by Madeleine Davies, Church Times
Tensions over a hotel housing asylum-seekers make it ‘difficult for the community to feel safe’ Archdeacon of Chelmsford says
REFLECTED in a warning that tensions over a hotel housing asylum-seekers are a “powder keg”, the fears of many people in Epping are as much about the presence of outsider agitators as about the use of the hotel, the Archdeacon of Chelmsford, the Ven. Jonathan Croucher, said this week.
“We are very conscious of the concerns,” Archdeacon Croucher said. “But there is a fear that this is being latched on to by outside forces that have particular agendas and that, therefore, it’s quite difficult for the community to feel safe now. There is as much, if not more, worry about people coming in and stoking up agitation as there is about the presence of the hotel.”
Protests outside the Bell Hotel began on Thursday. They followed the arrest on 8 July of Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, a 41-year-old asylum-seeker from Ethiopia who arrived in the UK last month by boat and had been staying there. He has been charged on three counts of sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity, and one count of harassment without violence. He has denied all offences and is on remand. His trial is due to start on 26 August.
The Conservative leader of Epping Forest District Council, Chris Whitbread, said that the Council had “consistently and repeatedly opposed the use of the Bell Hotel to accommodate asylum-seekers. . . Placing vulnerable individuals from a wide range of cultural backgrounds into an unsupervised setting, in the centre of a small town, without the proper infrastructure, support or services, is both reckless and unacceptable.” He has called for the hotel to be “closed without delay” by the Home Office.
Read also: Pro-migration protest group escorted by police is funded by trade unions – Campaigners brought to Epping hotel are TUC-backed and headed by Diane Abbott. By Fiona Parker and Patrick Sawer, Telegraph
Did Essex Police ‘bus in’ counter-protesters? by Tom Jones, UnHerd