Suella Braverman used these words about the many asylum seekers who cross the English Channel in rubber boats to seek asylum in the UK.

It was used when he had to maintain conditions at the asylum center in Manston in southeast England, where 4,000 people lived in a building intended for a maximum of 1,600 people.

Volker Turk, who took over as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights two weeks ago, strongly criticized the use of the words.

– Invasion, a bad word, said the Austrian as he held his first press conference as a UN summit on Wednesday.

Warning

– I’m glad there is such a strong reaction in the UK to the use of these words, he added.

Turk, who was deputy chairman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees amid the 2015-2016 refugee crisis, warned against the dehumanization of refugees and migrants.

– This is certainly a problem that we often see. The kind of dehumanizing words and language I heard from European politicians in that period was appalling, he said.

Braverman has gotten into trouble in recent days, both because of his asylum policy rhetoric, and because he used his personal email address to forward government documents.

Way down the list

Britain is far down the list of European countries that accept the most asylum seekers per resident, according to figures from the Oxford Migration Observatory obtained by The Guardian.

In the period 2020 to 2021, eight asylum seekers came to the country per 10,000 residents. In terms of population, 17 EU countries receive more.

Cyprus tops the list with 153 asylum seekers per 10,000 inhabitants. In Austria the figure is 42, in Malta the figure is 29, and in Greece the figure is 27, an overview shows newspaper already made.