Depending on the days, the Bibby Stockholm barge is either a maximum security prison or a five-star hotel. When the British government wants to put fear into the body of potential asylum seekers, or show voters how tough it is on the immigration issue, it looks worse than Alcatraz, San Quentin or the sinister La Joyita prison in Panama. whose name speaks for itself. But when he has to respond to criticism from the progressive press and human rights groups, he describes it as if it were the Le Sirenuse hotel in Positano, on the Amalfi coast, where in August an ordinary room costs up to three thousand euros. the night.
In reality, the Bibby Stockholm, which after three weeks anchored off the Dorset coast this Monday 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, youth hostel or field hospital style, with cabins for between four and six immigrants, with their own bathroom (no need to go to the corridor), television and a desk, common facilities such as a gym and basketball court, nurse and doctor on call, food available 24 hours a day and excursion program.
Its residents are not imprisoned, because they can come and go as they please, with a bus that takes them to Weymouth (the nearest large town) between seven in the morning and eleven at night, and the possibility of hailing a taxi if they are it makes them 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 (a town of thirteen thousand inhabitants) received the first group on Monday, 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 the ages of 18 and 65, from countries in conflict and with serious human rights violations such as Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, Yemen and Iraq), and that they are afraid, probably somewhat exaggerated, that their wives and daughters are walking alone at night on the streets.
At the moment the residents of the Bibby Stockholm number a few dozen, but the authorities hope they will reach fifty by the weekend, and soon they will add up to five hundred, which is the maximum capacity of the barge in decent conditions. Some were ultimately blocked from entering by humanitarian NGOs, who successfully claimed they had traumatic experiences at sea, lost family and friends, or feared for their lives, and putting them on a ship is a flagrant violation of their rights. humans.
The residents of the barge (three decks and 93 meters long) will be entirely asylum seekers who arrived in Great Britain in small boats through the English Channel, or hidden in trucks, in car trunks and in the Eurostar train. Last year 105,000 applied, more than half of whom have still not received an answer as to whether or not they can stay in the country (on average the process takes fifteen months, much longer than in France, the Netherlands and Germany). Of them, one half is housed in houses, and the other in hotels, which cost seven million euros a year.
The conservative government headed by Rishi Sunak, twenty points behind Labor in the polls, believes that its only chance of staying in power is to control inflation by next year (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 are already here on barges like the Bibby Stockholm (but he has had to return three others that he had bought because no port receives them), and in disused military installations, which lack running water, electricity and nearby hospital.
More than stopping 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 court, awaiting a final ruling this winter. of the Supreme (who trusts that it will be favourable). Plan B is to place them on Ascension Island, in the middle of the Atlantic, six thousand kilometers from Great Britain. Labor criticizes those plans, but has announced that it will keep them in force if it wins the elections, due to "lack of alternatives."
Meanwhile, the Bibby Stockholm, a charming hotel or maximum security prison, already has its first residents. And soon it will place the "no vacancies" sign
