Britain’s pledge to resettle hundreds of unaccompanied child refugees over the weekend was a great piece of positive news in an increasingly bleak European landscape, lately full of xenophobic outpourings against desperate and penniless people.
The David Cameron government’s plan to provide shelter to children from UNHCR-run Syrian refugee camps as well as from the holding camps in Greece and Italy, follows a British court order to allow in three teenage boys from camps in Calais. The British programme — with an estimated budget of £10 million — not only provides a safe sanctuary for children and teenage refugees caught in a legal wrangle, but also sends out the right signals as far as rehabilitation projects and humanitarian gestures are concerned.
Contrast that with the thugs who went on a rampage around Stockholm’s main train station, beating up and severely injuring refugees and apparently anyone who did not look “ethnically Swedish”. The attack was also shocking in its detailed planning and scope: prior to the rampage, a group of 200 people distributed xenophobic leaflets with the message “Enough now”, while during the attack they mainly targeted unaccompanied minors with a “foreign” background. This came even as the Swedish government officially confirmed plans to deport 80,000 refugees.
Such contrarian behaviour in the same continent neither helps the few nations trying to maintain a semblance of coherence as far as refugee programmes go, nor do they provide any reassurance and consistent message to the thousands of people trying to reach its shores in search of a new life.
Instead of the alarmist agenda and inflamed passions being whipped up across Europe with regards to refugees, governments should instead focus on finding a common voice and an approach that speaks of humanity rather than being devoid of it.
