Hark! What’s That Noise?

Oh, it must be the world’s smallest violin…

Racist asylum and immigration policies in the UK have led to the deaths of 77 asylum seekers and migrants over the past four years, according to a report for the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) .

Oh noes! It’s a pogrom!

Oh, hang on…

More than a third (28) of the deaths reported by the IRR are people suspected or known to have taken their own lives after their asylum claims had been turned down. Seven are said to have died after being denied health care for "preventable medical problems", seven are said to have died in prison custody…

Doesn’t look like we are slaughtering them in the streets now, does it?

What about the rest?

… and 15 are said to have died during desperate and "highly risky" attempts to enter the country.

Wait, what?

Some of those deaths are because we harsh, unfeeling British don’t make it easy enough to get into the country? We are supposed to just have an open door policy? FFS!

And that’s not the only use of dodgy stats:

The 77 deaths include seven who died on the streets in attacks "at the hands of racists"…

Hmmm, who defined it as a ‘racist’ attack, I wonder? Rather than a squabble over drugs, money, political outlook?

Well, we’ll never know, because these figures appear to have been made up out of whole cloth anyway:

Not all the deaths in the report, which the IRR said was likely to be an underestimate, could be independently verified…

How convenient!

The report, Driven to Desperate Measures, published today says the number of deaths of asylum seekers in the community has increased and now averages one a month.

However, it also says that, due to the difficulty of obtaining figures, this is likely to be an underestimate.

Or an overestimate?

The IRR said the 77 deaths, most of which happened in the UK, were a consequence of "direct racism or indirect racism stemming from" asylum and immigration policies.

Of course they were, of course they were…

Harmit Athwal, a researcher at IRR and the report's author, said: "Racism percolates right through the immigration-asylum system – from forcing people to risk life and limb to enter, forcing them to live destitute on the street, prey to violent racist attack. That 28 people died at their own hand, preferring this to being returned, when their asylum application failed, to the country they fled, is a terrible indictment of British justice.

"Asylum seekers are demonised by the mass media as illegals and scroungers and to appease popular racism, governments across Europe, in addition to making access to refugee status much more difficult, have decided to accelerate the deportation of the many who have 'failed'.

"Such forced deportations of those terrified of being returned to the countries they have fled – often areas in which we are involved and at war – will inevitably lead to more deaths."

And yet, still they come, in their thousands. I guess they think it a risk worth taking, or the rewards worth the gamble...