London - German leader Angela Merkel has encouraged more refugees to risk their lives in attempts to reach Europe by saying her country would take more asylum-seekers, the leader of Britain's anti-European Union UK Independence Party (UKIP) said on Friday.
Nigel Farage said he was appalled by the photographs of a dead three-year Syrian boy washed up on a beach in Turkey and said there was a risk of more deaths because Europe has said it plans to accept more refugees.
“The question we need to ask ourselves is how do we prevent more appalling photographs like that? How do we prevent things like the 71 people who were found dead in the back of that truck in Austria the other day,” Farage said.
Merkel's stance had increased the incentive for people to try to reach Europe and the images of migrants trying to cram onto trains at a Budapest railway station this week looked like the beginning of a “stampede,” he said.
“It is a very dangerous thing, I think, that she has done,” Farage said at the launch of UKIP's campaigning ahead of Britain's EU membership referendum, due before the end of 2017.
He added: “I genuinely think and believe that Chancellor Merkel, compounding the pull factors this week, is more likely to make us see more of those kind of photographs.”
Reuters