Beyond Borders’ Bibby Stockholm petition hits 50,000

Beyond Borders in Totnes (BBT&D) is a group of activists who facilitate a wide network of volunteers in active welcome and support for asylum seekers and refugees, collaborating with official refugee support organisations in Plymouth, other local voluntary networks and asylum seekers in local hotels. Formed in 2015 at a time in the Syrian crisis when the drowned body of toddler Alun Kurdi was carried out of the water– and the photo went viral stirring wide concern.

Human beings belong in communities.

A petition set-up by the group targeting a message directly at Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman has gathered a whopping 50,000 signatures.

The government plans to use the Bibby Stockholm – an engineless barge designed to accommodate 200 people – to house 550 asylum-seeking men on the barge that has been widely condemned by lawyers, firefighters, health agencies and water companies  among others.

The Beyond Borders’ petition details how men who are fleeing intolerable, life-threatening situations into into the risk-laden, claustrophobic facility is inhumane and dangerous.. Small cabins intended for just one person now planned to bunk-bed two adult men for months.

Strangers, probably without common language, each carrying emotional and mental distress from the necessity to flee their homeland and everything familiar, will be roomed together in claustrophobic conditions. The location is a harbour distanced from daily town life, in bleak, marginalised isolation. Security processes at exit and entry invoke feelings of imprisonment.

The mayor of Portland, Carralyn Parkes, who is taking the Government to court over lack of planning permission for the barge, denounces the project: “The Bibby Stockholm is not a suitable place to house asylum seekers. It is still not too late to stop this. Human beings belong in communities.”

Hilary Bee from the core group of BBT&D said  “I think the Bibby Stockholm petition is important, in order to show the government that there are many people in this country who do not go along with their punitive, cruel and inhumane attitude towards people seeking asylum in this country.  This small, home-grown petition has been supported and promoted by people across the country.  We need to let the government know that they can’t get away with scapegoating people who do not have a voice.  Their persistent demonising refugees and asylum seekers is a cynical way of taking attention away from the root causes of our collective challenges.  The petition is a demonstration that this attempt to divide and rule is not working.”

The group attest that the petition has aimed to inform people about the real conditions and risks of the barge – and join in protest against the inhumanity, the unsafe and intolerably cramped conditions of the whole barge project. It calls on the government to abandon the Bibby Stockholm plans and urgently resource swifter asylum processing to end the cruel waiting and uncertainty of thousands trapped here in pitifully marginalised lives with the aim of fostering human respect, dignity and caring among both asylum seekers and among us all.

Jill Lewis of the core group said  “The men asylum seekers that our Beyond Borders network has come to know, are people like our sons, brothers, husbands, fathers. Contrary to hostility and prejudice provoked by some media and some key people in the Government, people seeking sanctuary are overwhelmingly decent, kind, respectful people, many of whom will be settling here as our neighbours and friends.  The conditions and support offered to them in this interim time waiting for their applications to be processed will shape their relationship to our society for years to come”

You can read more about or get involved with Beyond Borders at their website here: https://beyondborderstotnes.org.uk/

The Change.org petition is here: https://www.change.org/p/rethink-the-bibby-stockholm-barge-ensure-safe-humane-conditions-for-asylum-seekers-in-uk