A UN Official has attacked Britain’s concerns over uncontrolled immigration ahead of a “fact finding” mission to Italy and said its attitudes are “bulls**t”. In an interview with The Independent, François Crépeau, who is the special rapporteur for migrants’ rights, said that it was “not cool” if UKIP influenced policy or formed part of the government.
The Italian island of Lampedusa has been the target destination for thousands of migrants from Africa and the Middle East who are crammed onto unseaworthy vessels, often run by Mafia groups and other people traffickers.
They head there as the closest part of the European Union and, according to reports given to Breitbart London by migrants in Calais, many are told by Italian officials that they can go wherever they want within the continent.
M. Crépeau criticised the Home Office for only sending one official to take part in a European Search and Rescue mission to prevent deaths in the Mediterranean even though the UK is not part of the Schengen Area which has removed internal borders between countries and facilitated both legal and illegal immigration.
There had been a policy of patrolling the waterways between Africa and Southern Europe to pick up asylum seekers and migrants en route, known as Mare Nostrum, following an accident when 366 immigrants were killed after a fire broke out on board the run-down fishing boat they were being transported in.
But it is the view of the British government that these missions only encourage illegal migration and stopping them would deter migrants. The mission has now been replaced with a patrol costing only a third of the search and rescue watch which will be run by the EU agency Frontex.
The official said politicians should dispel ‘myths’ about immigration and ‘stand up’ to the public who have repeatedly shown they want the government to take a much tougher approach.
And he said that by stopping the search and rescue missions, the UK government was “letting them [migrants] die”.
“This is what happens, if you don’t search and rescue them; they die,” he said.
“The fantasy is that there is a core British culture that was created probably 2,000 years ago and carried on, and now it’s being threatened by all those barbarians that are coming to our gate,” he said.
After years of concerns about immigration being ignored by politicians and batted away as ‘racist’, the Canadian further insulted the British public by saying it was “utter bulls**t”.
“That is why I think we have a problem with political conversations that we can’t have” he added.
And he appeared to praise Tony Blair by saying he instilled a “multicultural, diverse, open society” in Britain (when in fact it was before the EU enlargement to Eastern Europe in 2004, defeating his whole argument) when people were talking about “Cool Britannia”.
“If Britannia is ruled by the Ukip, or with Ukip-type policies, it is not going to be cool,” he said.
His outburst was condemned by UKIP leader Nigel Farage who accused the Canadian of “talking utter baloney”.
“More people came to Britain in 2013 than came between 1066 and 1950.” He added that M. Crépeau was “just not living in the real world” and said “Britain is one of the most relaxed countries in the whole of Europe on immigration, but not with numbers like this.”
And Tory MP Dominic Raab said the official’s view was very prejudiced, saying: “To claim the British public sees immigrants as ‘barbarians’ because it is ‘gripped’ by a 2,000 year old cultural ‘fantasy’ is offensive bigotry.
“Monsieur Crépeau is aping the very prejudice he is supposed to be fighting,” he added.
David Coburn, a Ukip MEP added that M. Crépeau “knows nothing of our country” and said, “it’s not for him to decide what we feel.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.