever woe that
befell Britain.
With the escalation of the European refugee crisis, the government has now turned its gaze
from welfare recipients and immigrants to refugees and prospective asylum seekers. As the
British media continues to beam images of refugees clinging to dinghies to our TV screens,
the public fears that Britain would soon be overpopulated with refugees. In response, the
rhetorics against the refugees has become hotter, harder and harsher. Politicians now
engage in a race to the bottom to use words that even outstrip Katie Hopkins vitriolic
description of refugees as cockroaches. Some politicians have compared refugees to swarms
of bees and marauders. Philip Hammond, the foreign Secretary said, Europe cant protect
itself, preserve its standard of living and social infrastructure if it has to absorb millions of
migrants from Africa.
In articulating its policy towards the crisis, The British government has developed a syllogism
along the following lines:
Premise 1: Britain is a great rich country.
Premise 2: Africa, Asia and the Middle East are poor regions.
Premise 3 Migrants from these poor regions are fleeing their countries so that they can
scrounge on Britains generous welfare system.
Conclusion: We have to make live difficult for migrants so that Britain can maintain its high
standard of living.
In the next couple of paragraphs, I will detail why the governments approach to the current
European refugee crisis is flawed.
The government has resulted to exaggerating the scale of the influx of refugees into Britain.
Of the estimated 340,000 refugees that have come to Europe, only 5,000 of them are at
Calais. Most of the hundreds of thousand of refugees are not seeking asylum in Britain. In
2014, while 25,870 sought asylum in Britain, the number of asylum seekers in Germany and
France was 97,275 and 68,500 respectively. Furthermore, of the 4 million refugees that have
fled Syria, only 187 have resettled in the United Kingdom

Another flaw is the governments failure to make the distinction between economic immigrants
and refugees. The prevailing narrative is that most of the people coming to the shores of
Europe via the Mediterranean are economic migrants who are fleeing their countries due to
poverty and want to enjoy the welfare benefits, which Britain provides. In reality, these people
coming are refugees fleeing war and persecution in their home countries. According to the UN
1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is an individual who is outside
his or her country of nationality or habitual residence who is unable or unwilling to return due
to a well-founded fear of persecution based on his or her race, religion, nationality, political
opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Perhaps, the government should ask
itself whether it truly believes that someone would embark on an 11,000km journey, risk
drowning in the sea in order to come to Britain to receive a 36.95 weekly allowance.
Philip Hammonds suggestion that refugees coming to Africa constitute a threat to Europes
standard of living is baseless on two grounds. First, most of the refugees are not from Africa
but from Afghanistan and Syria. Second, Hammonds statement is insulting and serves a
privilege narrative that nothing good can come out of Africa. It ignores Africas contribution to
European civilisation. His comments ignore the fact that Europes development was built on
the bent and broken backs of the black and brown people of Africa as countries like Britain
plundered Africa via slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism.
The British government also seems to have forgotten that it played a key role in creating
some of the conditions that caused the mass exodus towards Europe. Britain and France
were principal actors in the ousting of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. Ever since the removal of
Gaddafi, Libya has become a failed state and people smugglers have exploited the chaos and
porous borders to transport people to Europe via the Mediterranean. The invasion of Iraq and
Afghanistan by British and American forces in addition to Britains role in the Syrian civil war
(through the supply of weapons to rebels which eventually ended up in ISIS hands) has
resulted in the destabilisation of these countries, which has led to a mass migration towards
Europe.
The governments narrative about the crisis conveniently ignores the fact that it is the poorer
countries of the Southern and Eastern hemisphere and not the rich countries of the West that
mainly shelter refugees. Many of these countries absorbing refugees are developing
countries, which lack the capacity to accommodate them. For instance, 95% of the 4 million
refugees that have fled Syria are in five countries namely Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and
Egypt. Kenya Yemen and Ethiopia account for nearly a million Somali refugees while 2.4
million refugees currently live in Iran and Pakistan. In todays globalised world we tend to
focus on trade and economic integration; cant we also incorporate compassionate
integration? Those with the broadest shoulders should assist in lifting part of the burden borne
by the poorer parts of the world hosting the refugees. Contrary to Hammonds claim, Europes
civilisation will not end if it absorbs a couple of hundreds of thousands of refugees; infact it will
help mitigate the effects of Europes ageing crisis. Moreover, many of them are likely to return
to their home once the conditions that made them leave are over.
By its demonisation of refugees, the government is making an implicit assumption that
refugees have nothing positive to contribute to Britain. A search through the history books
reveals the positive contributions made by refugees to Britain. I need not remind the
government that people like Michael Marks, Sigmund Freud, Victor Hugo and Wole Soyinka
to name a few were once refugees in Britain.
The governments approach to the crisis is not only logically flawed, it is also morally flawed.
The attitude of the British public, the British media and the British politicians towards refugees
fleeing rape, war, forced conscription and forced marriage is a moral scar on the soul of
Britain. Refugees are one of the most marginalised and vulnerable people on earth. They
have lost everything and are not only homeless, but also stateless. It is for this reason that
people ought to treat them with compassion. Instead, Britain has stripped the Mediterranean
refugees of every layer of their humanity. One segment of the British populace acts as
cheerleaders, as government officials and the media dehumanise the refugees, while the
other segment dozes off having been anaesthetised by the soothing effect of reality TV and
celebrity culture. With the constant dehumanisation of refugees, should it be any surprise that

following the drowning of 700 refugees in the Mediterranean in April 2015, the British print
media chose as its front page headlineThe Greed of NHS Fat Cats and How To Get A
Summer Bikini Body In Five Weeks. Cardinal Mahony got it right when he said, Any society,
any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest membersthe

last, the least,
the littlest. Britain might pride herself as being a developed country economically, a civilised
country diplomatically and a first world country militarily; but as far as her treatment of
refugees is concerned, Britain is seen by the outside world as an undeveloped and uncivilised
third world country.
There is a vicious cycle whereby the British media demonises refugees which triggers the
publics hatred of refugees, which in turn leads to politicians harsh rhetorics against refugees,
which results in more negative reportage by the media. Has the political class sold its soul for
a pottage of votes at the expense of refugees? To paraphrase Martin Luther King, the British
political elite seems to determine what is right or wrong by taking a YouGov poll of the
majority opinion and therefore has become searchers for consensus rather than moulders of
consensus. It might be politically convenient at the moment for politicians to call refugees
fleeing war, marauders and plunderers, but in reality, who are the real marauders and
plunderers of British society? Shouldnt it be the Masters of the Universe that fix Libor?
Shouldnt it be the multinationals that warehouse its profits in various special purpose
vehicles? Shouldnt it be the MPs who fix their expense claims to make a quick buck?
I would like to say something about Britains immigration detention centres. Britain has one of
the largest immigration centres in Europe. According to the Home Office, in 2013 around
30,000 people were detained in Britain while their immigration statuses were being resolved.
60% of those detained were asylum seekers. These migrants and refugees are kept in
detention centres, which are actually de facto prisons. Some of the detainees include
children, pregnant women, people with mental health issues and rape victims. A cross party
group of MPs called for an end to the indefinite detention of migrants and refugees and
described the detention system as expensive, ineffective and unjust. There have been
reports of sexual harassment, racial abuse, suicide attempts and detainees being handcuffed
before seeing a doctor. The criminalisation of refugees by the British government is immoral
and unjust. It is time for the British government to heed to the calls of civil society and
overhaul this Gestapo-like immigration detention centres and implement a more humane
system.
The current refugee crisis shows no sign of ending. It is a global problem and therefore
requires a global solution. The British Government cannot and should not work in isolation.
Sending sniffer dogs, blowing up smugglers boats, repatriating refugees and building high
walls are only short-term solutions to a long-term problem. What is the way forward?
First, there needs to be a revolution in thinking by the British government, the British media
and the British publicMIGRANTS ARE NOT ANTS AND REFUGEES ARE NOT BEES;
they are human beings. Once the humanity of refugees has been recognised, the harsh
rhetorics should stop. Second, the British government should be willing to help by emulating
its European counterparts by accommodating some of the refugees. Third, the government
should be more proactive in providing financial and logistical support for organisations
responsible for rescuing refugees from drowning in the sea. If the government can spend 1
trillion bailing out financial institutions that were sinking in 2008, why cant it spend a couple of
pounds to bailout refugees sinking in 2015?
Fourth, it is time for the government to address the issue of global inequality. For too long,
politicians in the West have been paying lip service to global and national inequality. This
crisis has shown that the West can no longer afford to ignore the suffering of those far away.
As Martin Luther King eloquently put it, we are all, Caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all
indirectlythis is the inter-related structure of reality. The ever-expanding gap between the
rich and poor countries of the world needs to be narrowed. Factors that promote these
inequalities such as climate change, tax policies, wage disparity, agricultural subsidies, the
military industrial complex and globalisation need to be fixed at the international level.

In conclusion, the refugee crisis is a humanitarian problem, which requires a human touch.
Focusing on the economics or the politics of the crisis while ignoring the morality of the crisis
is not the answer. The British political elite should snap out of its empathy deficit and start to
view the crisis from the point of view of the refugees. It is easy for one to take a hardline
approach towards the refugees especially when accessing the problem from the comfortable
confines of Westminster. But when one steps out of Westminster and then takes a trip to
Somalia, dodges several bullets and bombs, boards a tightly-packed boat tossed on the
choppy waters, watches fellow passengers die of dehydration as others are thrown
overboard, and eventually arrives on the shores of Italy then one would appreciate that
migrants are not ants and refugees are not bees.
Selah.
Ahmed Olayinka Sule, CFA
suleaos@gmail.com
August 2015
Cc
Rt Hon David Cameron
Rt Hon Theresa May
Rt Hon Philip Hammond
Members of House of Parliament
UN Refugee Agency
Conservative Party

PS: Below are some of the agencies providing support for refugees impacted by the crisis.
Feel free to support them.
Refugee Council: http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk
Refugee Action: http://www.refugee-action.org.uk
British Red Cross Refugee Support: http://www.redcross.org.uk/What-we-do/Refugee-support
Mdecins du Monde : http://www.medecinsdumonde.org
UNHCR Syrian appeal:
http://donate.unhcr.org/gbr/lifeline?gclid=CJmF5cynxMcCFUFmGwod8Y8NLw&gclsrc=aw.ds
Justice First : http://justicefirst.org.uk/the-problems/
Mdecins Sans Frontires : http://www.msf.org.uk/about-msf
Kent Refugee Action Network: http://kran.org.uk
Bail for Immigration Detainees: http://www.biduk.org