Migrants walk through the water in Boulogne-sur-Mer on July 18 to an already full dinghy. The passengers want to cross from the French coast to the United Kingdom.Image Johan Ben Azzouz/MAXPPP
In front of the beach of Boulogne-sur-Mer, a tourist paddled leisurely in a canoe. Further on, children were given sailing lessons in small boats. Holidaymakers lay on the beach in swimsuits and sunglasses.
A usual summer scene, until suddenly something remarkable happened: dozens of migrants walked on the beach, right between the tourists. Then they walked into the water, past the canoe and the sailing children. Photos show some migrants lifting their own toddlers and babies to keep them above the water.
About 40 migrants climbed aboard a large dinghy that was waiting for the coast. A woman could only put her two children on the boat, there was no room for herself. She had to go back to the beach. The outboard engine was started and we set sail for the British coast, the dream destination of many migrants.
New method
Along the northern French coast, people smugglers are using a new method of ferrying people across the Channel: with so-called ‘taxi boats’. They are ready in the water off the coast. You climb in and are ferried across for a fee.
In the past, the migrants usually walked at night, with a boat, from the dunes to the sea. Now they walk without a boat and no longer isolated in the dunes, but in places where many holidaymakers are. This makes it more difficult for the police to act.
The described scene in Boulogne-sur-Mer happened on Tuesday. As many as six taxi boats then reported for the beach and about two hundred migrants climbed aboard.
“The police managed to arrest about fifteen migrants who were still on the beach. But once they are in the water, the police do nothing,” photographer Johan Ben Azzouz told his own newspaper La Voix du Nord. He stood on the beach and took pictures.
“Migrants run less risk if they walk into the water to a boat that is coming there, than if they come out of the dunes with a boat and have to walk across the beach with it.”
Mothers with babies
The photos of taxi boats and migrants in the midst of tourists caused a lot of commotion in France. “What everyone prefers to close their eyes to, became visible with those photos,” said Olivier Ternisien of aid organization Osmose 62 on television. “Mothers with babies who are waist-deep in water. And the tourists, foreign holidaymakers, saw it happen before their very eyes.”
The French authorities are very upset about it. “We’ve had a very difficult day,” regional prefect Jacques Billant said after Ben Azzouz’s photos were released. “It happened in broad daylight in the heart of the city. People smugglers deliberately let the migrants walk among the holidaymakers to make the work of the police more difficult.”
A dinghy off the French coast near Sangatte on July 18. Image AFP
The taxi boats are a new phenomenon, he emphasized. The first surfaced a few months ago. “They are now being used more and more. Migrants sometimes even have to swim to it, which entails enormous risks. I’ve asked for police reinforcements. We need to stop more migrants as they walk into parts of the city where there are also many tourists. We’re going to ban them from walking on the beach.”
Those extra agents, about sixty in total, have now arrived. But the northern French coastal strip that must be monitored is long: more than 100 kilometers. If one location is better guarded, the people smugglers immediately move to another. Even from Normandy, migrants try to get on the water.
‘Bunkerstad’ Calais
In 2022, a total of about 45,000 migrants crossed the Channel from France by boat. That was about 60 percent more than the year before. Boats were increasingly chosen as the other ways to get to England – by ferries or via the tunnel – are becoming more secure. Calais is already called the ‘bunker city’ because of all the fences, walls and rolls of barbed wire around the harbor and tunnel entrance.
This year there will be considerably more patrolling and action on beaches and in the dunes near Calais and the surrounding area. According to Prefect Billant, that has an effect. “We are now stopping about 60 percent of all migrants before they can enter the Channel.”
In the first five months of this year, more than 10,000 migrants managed to make the crossing: more than a quarter less than in the same period last year. That could be one reason why people smugglers are now opting for a different method – with taxi boats from the water, where there are still relatively few checks.
“The police managed to arrest about fifteen migrants who were still on the beach. Once they are in the water, the police do nothing.”Image AFP
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2023-07-23 12:40:15
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