A painting of a mountain of lifejackets has appeared on a sea wall at Ramsgate’s Western Undercliff.
The image was created on a board by street artist Hugh Whitaker to raise awareness of the hundreds of lives lost in the Channel.
The artwork highlights the number of people seeking asylum who lose their lives every year making the dangerous crossings by sea. In 2024, 880 people have so far died attempting to cross waters in the Mediterranean.
The pop-up mural was created at the Western Undercliff with the changing tide revealing the image of discarded lifejackets. As the tide went out, passers-by spotted the artwork before the charity then removed it.
The Home Office reported as of 12th August, 18,467 people have crossed the Channel this year, that’s more than the same period over the past four years.
Revealed on the date of the most attempted crossings in previous years – August 22nd – the painting highlights the launch of a nationwide campaign by UK-based refugee charity Refugease.
The campaign asks commuters to donate the cost of their journeys to work, contrasting this mundane task to the gruelling attempt to cross the English Channel. Travellers will experience migrant boats ‘physically’ in sea-sick inducing tube station take-overs or aurally in 360 soundscapes nationwide in cinemas.
Valentina Osborn, Refugease founder and Managing Director, said: “Over the past decade, as wars have escalated, neighbouring countries to conflicts are buckling under the pressure of demands to host ever-increasing numbers of families seeking safety, rendering these environments increasingly inhospitable, as resources are scarce and refugee camps crowded. “This has forced refugees to make longer and more dangerous journeys, to the UK for example, to reach safety. This has resulted in an increasing number of tragic drownings in the English Channel.
“Our aim is first to evacuate civilians from where conflicts are at their most precarious, then we do what we can to add to the resources of neighbouring nations (whether food packages, education, employment opportunities, or sustainable farming systems) – doing what we can to help refugees avoid making dangerous journeys further afield.”
Refugease, founded in 2015, is based in Tunbridge Wells.
For more information please visit https://www.refugease.org/.
Graffiti
No sympathy for illegal immigrants, almost all fughting sge males, leaving a safe EU country in search of a better benefits package. They are spending thousands with orgasnised criminal gangs. And naive fools still treat them as victims.
Do you have any sympathy for the women and children who attempt the crossing? Do you have any sort of feelings when you read of little children drowning?
None of them left a “safe” country in the first place. They fled from their homelands because of war or persecution.
The vast majority of people arriving by small boats obtain Asylum status! Migrants who are not asylum seekers who have arrived in the UK illegally. can be deported back to their home countries providing their home countries accept them. Many do not! Turkey won’t accept their own citizens back, and many other countries will not either, if the illegal migrant can’t prove their identity, and why should they?
When we were a member of the EU anyone claiming asylum in the first EU country they arrived at, usually Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, but also other EU countries and if they satisfied the criteria to become an asylum seeker, they were granted the right to remain. Some were distributed amongst other EU countries including the UK.
But now we are no longer a member of the EU, none of this applies, so if someone comes here by small boat they can’t be returned back to the first EU country they arrived at. The best way to stop people coming here in small boats claiming asylum would be to re-join the EU. Its the biggest draw factor as to why people want to come to the UK, because they can no longer be returned to the first EU country they arrived at! So, its all the fault of you so called Brexiteers, who voted to leave without knowing what the T & C’s were, Duurh!
What an utterly pointless and ugly thing to do. It’s like an alley cat marking its territory.
The gammons were just lying in wait to sputter their impotent fury about this, weren’t they?! 😂😂😂
If I drew anytyhing on those walls I would be arrested? Is this a legal or not if not lets see the approperate action, or can anyone draw anything they like now anywhere? I am not an expert but is this not one law for those from Tonbridge and one for those in Thanet?
Wokeflake, sorry, what is a gammon please explain so I understand and why do they make a series of soft explosive or spitting sounds. “the engine sputtered and stopped”
Wokeflake… It must be reassuring to know that it’s you and your ilk that is ultimately responsible for Manchester, Southport, Rotherham, Woolwich et al.
You must be proud.
😂 Sure it was, Alex.. love to see the logic behind that.
Alex Peters has surely got the wrong end of the stick. The recent shameful and disgusting riots were caused by people with no empathy for , or understanding of, any immigrants.
Like the Tsinga guy who set fire to a bus in Harehills and his 2,000 mates who charged the police, who then ran away in fear for their lives? All because of a social worker – presumably a Labour voter – who was trying to do their job and fulfil their Statutory Duty of Care.
Coldplay recently played Bucharest. They had one Romani support act…. Whom the crowd booed when they came on!
The hand wringers – middle class ladies for the most part who might a century or so ago have matched with the suffragettes & Temperance League – have no clue what they are helping to unleash. The real irony is that when the beast is fully free to roam it will be they who bear the brunt of its wrath. Many already have, but that is an infinitesimal fraction of those who will do if they don’t wake up now. Blokes like me have far less to fear.
I just feel sad for all you naive do-gooders.
what on earth are you talking about, Harry Webb? Your third paragraph is impenetrable. What sort of bloke are you then, and why would you (and other blokes like you) have less to fear than anyone else, and who are these people whom everyone else will fear?
Reread it and think.
Work it out.
No, Mr Webb, you wrote the comment, so you are the one who needs to clarify what you mean by it.
I don’t “… need to clarify…” anything.
The subjects and objects of the third paragraph are perfectly accessable from what is already written.
Suffice to say, I as a male have far less to fear from these incomers than a liberal woman does!
Every Castle has a moat and ours is 26 miles wide – Good bit of art.
I like that better than any stencilling from bankys.
But here’s my thing, why are some people allowed to do this type of graffiti and it’s art. Others who are just as good as bankys is classed as graffiti ?
It’s graffiti and looks ugly and will promote more graffiti across the island.
This is aloud but you can’t paint your own house in the colour you want and not aloud to have a 6ft fence around your property to keep yourself and family safe.
I blame the Refugease.
Why is Whitaker not arrested for this graffiti?2 tier criminal system.If somebody sprayed a” no more illegal migrants”mural next to it,would they achieve such acclaim?
How many of you so called”pro illegal migrants”campaigners,would take these into your house?Thought not,you hypocrites
Has it been authorised by someone? If so who?
If not, then it is a criminal act and needs to be handled accordingly.
If it isn’t, what happens when someone else graffiti’s over it? Will they be prosecuted?
Two tier in action.
” 2 tier criminal system”, what is that?
Similar to The Cymru Leagues in the Welsh football league system.
M.M. Rees
It means bankys doesn’t get nicked for his graffiti. But joe bloggs will get nicked for his graffiti. Hence a two tier system
In the mid 80s the British Givernment via HM Forces trained and supplied Sadden Hussein troops to fight against Iran in the Iran Iraq War. He never was going to invade the U.K. and yet due to Tony Bliar we went to war and more innocents died as a result if his illegal war than he killed and now we are being invaded by his former people.
We tried to dampen the civil war in the former Yugoslavia and there was a UN armed embargo in Bosnia overseen by NATO during the daytime while at night the US flied in and supplied the weapons to the Bosnia Muslims who later became ISIS.
Our governments cause these mass refugee influxes …. WHY?
Poodling to Washington.
As former U.S. National Security Advisor termed Britain, “Our Good Lieutenant”.
It was, in Iraq & Libya at least, about the primary of Washington and the U.S. $. Nothing more.
Over 80 years Washington squandered all the good will and wealth it had amassed between 1917 & 1945. Now it owns not one ounce of what is held in Fort Knox.
Our poodling has impoverished us financially and morally.
Don’t mistake my concern about uncontrolled illegal migration as me being racist.
I have a friend I lserved with in the British Army. He is Kurdish by tribe but an agnostic Jew and he fought in the Iran/Iraq War (Iranian Revolutionary Guard) before working in Bosnia as an interpreter and then also in Iraq for the 2003 Gulf War.
Little our government have been involved in has been in the national interest and I believe Bliar is a traitor.
If you don’t know about the Iran Iraq War, here’s a link. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War
Weaken western culture, destroy democracy = power.
There’s a pretty diverse set opinions here, but I’m not going to get into the migrant-asylum debate. I’m only here to point out that if you look at the picture of the guy touching up the statement you can quite easily see that it’s a separate panel, easily removed and not actually painted on the wall. If you want get your knickers in a twist about the the Western Undercliff complain about the derelict cafe and the probability of part of it collapsing on a kid playing inside because the owner hasn’t kept the structure secure…
It’s such a non-argument to ask why people don’t take refugees into their homes. I can attest from first hand experience that this isn’t want people want. They don’t want charity, they don’t want hand outs.. they want to live their lives (rebuilding from scratch), work in and contribute to the society they’ve moved to and integrate with their new neighbours… This has been the case with the overwhelming majority of displaced people I’ve worked directly with over the last decade.
If you think it’s an easy choice, consider what it would take for you to leave you house with a single bag, walk to Dover, get in an overloaded boat and head to France to see what would happen.. AND for this to be the best choice for you/your family/your children.
And if you think folk have it easy or good.. have a Google for what it’s like inside Napier Barracks and budget up what it’s like living over less than a tenner a week!!
Don’t blame the immigrants, the poor or the unemployed for the state of the country.. that’s driven by the 0.01%.. not the minority!
the woke police have even censored my thoughts on here , this page is such a tiny part of real life that it dosnt realy matter
You haven’t been censored, perhaps your comment has gone into spam