More people want to spread message of welcome amid violence, charity says

A refugee charity has received an ‘incredible response’ to their campaign to send messages of welcome and solidarity to asylum seekers.

Charity Conversation Over Borders has said people are ‘rallying around’ their call to send messages of welcome to asylum seekers amid violence in parts of the UK (@conversationoverborders/PA)

There are so many more people who want to spread a message of welcome and solidarity to asylum seekers in the UK than spread hate, a charity boss has said, amid an “incredible response” to a campaign to counter violence seen across the country.

Conversation Over Borders, a national charity supporting refugees and asylum seekers, is calling for people to send in welcoming notes which will be delivered to asylum seekers staying at initial hotel accommodation, including those targeted in “far-right violence”.

Chief executive Colette Batten-Turner said since putting the call out the charity received 150 messages by the next day, adding: “We are getting more and more messages come in by the second.”

“People are really rallying around it,” she said.

“It’s incredible to see it, I think it’s so important the voices we are hearing, most are the voices of far-right extremism, that it’s actually really not representative of most people in the UK.”

She added: “My message to anyone living in initial accommodation hotels and newly arrived to the UK or feel affected, is… there are so many more people who want to spread a message of welcome and solidarity and compassion, and who will welcome those people to the UK, and feel the UK is a better place because they’re here.

“We will make this a safe place for them to be, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the moment.”

More than 400 people have been arrested after disorder around England and Northern Ireland, according to police sources, with the number expected to rise in the coming days.

The violence was sparked by false claims about the identity of the teenager suspected of killing three young girls and injuring several others in a knife attack in Southport on July 29, and has seen shops looted and hotels housing asylum seekers attacked.

Conversation Over Borders currently works with 800 refugees and asylum seekers across the country, including visiting people in hotel accommodation.

Ms Batten-Turner said: “People are very, very afraid, even in places not yet targeted by the far-right violence.”

Sharing positive messages to asylum seekers began as part of the charity’s digital inclusion project where a note from the donor would accompany technology such as a laptop to the newly arrived asylum seeker to create a “personal connection”.

“It’s really touched people and really helped,” Ms Batten-Turner said, as the initiative aims to counter a narrative of exclusion and racism, and think about how people who have just arrived are “just human beings like everyone else”.

The charity hopes to start sending out the handwritten notes at the end of the week.