A number of left-wing activists are sabotaging migrant removals in the United Kingdom. Earlier this week, they prevented migrants from being moved from a hotel in London to the Bibby Stockholm barge by slashing the tires on the bus meant to transport them.
A number of migrants were set to board the bus at the Best Western Hotel in Peckham, in the south of the capital city, to be transferred to the barge in Portland, Dorset, where the government is currently housing hundreds asylum seekers, some of whom have been earmarked for deportation to Rwanda.
The transfer to the barge is part of a plan by the UK government to reduce the amount of taxpayer money spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels. However, when not at full capacity, the cost of the barge is more than the average cost of a hotel room.
On May 2, large crowd of left-wing activists were able to stop the bus from leaving, by throwing electric bikes under the wheels, and slashing the tires. After around 8 hours, with over 100 officers from the Metropolitan Police trying to hold back the mob, the bus departed without any of the migrants on board.
Speaking to The Telegraph, an anonymous protester from Gma’s Community Kitchen, a pro-asylum seeker organisation, said that the migrants were “human beings who don’t deserve to be moved around like cattle,” and the attempt by the government to move them from the hotels was tantamount to “state-sponsored human trafficking.” Another protester claimed that “the revolution is coming and it looks beautiful.”
“Housing migrants in hotels costs the British taxpayer millions of pounds every day,” said the Home Secretary, James Cleverly, in a statement.
“We will continue to remove those with no right to be here, despite continued efforts by the Labour Party and a coalition of disparate student groups to stop us. No amount of chanting, drum banging or tyre-slashing by a noisy few will prevent us doing what is necessary to deliver the firm but fair approach that the British people expect.”
He added: “I’d like to thank the police for their swift and professional action. They have my full support in clamping down on unacceptable criminality, racism and intimidation regardless of where it comes from.”
At least 10 of the protesters were arrested by the Metropolitan Police, most for offense including obstruction of the highway, but one for a “racially aggravated public order offense,” with the Home Office decrying the protests as “intimidatory and aggressive.”
While pro-migrant activists may believe they are acting in support of the vulnerable, a number of migrants spared from deportation were recently revealed to be sex offenders.
As previously reported by The Publica, Anicet Mayela, a Congolese asylum seeker, admitted to raping a 15-year-old girl in the UK after his deportation flight was blocked a sympathetic Air France cabin crew.
In another incident, an African child rapist who successfully argued that he could not be properly treated for PTSD in his home country of Eritrea was also spared deportation, along with an Afghani repeat sex offender, was allowed to stay in the UK because Afghanistan’s harsh “stigmatization” of sex offenders was considered a mental health risk for him.
