The sinking on Wednesday off Calais of a boat carrying migrants trying to reach Britain left 27 dead.
La Manche, a new “open-air cemetery”: at least 31 migrants died Wednesday in the sinking of their boat off Calais, the starting point, in northern France, of attempted crossings to the British coasts, sending a shock wave in Paris and London after several weeks of tension. “France will not let the Channel become a cemetery,” President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday, announcing the death of at least 31 migrants in what Prime Minister Jean Castex called a “tragedy”.
The shipwreck in the English Channel is a tragedy.
My thoughts are with the many missing and injured, victims of criminal smugglers who exploit their distress and misery.
I follow the situation in real time.@GDarmanin goes there.— Jean Castex (@JeanCASTEX) November 24, 2021
The French head of state called for “an emergency meeting of European ministers concerned by the migration challenge” and assured that “everything will be done to find and condemn those responsible” for this shipwreck, shortly before his Minister of the Interior does not announce the arrest of four people smugglers suspected of being linked to this shipwreck. “Shocked, revolted and deeply saddened”, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he wanted to “do more” with France to discourage illegal crossings of the Channel. “We had difficulty persuading some of our partners, in particular the French, to act up to the situation,” he told Sky News after a crisis meeting, pointing Franco-British disagreements.
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Strong emotion
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After weeks of tension on the migration issue, London and Paris had recently agreed to strengthen their cooperation to try to stop these departures, especially in the wake of the arrival on November 11 of 1,185 migrants on the English coast, a record number. This tragedy, feared by the authorities and associations for several months, is by far the deadliest since the soaring in 2018 of migratory crossings of the Channel, in the face of the increasing lockdown of the port of Calais and the Channel tunnel, used until there by migrants trying to reach England.
Rescue ships bringing back the victims were to dock in the evening in Calais, where a hangar was opened in the port to accommodate the bodies. A large security perimeter has been set up with a large system of firefighters and rescuers, noted an AFP journalist. According to the Maritime Affairs administration, the search has been halted for the moment. Before this sinking, the death toll since the start of the year stood at three dead and four missing. Six people were killed and three were reported missing in 2020.
Strong emotion in front of the drama of the many deaths due to the capsizing of a migrant boat in the English Channel.
We cannot say enough about the criminal nature of the smugglers who organize these crossings. I go there.— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) November 24, 2021
The Dunkirk prosecutor’s office announced to AFP the opening of an investigation for “assistance with entry to illegal residence in an organized group” and “aggravated manslaughter”. According to the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea, three helicopters and three boats are participating in the research.
The French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, was due to go to Calais hospital in the evening. He expressed on Twitter his “strong emotion” and condemned the “criminal nature of the smugglers who organize these crossings”, before calling for “a very harsh international response”. The Dunkirk prosecutor’s office announced to AFP the opening of an investigation for “assistance with entry to illegal residence in an organized group” and “aggravated manslaughter”.
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An absolute tragedy
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The drama took place on a “long boat”, a fragile inflatable boat, whose flexible bottom tends to fold up when it takes on water and is overloaded, we learned from the rescuers. The use of these particularly dangerous and poor quality boats has become more and more frequent since this summer. According to the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea, three helicopters and three boats participated in the search. About fifty people were on board the boat which had left Dunkirk, said a source familiar with the matter.
“People are dying in the Channel, which is turning into an open-air cemetery, like the Mediterranean,” said Pierre Roques, coordinator of the Auberge des Migrants, an association in Calais. “What happened is a horrible tragedy,” Didier Leschi, director general of the French Immigration Office, told AFP. He denounced the smugglers “who try at all costs to maintain camps near the sea to facilitate the morbid work of making migrants cross the Channel at their own risk”. Across the Channel, the Conservative MP for Dover, Natalie Elphicke, deplored “an absolute tragedy”.
Attempts to migrate across the Channel on board small boats have doubled in the past three months, the maritime prefect of the Channel and the North Sea, Philippe Dutrieux, warned last Friday. As of November 20, 31,500 migrants had left the coast since the start of the year and 7,800 migrants had been rescued, he said. A trend, he had noticed, which has not abated despite the winter temperatures. According to London 22,000 migrants made the crossing over the first ten months of the year. Mr. Dutrieux explains this phenomenon in particular by “the cynicism of the organizations which are behind these passages”.
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