BHHRG

The present legal position, like the present Dutch practices, is ambiguous. From the purely legal point of view, both euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal. However, even the law recognizes euthanasia and assisted suicide as lesser crimes than murder, which is not the case in most other countries or in international human rights law. The sentences which apply to euthanasia and assisted suicide in the Netherlands are markedly lower than those which apply to murder, for the simple reason that Dutch law does not consider these acts to be murder. Adherents of the argument that even partially permitting euthanasia leads down a "slippery slope" to uncontrollable abuses might well locate here, in the Dutch criminal code itself, the beginning of that slippery slope.

Article 293 of the Dutch penal code states, "He who, on the explicit and serious desire of another person, deprives him of his life, will be punished with an imprisonment of up to 12 years or a fine in the 5th category (100,000 guilders)." Article 294 states, "He who deliberately incites another person to commit suicide, renders assistance in doing so or provides him with the means to do so, will, in case suicide follows, be punished with an imprisonment of up to 3 years or a fine in the 4th category (10,000 guilders)."

There can be few issues which touch the twin human rights issues of the rule of law and the right to life more deeply than euthanasia. And yet, in a leading European Union country which vaunts its own commitment to the principle of human rights, euthanasia is widely and openly practiced, even though it is against the law.
Introduction
The Dutch seat of government, the Hague, was the place where the first steps were made towards establishing a system of international criminal law: the first attempt at creating a supranational security system was made at the International Peace Conference in the Hague, while a series of conventions on the laws of war were signed at the Hague between 1904 and 1907, marking the preliminary building-blocks for a supranational legal system. Now, the Dutch city is once again in the vanguard of international criminal law, as it hosts the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the court which is expected to give rise, in time, to the International Criminal Court with universal jurisdiction.
Despite this, there are serious grounds for concern that the internationally famous Dutch toleration of euthanasia contradicts the very principles to which the Dutch have proclaimed themselves attached for a century. The Dutch parliament is currently considering a bill to bring the law into line with a quarter of a century of official toleration of euthanasia. However, even this regularization of the legal situation leaves open the more fundamental issues of the right to life and its potential infringement.

In November 1997 violent confrontations broke out between between pro- and anti-immigration groups in Dover after a summer in which several hundred Czech and Slovak gypsies had arrived in the town seeking political asylum. Since then the situation has calmed down only to re-ignite alarmingly on the evenings of 13th and 14th August when several white youths were attacked with Stanley knives by groups of migrant youths at a local funfair and outside a petrol station in Dover. Some of the injuries sustained were severe _ in one case a white youth needed 175 stitches. Women are not immune: a 13-year-old girl had 48 stitches after being caught up in the attack.
It seems that local boys had taunted the foreigners. However, many saw the incident as a dangerous scenario that had been in the making for some time. Dover is a small, impoverished port of 40,000 people. The presence of less than 1000 migrants in the town at any one time where they are housed in bed and breakfast accommodation should pass unnoticed. This is not the case: the migrants are seen as compounding the problems of blight and unemployment that disfigure this coastal town. Competition between young males from the town and abroad for the attention of girls at the town’s few entertainment centres also seems to promote tensions.

France has a variety of problems associated with migration and asylum-seekers from North Africa, but the port of Calais just 22 miles across the English Channel from Dover provides the jumping-off point for people who wish to cross into Britain. Other Channel ports, including those in Belgium and Holland, attract some would-be asylum-seekers anxious to enter Britain but Calais is the most important point of embarkation by far. The means employed usually involve stowing away in the back of one of the many trucks that pass daily into the English port. Despite the fact that truckers face a fine in England if it can be proved they knowingly transported illegal immigrants, many say that their human cargo climbs into the back of the vehicles without their knowledge. Some have alleged that immigrants have threatened them with knives in order to gain passage, but it cannot be ruled out that others knowingly collude in the trade for the substantial financial rewards it offers _ up to several thousand dollars per person carried. On the day BHHRG visited Dover 140 people had been found hidden in the back of a truck.
Many also enter Britain on the Eurostar train service from France. Once in France an immigrant can buy a ticket in Paris for the last station before the Tunnel and a second for the cross-Channel section of the route and get on the train with only perfunctory checks on documents to contend with since on showing only the first ticket the impression is given that he intends only to travel to Calais.