Workers at a charity that helps refugees once they arrive in the UK say they have faced death threats after footage of them helping refugees on the beach was passed on to former UKIP leader Nigel Farage. Channel Rescue, based in Kent, was set up during the covid pandemic to advocate safe and legal routes for those seeking asylum.
As reported by Kent Live, the human rights monitoring organisation claim it was targeted after its work was featured on Mr Farage's show on GB News. Co-founder Steven Martin says the group has received thousands of death threats since the story.
He said: "Last year, there was myself and another volunteer, we assisted a landing. We were helping to help secure the port on the beach and help people out of the boat safely. We were trying to do it as safely as we could.
"There was no border force or police around. There was just us. People took some footage of us doing it and sent it to Nigel Farage and it ended up on GB News and he did this 20-minute piece about how Channel Rescue is essentially facilitating people smuggling and we ended up getting thousands of death threats, saying we are traitors to our race, we're traitors to our country.
"Now we occasionally get a stupid email. Somebody will see something in the news and we will get an email - 'look what you're doing. you're bringing this country down. If I see you, I'm gonna throw you off the cliffs. We get that kind of idiocy.
The charity is hoping to raise urgent funding to maintain its presence along the coastline as an increasing number of vulnerable people trying to reach British shores. The group needs £10,000 to carry out their everyday activities, which involve monitoring the channel, including arrivals by small boats from France and the processing of asylum seekers.
Mr Martin says “a mature adult conversation about the humanitarian crisis” is needed to deal with the current situation. He said: “Some of it will go towards our running costs. We have volunteer accommodation. We have our boat that we have to maintain and pay for fuel. We provide free accommodation for our volunteers, they don’t have to pay anything. We also pay that travel costs.”
“We need to replace some of our kit, because it’s getting old and a bit damaged. So we have a huge range of outgoings that we need to cover. The boat can cost more than £400 pound a day in fuel. One of the things we want to do is replace our engines on the boat and new engines cost more than 10 grand each, so we would need 25-30 grand just to replace our engines.”
The group, which covers 33 miles of coastline, has been calling for the government to stop describing asylum seekers and refugees as “illegal migrants” as it “sensationalises and stigmatises” them.
“The way they talk about “illegal migrants”, there is nothing illegal about crossing a border in order to seek sanctuary to claim asylum. That is not illegal. That’s a perfectly legal thing to do,” Mr Martin said. “It’s like dog whistle politics, they are talking to the right wing of their party. I think that they are wilfully misrepresenting what is going on.”
He said they are seeing more people take riskier journeys in the hope of a better future in Britain. He shared his worries about a serious incident happening if nothing is done to provide them with a safer way to arrive in the UK. Mr Martin said: “It’s going to be a when not if there is a mass casualty event as there will be another disaster. There will be another mass drowning.”
