The discovery of
35 desperate people inside a shipping container at Tilbury docks is a real-life
horror story. Basic humanity requires that we give them medical treatment and
temporary accommodation.
Clearly they have
suffered a terrible ordeal. They were dehydrated and close to suffocation. One
of them died on the voyage from Zeebrugge.
There were 13
blameless children among those packed into what has been described as a ‘metal
coffin’. We can only imagine what they have endured on their 3,500-mile journey
across continents.
They have been exploited and put in mortal danger
by callous traffickers, who trade in human misery.
But they weren’t kidnapped. While the children are
exempt from any responsibility for their plight, all the adults involved knew
what they were getting into.
They voluntarily paid the traffickers to smuggle
them into Britain. Typically, it costs £20,000 to get from Afghanistan to
Zeebrugge and a further £1,500 for a passage to England. I’m assuming they
weren’t expecting to be flown first-class to Heathrow.
We are told they are all Afghan Sikhs fleeing
Taliban persecution and they were attracted here because of the ‘thriving and
established Afghan Sikh community in London’. There is also a thriving Sikh
community in India, right on Afghanistan’s doorstep. So why didn’t they flee
there? I’m sure they’d be more at home in the Punjab than
Putney.
Why
didn’t they seek asylum in Russia, or Turkey, or any of the countries that they
crossed en route to Zeebrugge?
