Ukip AM causes outrage with ‘appalling’ refugee comments
AUKIP AM has caused a storm by suggesting refugees should only be allowed into the UK if they would otherwise be in imminent threat of death.
Gareth Bennett also said they should only come here as long as they haven’t engaged in political or human rights activity in their home country or haven’t passed through another country where they could have sought asylum.
The AM for South Wales Central sits on the National Assembly’s Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee.
He has written a one-man minority report disagreeing with the committee’s main report on refugees in Wales, which has yet to be published.
In his report, Mr Bennett quotes approvingly from a column written in the Times by Matthew Parris, the journalist and former Conservative MP.
Under a heading “My Opinion”, Mr Bennett states: “The committee’s report, by seeking to extend provision in Wales not only to Syrian refugees, but to refugees arriving spontaneously, is not recognising the difficulties of establishing who are the genuine political migrants.
“The danger is that Wales will be complicit in encouraging more spontaneous arrivals in the UK, which the UK taxpayer will then have to pay for. This cannot be right.”
Still under the heading “My Opinion”, Mr Bennett goes on to quote a section from Parris’ column in which the former MP suggests a severe tightening of the definition of persecution: “A reasonable fear of death, death alone, and death at the hands of the state or its servants should be the sole qualifier for political asylum.
“There should be no automatic right to bring family members. And the applicant must have taken all reasonable steps to mitigate persecution – such as, for example, keeping out of politics, and obeying the laws of their country on, for example, the status of women, homosexual activity or the public practice of a proscribed religion like Christianity.”
The Rev Aled Edwards, who chairs the refugees’ support group Displaced People in Action, said: “This is a truly shocking suggestion. It sounds as if to have any chance of being accepted as a refugee, you would have to be sentenced to death and somehow be magicked to the UK. It also seems you wouldn’t qualify if you had been tortured and not killed.
“There is a robust definition of refugee status which has stood the test of time and which is accepted across the civilised world. Host countries decide whether to accept people as refugees according to due legal process and can insist on people leaving if their claim does not stand up to scrutiny.”
A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence.
A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
Article 1 of the Geneva Convention, as amended by the 1967 Protocol, defines a refugee as “a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”.
Joyce Watson, a Labour member of the committee which drew up the original report, said: ”It is very disappointing that Gareth said nothing while this was being discussed in committee. This was a cross-party committee which was looking at a serious issue.
“Gareth has chosen to produce a Ukip report complete with Ukip branding.”
An Assembly source said: “Gareth sat through the entire committee investigation hardly saying a word. We now know why. According to his document, persecuted Christians should stay silent, people threatened with death for being gay should do the same.
“In fact Gareth says you cannot be a refugee if you question the regime you live under, no matter how brutal it is.
“This is not the Welsh or British way. We have a noble history of supporting those that stand up to tyranny including the French resistance during the war. This is truly appalling stuff.”