Sink migrant boats, urges North West MEP (From Blackburn Citizen)

Sink migrant boats, urges North West MEP

8:10am Thursday 9th July 2009

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BRITISH National Party leader Nick Griffin, an MEP for the North West, has said boats carrying migrants from Africa to Europe should be sunk to stop Europe being “swamped by the Third World”.

Mr Griffin said occupants of sunk boats could be given life rafts to get back to Africa.

Nearly 37,000 immigrants, many from Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa, arrived in Italy by sea last year from Libya which has become a major staging post.

Mr Griffin said he would back the creation of a ocean-going force to block the Mediterranean route, but called for tougher measures to be introduced.

”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 told BBC Parliament’s The Record Europe.

”Frankly, they need to sink several of those boats.

"Anyone coming up with measures like that 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”, telling the BBC: “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 its simply going to be swamped by the Third World.”

Mr Griffin also conceded that the BNP had been unable to find enough extremist allies to create a “group” in the European Parliament, where he will take his seat next week.

The decision of Italy’s Lega Nord to join the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group led by Britain’s UK Independence Party effectively ended efforts to find the necessary 25 MEPs from seven different member states.

”No one was prepared to commit themselves knowing that we had not got Lega Nord on board.

"Even so, we will continue to work together with these other groups and share ideas,” he said.

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