British Home Secretary Priti Patel has insisted that Ukrainian refugees are not being turned back at the French port city of Calais and said the UK is “doing everything possible” to speed up efforts to grant them visas.
On Sunday, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said it was “inhumane” of the UK to turn away refugees arriving at Calais if they did not have a valid visa.
Ms Patel responded by saying that the British government was “not turning anybody around or turning anybody back at all”.
“And I think it’s really important to emphasise that, particularly at this time, when all nations across Europe must work together to help and support people in need and fleeing Ukraine at this awful, awful time.”
“I have staff in Calais to provide support to Ukrainian families that have left Ukraine to come to the United Kingdom. It is wrong and it is inaccurate to say that we are not providing support on the ground. We are.”
The Home Office said “around 50” visas had been granted under the Ukraine Family Scheme as of 10am on Sunday. The government said that 5,535 applications had been completed and submitted online and 2,368 people had booked a visa appointment to submit their application and biometric information.
On Sunday, Ms Patel visited the Ukrainian Social Club in Holland Park, west London, where she dropped off a bag of donations before meeting volunteers helping with relief efforts. She later held a meeting with the Ukrainian ambassador to the UK, Vadym Prystaiko.
Asked if it was acceptable that only about 1 per cent of submitted applications had been granted in the first 48 hours of the visa scheme, she said: “Let’s be clear, this is the first scheme in the world that’s up and running in this short period of time.
“Ten thousand applications and, yes, grants are happening as we stand here right now and are speaking."
Ms Patel said the UK government was increasing staff numbers at application centres across the EU "as well as in the border countries such as Poland, where I was the other day and obviously where huge numbers of people are coming through”.
She said staff were being flown to border countries “so we can fast-track and speed up applications, and it’s right that we do this”.
Speaking outside the Ukrainian embassy in west London, Mr Prystaiko said the visa process for refugees fleeing his homeland for Britain could be improved.
“We believe that some of the procedures can be really simplified.
“We will sort it out later. Now we have to let as maximum people we can have as possible.
“All the security checks should be in place for obvious reasons because it is a war.”
But he said any “bureaucratic nonsense” should be cleared for now, something he said the UK is already doing, both with immigration and on sanctions.
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
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