End media obsession

A leading House of Commons committee has been told that the media
is “obsessed” with the numbers of asylum seekers coming into the
country to the exclusion of all else. We couldn’t agree more. The
media have failed, Immigration Advisory Service chief executive
Keith Best told the House of Commons home affairs committee, “to
articulate why asylum seekers are fleeing [their home countries].”

Our Right to Refuge campaign calls for an end to the hysterical
treatment of asylum seekers by some politicians and parts of the
press, the effect of which is to foster racism and fear in many of
our communities. Our campaign also aims to ensure that asylum
seekers have access to basic care and support, and the IAS’s
proposal for more training for case workers and specialisation by
country would be a necessary part of that.

Asylum seekers are outsiders whose voices go mostly unheard by the
rest of us. As the writer Hanif Kureishi says: “It is where the
words end, or can’t go, that abuse takes place, whether it’s racial
harassment, bullying, neglect, or sexual violence.” It is time to
break the silence.