A Labour shadow minister has reacted furiously after discovering a joke poster lampooning the age of so-called ‘child migrants’ in a communal kitchen in Westminster.
Tweeting a photo of the poster, which featured the caption “Just £3 from you could feed and clothe this 12 yr old Syrian child for a week” over the image of an elderly Muslim man, Chi Onwurah, the shadow minister for Industrial Strategy, said she was “upset” that someone “thought it funny”, adding the hashtag #refugeeswelcome.
Upset someone in Parliament thought it funny to display this in the communal kitchen over the weekend. #refugeeswelcome pic.twitter.com/UJzTKy4we3
— chi onwurah (@ChiOnwurah) October 24, 2016
The poster had been taped above the sink in a communal kitchen shared by 15 MPs and their staff, she later clarified. Conservative, Labour, and SNP MPs are all understood to occupy nearby offices.
To be clear my researcher went to make cup of tea & saw it sellotaped above sink, kitchen shared by ~15 MPs & their staff. Not acceptable https://t.co/lXNyPu7L1s
— chi onwurah (@ChiOnwurah) October 24, 2016
In response her followers expressed outrage, calling the poster xenophobic and suggesting CCTV should be used to track down the “culprit”. Fellow Labour MP Liz McInnes tweeted “So shocked that could happen in Parliament. Disgraceful. You’re right to highlight the incident.”
Speaking to the Huffington Post UK, Onwurah said: “It was spotted sellotaped above a sink so it was not by accident.
“I thought it was really upsetting. It shouldn’t have a place in Parliament.
“There’s been an increasing xenophobic commentary in politics and the Tory Party Conference had numerous examples of that and so by condoning that kind of hostility you’re making this more likely to happen.”
And in a message to other MPs and their staff, seen by the Daily Mail, she said: “It’s a communal area, not everybody shares your sense of humour.
“There are many things I get angry about but I’m not going to force that on my work colleagues.
“I don’t think it’s funny. Not when you see what people have been through coming from Syria.
“People often share jokes but this is a communal area and I and others shouldn’t have to suffer what you think is funny.”
The Conservative government has come under a lot of criticism over the last few days as the first child migrants arrived from Calais ahead of the scheduled clearance of the Jungle migrant camp by the French government.
Despite charity reports depicting toddlers and young children living in squalor, the vast majority of the children to emerge from buses arriving at the Home Office reception centre in Croydon, Sussex, have been lads, many of whom looked to be grown men.
One man was estimated by facial recognition technology to be as old as 38.
But while Labour has remained quiet on the issue, it has fallen to the ruling party’s own MPs to appeal to ministers to ensure that British hospitality was not being abused. On Friday, the Conservative member for Shipley, Philip Davies, raised an urgent question on the issue.
Addressing Minister for Immigration Robert Goodwill he said: “Surely it cannot be necessary to explain why it is important that child refugees are actually children? We agreed to take in child refugees, so surely it is not too much to ask that the Government ensure that they are children?
“But clearly this is not the case: people only have to see the pictures of the so-called child refugees to see that many of them are not children.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.