UPDATE:
A fundraiser calling to raise cash for the same “cockroach” migrants dismissed by Katie Hopkins has secured more than £13,000 in just a matter of hours.
The JustGiving page was set up by Izzy Saunders –who also started a Change.org petition calling for Hopkins to be sacked from her job as a columnist for The Sun.
The page calls for financial support for the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) which will launch search, rescue and medical aid operations following the capsizing of a migrant vessel in the Mediterranean on Saturday.
Katie Hopkins has helped raise £13,000 for migrants
Up to 900 people are feared dead in what could be the deadliest toll from a single capsizing.
Saunders, 22, told Huffington Post UK: “It’s been amazing to watch those who signed the petition condemning Katie Hopkins’ comments raise more than £10k in just a few hours.”
What’s more, Saunders is now petitioning The Sun to match the funds raised. She added: “Now we’re asking the Sun to put their hands in their pockets and match these donations.”
The petition calling for The Sun editor David Dinsmore to remove Hopkins as a columnist reached the milestone of 200,000 signatures on Monday afternoon.
It refers to Hopkins’ column on Friday entitled ‘Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants’.
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Here's a reminder of what else she had to say.
NO, I don’t care. Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad.
I still don’t care.
Also:
Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit “Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984”, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb. They are survivors.
And finally:
It’s time to get Australian. Bring on the gunships, force migrants back to their shores and burn the boats.
The capsizing comes amid a wave of migrants trying to leave Libya for Italian shores. They seek to take advantage of calmer seas and warm weather to make the dangerous crossing on smugglers' boats.
Just last week, 400 people were presumed drowned when another boat capsized.
On Monday press watchdog Ipso informed HuffPost UK it had received more than 100 complaints about Hopkins’ column, describing the number as “unusual”.
A spokesman added: “I can’t remember another issue that has generated so many complaints so quickly.”
A spokesman for The Sun told HuffPost UK the newspaper would “not be commenting on an internet petition” and also refused to comment on the Ipso complaints.