Depending on the day, the barge Bibby Stockholm is either a maximum security prison or a five-star hotel. When the British Government wants to put fear in the body of potential asylum seekers, or show the voters how tough it is on the migration issue, it paints it worse than Alcatraz, San Quintín or the sinister prison of La Joyita in Panama, whose name speaks for itself. But when he has to respond to criticism from the progressive press and human rights groups, then he describes it as if it were the hotel Le Sirenuse in Positano, on the Amalfi Coast, where in August a standard room costs about three thousand euros at night.
In reality, the Bibby Stockholm, which after three weeks anchored off the coast of Dorset yesterday began to receive the first refugees, is neither Alcatraz nor a charming boutique hotel recommended by the Michelin guide. Rather, it is very basic accommodation, in the manner of a youth hostel or field hospital, with cabins for between four and six immigrants with their own bathroom (no need to go to the corridor), television and a desk, instal· common facilities such as gym and basketball court, nurse and doctor on call, food available 24 hours a day and excursion program.
Its residents are not prisoners, because they can come and go as they please, with a bus that takes them to Weymouth (the nearest large population) between seven in the morning and eleven at night, and the possibility of ask for a taxi if they are late. But they are subject to a disciplinary regime, and to move they need a card with a QR code that opens the access fence to the private port where the barge is anchored.
Demonstrators for and against the presence of refugees in Portland (town of thirteen thousand inhabitants) yesterday received the first group, which arrived in blue buses. Some welcomed them, others made it clear that they do not want them in their community (all are men between 18 and 65 years old, from countries in conflict and with serious violations of human rights such as Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sudan , Iran, Yemen and Iraq), and who are afraid, probably a little too much, of their wives and daughters walking alone in the street at night.
At the moment the residents of the Bibby Stockholm number a few dozen, but the authorities expect them to reach half a hundred by the weekend and soon to be about five hundred, which is the maximum capacity of the barge in decent conditions. The entry of some was ultimately blocked by humanitarian agencies, who successfully argued that they had had traumatic experiences at sea, lost family and friends, or feared for their lives, and brought them into a ship is a flagrant violation of their human rights.
The residents of the barge (three floors and 93 meters long) will all be asylum seekers who arrived in the United Kingdom in shepherds through the English Channel, or hidden in lorries, in the trunks of cars and in the Eurostar train. Last year, 105,000 applied, more than half of whom have not yet received an answer as to whether or not they can stay in the country (the process takes fifteen months on average, much longer than in France, the Netherlands and Germany) . Of them, half stay in houses, and the other in hotels, which cost seven million euros a year.
The Conservative Government led by Rishi Sunak, twenty points behind Labor in the polls, believes that its only chance of staying in power depends on controlling inflation next year (of 7.9 %, the highest in the G7) and immigration (606,000 people last year, a historical record). He wants to put the asylum seekers who have already arrived in the country in barges like the Bibby Stockholm (but he had to return three more that he had bought because no port accepts them), and in military installations in disused, which do not have running water, electricity and a hospital nearby.
Rather than curbing immigration, because it is necessary for economic growth and the payment of pensions, the Government wants to give the impression that it will be inflexible with those who arrive illegally from now on. His plan A is to send them to Rwanda (and other African countries such as Morocco, Ghana, Nigeria, Namibia and Niger, with whom he is in negotiations), but the matter is blocked in the courts, pending the final ruling in the winter of the Supreme (which he trusts will be favorable). Plan B is to place them on Ascension Island, in the middle of the Atlantic, six thousand kilometers from the United Kingdom. Labor criticizes these plans, but has announced that it will keep them in force if it wins the election, due to “lack of alternatives”.
Meanwhile, the Bibby Stockholm, charming hotel or maximum security prison, already has its first residents. And soon he will put up the “no places” sign.
