At least four migrants died on Wednesday when their makeshift boat sank in the English Channel as they tried to reach England from France, a new tragedy illustrating the dangers of these ever-increasing crossings. At a time when England and northern France are experiencing freezing temperatures, the vast operation coordinated by the British Coastguard has rescued more than 40 people, said British media citing a government source.
A little over a year after a shipwreck in which 27 migrants perished, the tragedy once again raises the question of the coordination and responsibilities of the United Kingdom and France on this issue, at the heart of frequent tensions between the two country.
A rescue operation at night
“Four deaths have been confirmed,” a UK government spokesman said. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed his “sorrow” after this “tragic loss of life”. Footage broadcast on Sky News television shows migrants in a black dinghy, apparently too small to carry dozens of passengers, being rescued in the middle of the night.
The captain of a fishing boat at sea last night told Sky he was woken up by a colleague telling him that “there are migrants around the boat”. “There were people all over the water, screaming,” said the sailor, who says his team spent two hours rescuing the migrants, saving 31 of them. Since the beginning of the year, nearly 45,000 migrants have made the dangerous crossing in these busy waters, unheard of.
Extremely high risk of hypothermia
Several rescue teams from south-east England have been mobilised, along with two British helicopters and one from the French navy, according to the coastguard. The alert was given at 3:05 a.m. (local and GMT), according to the British government. But the French association for helping migrants Utopia 56 told AFP that it had been contacted at 1:53 GMT about a boat in distress by a voice message with a location in French waters.
“At 3:40 a.m. (2:40 a.m. GMT), the French coast guard told us that it was the English who were in charge of it,” said Nikolaï Posner, a manager of Utopia 56, specifying that we “can never be really sure” that it is the ship that sank despite the corroborating evidence. “The risk of hypothermia followed by death is extremely great. (…) We do not have the luxury of waiting to intervene.”
A heavy precedent in November 2021
Already in November 2021, 27 migrants aged between seven and 46 had perished in the sinking of their boat while trying to reach England. Documents recently unveiled by the French daily The world and consulted by AFP implicate the French and British rescuers, who passed the buck without assisting the boat. The new shipwreck on Wednesday comes the day after the announcement by the British Prime Minister of a vast package of measures intended to fight against illegal immigration and after the signing in mid-November of an agreement between Paris and London on the subject.
The issue is highly sensitive for the Conservatives, who have been promising since Brexit to “take back control” of the borders when the number of crossings has never been so high, completely overflowing the asylum system. “It is literally vital that we put an end to illegal crossings in the English Channel”, reacted Wednesday Suella Braverman, the British Minister of the Interior, who recently created controversy by calling the arrivals of migrants an “invasion”.
London’s measures “will have a deterrent effect and will save lives”, she argued, while refugee support associations are calling on the contrary for the opening of safe migratory routes. “Until we have more safe and accessible routes for people seeking asylum, we are likely to see more such incidents,” said Alex Fraser, a British Red Cross official. At least 205 migrants have died or gone missing crossing the English Channel since 2014, according to the Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).