Cameron/Hammond: Stop demonising African migrants

'African migrants a threat to our way of life' was the headline screaming from the front page of the Metro. It was the most depressing front page I’ve seen for a long time. The Metro, like many other papers, had picked up the comments made by Defence Minister, Phillip Hammond, whilst speaking abroad. Another comment Hammond used whilst describing migrants was 'marauding Africans'.

Hammond is not alone in migrant bashing. Earlier this month the Prime Minister described those in Calais trying to get to the UK as a ‘swarm’ of migrants. Both are using language that dehumanises not just those African migrants in Calais, Greece or Italy, but Africans and other people of colour too.

The fear and loathing used in the language is despicable. One quick glance at the definition of ‘marauding’ shows it as describing people who are ‘going about in search of things to steal or people to attack.’

At school students often see the description juxtaposed with Barbarians: The 'marauding Barbarians' were seen as a non-Christian people who were thus less than human.

The Prime Minster’s use of the word ‘swarm’, when describing migrants rushing the security fences at the Euro tunnel, is at best unfortunate and at worst mischievous. We usually use the term to describe a large number of bees or wasps in a manner that makes us feel that we’re about to be attacked.

These descriptions from our politicians not only belittle and dehumanise the migrants they describe, but equally important they don’t even begin to describe the migrants' plight and the collective responsibility that we should have.

Our political class and most mainstream media would have us believe that the overwhelming majority of those who make the perilous journeys across roads, mountains and the Mediterranean sea are economic migrants seeking a better life. The image they seek to convey might not be too dissimilar of an English family seeking a ‘better life’ in Australia for example.

However, according to the United Nations, most migrants in the ‘European camps’ in Calais, Lampudesa in Italy and the Greek Island of Kos, are escaping brutal, cruel conflict in a growing number of countries we’ve helped destabilise including Eritrea, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

In Syria for example, more than four million people have fled the increasingly bloody civil war. Eritrea, once a shining light in Africa, and Sudan both have civil wars that have cost millions of lives. People are not just fleeing these countries for a better life, but very often to save their lives, particularly if they speak out, and to flee brutal persecution.

Therefore, to describe these brave men and women who risk their lives as ‘marauding’ Africans whose presence threatens our way of life, shames those who make them. Throughout history, the dehumanising of those you intend to persecute is a way of justifying the most terrible slaughter, and this is something we must never forget.

The escalating migrant situation is an on-going global humanitarian crisis which touches all of us whether we like it or not. For me there is one critical question to answer. How will we respond - fear and loathing, or compassion and a collective plan which gives dignity and hope to those who deserve it?

Simon Woolley