In a sad state of affairs, a petition calling for Emma Watson to spend one week in a Calais migrant camp without bodyguards has gained over 15,000 signatures.
The petition has emerged online at a time when the acceptance of migrants into Europe is under heavy scrutiny following the New Year attacks in Cologne.
According to The Independent, the petition’s founder, Oscar Izard, is against the idea that refugees from Africa and the Middle East pose a sexual threat to women.
In the description of the cause, Izard wrote:
In order to show how safe current migration is to Europe, particularly regarding the cause of feminism (I reject wholeheartedly the notion that North African and Middle Eastern migrants are unsafe, and rapists), Emma Watson should spend a week’s holiday in a Calais migrant camp, without guards of course, to show how safe, and how pro feminism these migrants are.
There has been no response from Watson as yet, but she has previously used social media to make clear her pro-refugee stance.
I’m not sure what anyone is getting out of this petition, and the thinly veiled attack on Watson, in all honesty.
She may have come in for some stick for that Alan Rickman tribute tweet, and obviously her feminist activism to promote equal rights gets under the skin of a minority of people who refuse to evolve, but I think requesting her to spend a week unguarded in an undoubtedly dangerous venue is out of line.
Migrant camps aren’t dangerous because those within are predisposed to violence or sexual assault, they are dangerous because these people are in a desperate situation.
Rather then spend time on pointless petitions why not actually help in whatever way, great or small, you can?
