Fmr. FM urges govt. to take responsibility towards migrants
UK former foreign minister has joined other politicians calling on the government to shoulder its responsibility towards the refugees fleeing the war in Syria and other conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa.
David Miliband also warned that continued failure of the government to fulfill the responsibility amounts to an abandonment of UK’s legal and humanitarian traditions.
Miliband went further saying:” The strict limits Britain has placed on the acceptance of refugees represented a double standard that would ultimately undermine Britain’s influence abroad.”
Miliband added: “When I hear people say we’ve got to firm up our borders, it makes me think of the message we’re sending to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq, which is to keep their borders open for Syrians. People in Britain have got to understand that these countries notice the difference between what we’re saying and what we’re doing.”
According to media reports, the UK has granted asylum to about 10,000 refugees in 2014 which is significantly lower than most other wealthy western European countries.
“Britain was at the forefront of writing the conventions and writing the protocols that established legal rights for refugees. A lot of the legal theory came out of the UK,” he said. “The reasons we did so were good in the 40s and 50s and they are good today. What applied to Europeans then should apply to Africans and Asians today. We cannot say UN conventions apply to one group of people and not to others,” Miliband said.
The award-winning author, Alan Albert Gibbons believes that the UK has a responsibility towards the desperate migrants because of its polices in the region.
In an interview with Press TV, he referred to UK’s participation in military operations in the region saying now that desperate people of the region are fleeing their homes in fear of their lives.
Germany, France and the UK have called for a meeting of EU in September to discuss the current deteriorating crisis.
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