Brexitwatch: how to talk like a Conservative minister

Ever wanted to be a Conservative cabinet minister? No reason you can’t be, but one thing you will need is the right speech. So, as a public service I am providing, free of charge, the Tory Self-writing Speech Kit.

Write each of the phrases below on a card, then put on a blindfold, and arrange them in a random order. Fill in the gaps between with any old guff that takes your fancy (fact-checking not required).

These are the phrases:

evil gangs of people smugglers (put this on 3 separate cards to ensure repetition)

illegal asylum seekers (again on 3 cards)

economic migrants

a lot of them are young men, you know

stop the boats (3 cards)

abusing Britain’s hospitality

proud record of taking in refugees (though not ones arriving in small boats obviously)

delivering the people’s priorities

activist lefty lawyers

opportunities of Brexit

global Britain

I am available to promote any business of your choice in return for shedloads of money [actually, maybe leave this one out] 

Europe's migrant crisis - facts and numbers

Last month, more than 218,000 migrants reached Europe by sea according to the United Nations – about the same as the number for the whole of 2014. More than 10,000 arrived in Greece alone on a single day. So far this year, nearly 3,500 are estimated to have died trying to get to Europe.

The vast majority have come via Turkey to Greece. This has replaced the route to Italy via Libya which used to be more popular. The highest number come from Syria – about 53 per cent, with Afghanistan next – 18 per cent.

The United Nations has been heavily critical of Europe’s response, but the organisation’s own predictions for the number of migrants expected have been gross underestimates. It forecast 700,000 for the whole year, but at the end of October with two months still to go, that figure had already been exceeded by 44,000.

Normally the numbers fall during the winter months, but that may not happen this year as the people traffickers seem to be offering bad weather discounts. The fact that some of the Islamic fanatics who carried out the mass murders in Paris apparently slipped into Europe as ‘refugees’ has heightened alarm.

More refugees than ever

This week 45 African men suffocated in the hold of a ship as they tried to get themselves smuggled into Italy. It is said they had begged to be released but that they were kept below in case the vessel capsized. Another 70 boat people were lost in the Mediterranean in a separate incident.

Over last weekend, patrol boats picked up 5,000 migrants, following a reversal in Italian policy. Until 2011, the country had tried to block them, sending those it caught back to Africa, but after 360 drowned off Lampedusa last year, it has started search-and-rescue missions.

Since then, the number of arrivals has ballooned to 65,000, compared with 8,000 in the first half of last year, while Greece has seen the number of illegal migrants more than double. Earlier this week, Italian police arrested five Eritreans they said were running a people-smuggling operation.

Across the world, 2013 saw 6 million people driven from their homes by violence and conflict, taking the global total for refugees to more than 50 million. The war in Syria has displaced 9 million people – nearly half the population.

Darfur - lest we forget

So far this year, an estimated 300,000 people have fled their homes in Sudan’s Darfur region according to the United Nations.    After a peace deal was signed in 2011, violence had died down, but not out.

Altogether, about 1.4 million people are now homeless, and 300,000 are believed to have died since the conflict began in 2003.  While on a visit to a refugee camp, the UN’s top humanitarian official, Valerie Amos, said the situation was ‘extremely worrying’.

She said displaced people faced chronic food shortages, and had to walk in fierce heat to get water.  They also lacked access to health care and education, while rebels were obstructing the distribution of aid.

The conflict began with rebels complaining that the Sudanese government favoured Arabs and oppressed black Africans.  Since it started, the mainly Arab Janjaweed militia has been accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing and genocide, and President al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes.

(See also my blogs of March 4, 5 March, 6 Aug, 21 Sept, 2009 and 27 May 2010.)

* The fifth in my series of videos on Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters features the Battle of Hastings.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtIhODt-Wrc&feature=youtu.be

 

Genocide begets genocide?

The Rwandan government’s threat to withdraw its 3,400 personnel serving with the UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur (see my blog of Sept 3) seems to have had the desired effect. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon quickly jetted into the Rwandan capital, Kigali, to tell President Paul Kagame that he was “disappointed” about the leaking of a UN report accusing Rwandan forces of murdering tens of thousands of Hutus in the Congo.

A team from the UN’s office for the High Commissioner on Human Rights has catalogued more than 600 incidents, and it claims that President Kagame’s Hutu forces were involved in more than 100 of them.

In 1996, for example, Rwandan troops are said to have gone to the Chimanga refugee camp. They told the refugees they would be going back home. Then, on an apparently pre-arranged signal, they opened fire, killing up to 800.

Back in 1994, it was President Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front that put an end to the mass murder of Tutsis by extremist Hutus in Rwanda. Many of the perpetrators fled to the Congo, where they hid among a million other Hutus who had fled fearing for their lives under the new regime. It was when the genocide organisers started re-grouping that President Kagame ordered the invasion.

Sri Lanka - a glimpse of the disaster

The outside world has been given its first glimpse of the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Sri Lanka after the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, as journalists, who have been kept out of the way by the government, were able to accompany UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on his visit. From a helicopter they saw the utter devastation of the area where the Tigers made their last stand.

The UN says 7,000 civilians have been killed since January. The Sri Lankan government denies the figure, but says the Tigers were using civilians as human shields.

Ban Ki-moon’s visit also meant that for the first time, journalists got to see the “refugee” camps in which Tamil civilians are being held. The main one holds 220,000. It is surrounded by barbed wire and armed soldiers. There is desperate overcrowding, but the government says it will not let people leave until it has made sure there are no Tigers among them, which may take six months. The UN says people should be allowed to rejoin their families.

Aid agencies claim that their access to the Tamils has been restricted, and Mr Ban saw elderly, malnourished patients lying on cot beds in the open air with flies buzzing around them. There is also anxiety that unless there is a political settlement that offers reconciliation between the majority Sinhalese and minorities like the Tamils, trouble could soon flare up again.