Friday, July 10, 2009

BNP 'SINK BOATS AT SEA'

EU 'should sink immigrant boats'

Article from: Agence France-Presse

From correspondents in London

July 09, 2009 08:00am

THE leader of the far-right British National Party (BNP), recently elected to the European Parliament, says the European Union should sink boats carrying African immigrants trying to reach the continent.

Nick Griffin, one of two BNP members elected to the Brussels parliament in May, told the BBC that those on board would be thrown a life raft, but insisted only drastic action could stop Europe being "swamped by the Third World".

"The only measure, sooner or later, which is going to stop immigration and stop large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans dying on the way to get over here is to get very tough with those coming over," he said today. "Frankly, they need to sink several of those boats.

"Anyone coming up with measures like that (in the EU) we'll support, but anything which is there as a 'Oh, we need to do something about it' but in the end doing something about it means bringing them into Europe, we will oppose."

He denied advocating that anyone should be "murdered at sea", saying: "They can throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya.

"But Europe has sooner or later to close its borders or it's simply going to be swamped by the Third World."

More than 67,000 people crossed the Mediterranean Sea to seek asylum in Europe in 2008, half of them arriving in Italy and Malta, according to figures released in January by the United Nations' refugee agency.

The BNP calls for an immediate halt to immigration to Britain, and the "voluntary resettlement" of those who are already here to their countries of ethnic origin.