Suburban Social Experiment: UK Given Taste of Syrian Siege

'If Surrey were Syria', a film by charity, Save the Children, shows images of suburban schools shut down without notice and cordoned-off with barbed wire fence in a leafy part of a middle-class area south-west of London. In the film, stunned parents and children look on demanding answers that they don't get.

The shelves have been stripped from a local shop leaving the assistant, played by an actor, to tell shoppers that they haven't received a delivery and there's now a waiting list to buy milk. She's greeted with scorn, resentment and surprise.

"Don't talk to me like a simpleton", one man shouts as he leaves empty handed. Another asks if she's entered a parallel universe.

The film, shot to see how people living in the UK would handle similar everyday situations faced by people living in Syria, a fake ambulance is stopped by ‘guards' at a blockade unable to reach hospital.

 

Members of the public stop and stare in shock — some film the scene on their mobile phone — some try and intervene and help. But then the film switches to scenes from Syria with pictures of children bleeding, pleading for help. In a striking image to encourage charity donations, the words on the screen read:

‘Just because it isn't happening here, doesn't mean it isn't happening.

"A tiny fraction of Syrian refugees make it to Europe. The poorest, the sick and the elderly remain under siege, barrel bombed, gassed and shot, starved of food and medicine", Justin Forsyth, CEO of Save the Children said.

"These families now face an extreme choice, to return to a war zone or risk drowning as they are smuggled to Europe. If the average European citizen would not stand for being cut off from food, healthcare and schooling, why should Syrian families.

According to the charity, the vast majority of Syrian refugees are being cared for by neighbouring countries, "and more people flee across its borders every day than total the population of the Calais ‘jungle'".

Eleven million people have been forced to leave their homes in Syria —  three million more than the population of London. The charity is calling for countries, like the UK, to resettle their fair share of refugees.

Meanwhile the resettling of refugees and asylum seekers stokes fear and anger in right wing extreme groups of the population. And in response to the rising anti-immigration rhetoric, the British government appears to be matching it with its own words to describe refugees and asylum seekers.

Prime Minister David Cameron recently referred to refugees as a "swarm". Backed up by his Home Secretary Theresa May who said Britain was "not paved with gold" and immigration minister James Brokenshire was keen to tell asylum seekers that the UK was not "the land of milk and honey". That's because the government has just cut financial support to asylum seekers. 

But it's not just the UK government that are adopting an aggressive approach to immigration, fringe groups with extreme views such as self-titled Britain First, suggest that all asylum seekers should be rejected and deported "who do not originate from countries bordering Britain".

According to Home Office figures, the UK received 25,020 asylum applications in the year ending in March 2015.

The UK Home Secretary Theresa May has refused to accept a mandatory EU refugee quota system and will also refuse to take part in any future permanent EU system to relocate asylum seekers and refugees from outside Europe.

If the UK conservative government get its own way, the only way some people living in Britain will ever get a glimpse of the refugee crisis facing Europe, is by watching a fake film.