Katie Hopkins, a British celebrity and journalist, is no stranger to controversy. She has strong opinions about practically everything and is used to creating controversy.

The outspoken reality TV star compared migrants to “cockroaches” and “feral humans”, saying that they were “spreading like the norovirus”.

Gunships should be employed to block people crossing the Mediterranean, she argued in The Sun.

It was released just before a fishing boat sank, killing at least 700 people.

AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The 40-year-old former Apprentice contestant claimed she had little sympathy for migrants, instead feeling sorry for British lorry drivers and taxpayers.

“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,” she wrote in her Sun column.

“Because in the next minute you’ll show me pictures of aggressive young me spreading like norovirus on a cruise ship.”

“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.

“Once gunships have driven them back to their shores, boats need to be confiscated and burned on a huge bonfire.”

“…do I feel pity? Only for the British drivers, who get hit with a fine every time one of this plague of feral humans ends up in their truck.”

She advocates “going Australian” on the issue, saying:

“They threaten them with violence until they bugger off, throwing cans of Castlemaine in as an Aussie version of sharia stoning. And their approach is working.”

Hopkins stated, “We don’t need another rescue project.”

“What we need are gunships sending these boats back to their own country. You want to make a better life for yourself? Then you had better get creative in North Africa.”

“Some of our towns are festering sores,” continued Hopkins, “plagued by swarms of migrants and asylum seekers, shelling out benefits like Monopoly money.”

According to the Independent Press Standards Organisation, there have been over 100 complaints against the piece.

Hopkins’ remarks were condemned by comedian Russell Brand, who called them “hateful.”

Her remarks, according to the UN, resembled pro-genocide propaganda.

The UN High Commission for Human Rights claimed tabloid “misinformation” about immigration nourished a “nasty underbelly of racism” hiding underneath the migration issue in a harsh statement released on Friday.

In a statement, High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein stated, “Under the guise of freedom of expression, [negative coverage is] being allowed to feed a vicious cycle of vilification, intolerance and politicization of migrants.”

“This is not only sapping compassion for the thousands of people fleeing conflict, human rights violations and economic deprivation who are drowning in the Mediterranean. The nasty underbelly of racism that is characterizing the migration debate in an increasing number of EU countries has skewed the EU response to the crisis … and could sadly result in further massive loss of life.”

The Commission claimed in its statement that Ms Hopkins’s Sun column used “language very similar to that used by Rwanda’s Kangura newspaper and Radio Mille Collines during the run-up to the 1994 genocide.”

Both Rwandan media firms were eventually found guilty of public incitement to commit genocide by an international tribunal, according to the Commissioner.

Peter Herbert of the Society of Black Lawyers has also denounced Katie Hopkins and The Sun’s editor David Dinsmore to the Metropolitan Police in London, accusing them of inciting racial hate.

Hopkins has courted controversy on many occasions in recent months, most recently for claiming that dementia sufferers “block beds.”

A Labour MP also reported her to the police after she was accused of inciting racial hate after comments on the Rochdale grooming crisis.