Police Consider Potential Arson After Potential Asylum Accommodation Burns

A former retirement home which had been earmarked to become asylum seeker accommodation in an English village has burnt down, with police saying they are treating the incident as a potential act of arson. Engines and crews of Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue service responded to a fire at Roman Court in the village of Leverington, a former sheltered living facility for retirees, on Wednesday night. The fire was controlled but not before it had severely damaged the building. The Fire Brigade said they were going to launch an investigation into the cause of the fire, and Cambridgeshire Constabulary said “The fire is being treated as arson and is being investigated”. They asked any member of the public with knowledge of how the fire began to come forward and speak to them. State broadcaster the BBC notes the empty building has recently been earmarked by the British government to become asylum seeker accommodation. Despite the Home Office attempting to reassure locals that the facility was to be refurbished to accommodate “26 mothers and babies”, the decision is controversial locally and the local council has voiced its opposition to Whitehall. The plans have also been protested by locals. Cambs News reports demonstrations took place at the former care home on October 4th and 11th “as residents and campaigners voiced opposition to plans to turn the site into accommodation”. It is stated some 300 people turned out for the last protest, a considerable number for a village of just 3,300 residents. The BBC’s report cited a neighbour of Roman Court, who reflected of the fire: “It was probably going to happen wasn’t it, let’s be honest.” No arrests have been made. Breitbart News has long reported on the unusual propensity for sites earmarked to become asylum seeker accommodation in other European states to burn down. This became something of a public order emergency in Europe during the early days of what was called the Europe Migrant Crisis, as former hotels and other buildings bought up for asylum use burnt down nearly daily. On some occasions, not was all as it seemed. In 2016 it transpired that a case of a migrant hostel burning and being tagged with swastikas was actually the work of a Syrian arsonist, who wished to simultaneously protest crowded living conditions, and frame an imaginary anti-mass-migration activist for an attack. In 2021, migrants at a camp in Greece set fires to protest being locked down for coronavirus regulations and even attacked firefighters as they arrived to tackle the blaze.