IT WAS with a little perplexity that I read of two tragedies in last week’s Gazette.

Firstly on page eight, you reported on the tragedy that is unfolding in the migrant camps of Calais and is worldwide news and quite rightly so. This is a human disaster of great immensity and I was in admiration of Tina Lister and her team for what they are trying to do.

These migrants are in great need of any help people can give. They are living in makeshift camps and trying to survive everything that is put before them. They are humans and this tragedy needs to be sorted as soon as possible. Many people are really concerned for the migrants who have been displaced through circumstance, mostly through no fault of their own. It is a tragedy that we should all be concerned about.

Then for me the perplexity started as I read on page three about our own tragedy that is unfolding in a makeshift camp here in Devizes.

The circumstances of these homeless people here in our own town may be different but ultimately the result is the same. They too are trying to survive everything that is being put before them, they too are cold and hungry and above all, they too are human beings.

Devizes has the largest amount of displaced people living rough in the South West so why then do we treat our own so differently? Why, with the tragedy in Calais, do people send aid and ask for donations to help them? Yes they need and deserve it but don’t our own unfortunate homeless people living rough deserve it too?

You say in your reports that we can donate to the Calais tragedy and I urge people to do this but in your report about our own tragedy there is no plea for help. There is no hint of helping these people to find a warm place to maybe get their lives back on track, just a quote from deputy town clerk Simon Fisher saying: “We are already working to clear the land of homeless people and making sure the camps were removed.” Where is the justification in this? Why do our own homeless deserve to be treated like vermin and cleared out from a place that is as near to home as they have?

We are human, the unfortunate migrants are human and our own unfortunate Devizes homeless are humans, so let’s treat everybody the same. They all need help but let’s sort out our own tragedy first.

ASHLEY SMITH, West View Crescent, Devizes