They spent two hours in the water, at dawn and without knowing how to swim. They say that they shouted for help, that they whistled very loudly, but that no one came. They were alone. Alone in the middle of the English Channel, the strait that separates France from the United Kingdom. Until they were rescued. The shipwreck of the boat in which they were traveling left at least six dead on August 12. It was the second deadliest since November 2021. But even so, Afghans Mohsin, Aref Amir, Hajjomid and Sadaqat will try again. They see no other option. While they wait to board again, they survive hiding among trees on the outskirts of Calais, like hundreds of other migrants, in fear of being evicted by the police.
The northern French city has been synonymous with barbed wire, concertinas, concrete walls, fences and high-tech cameras for several years. Also of police patrols, which in the middle of the night and at unexpected crossings, inspect the vehicles that go to the beaches in the area. The City Council, governed since 2008 by Natacha Bouchart (Les Républicains, right), even placed hundreds of rocks in the town to prevent the pitching of tents. The objective is to avoid a new Jungle at all costs, the camp where 10,000 migrants came to live before it was dismantled in 2016. And to stop irregular immigration to the United Kingdom through the canal, one of the busiest in the world, which in turn narrowest is only 33 kilometers.
The camps today are smaller and more dispersed. Police, NGOs denounceThey dismantle them every 48 hours. The harassment is constant. “They didn’t come yesterday, so they’ll probably be here tomorrow,” anticipates Mohsin Zazai, a 24-year-old Afghan who has been in Calais for more than a month. His friends were in the boat that sank that Saturday in August. He lives with them in a tiny settlement reached by dirt roads and by jumping over a puddle of greenish water. In the surroundings, police vans come and go without stopping.
The bet is to reinforce the patrols even more. The British Government promised in March to contribute more than 540 million euros over three years to intensify controls. But for NGOs working on the ground, the effort is counterproductive. “None of the implemented strategies work”, says Pierre Roques, coordinator of the association Auberge des Migrants. It’s more. “The more the border is protected, the more indispensable the traffickers become,” he says. Another of the consequences, he points out, is that the exits are moving more and more to the south. French rescuers saved 25 people from a drifting boat in August Le Touquet, 70 kilometers south of Calais. From there, the journey is even more dangerous, since it lasts longer.
Mohsin, like his friends, arrived at a beach at night to get on an inflatable boat. But he backed down when he saw the state he was in. It was not the case of Aref Amir, 24 years old. He tells that the boat had capacity for 40 people. “But there were more than 60 of us,” recalls the young man, originally from Mazar-e Sarif, in northern Afghanistan. “The one who was driving the boat had no experience, he did not know the location,” he continues. Those who offer to drive the boat usually get a more advantageous price for the journey. Mohsin and his friends, on the other hand, paid between 1,500 and 2,000 euros for risking their lives.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe
On board were two Sudanese and two Iraqis, now indicted for their possible responsibility in the shipwreck, according to the prosecution. But most were from Afghanistan, where the Taliban seized power in August 2021 after the withdrawal of US and allied troops. It is one of the reasons why they emigrated. A relative of Mohsin, for example, was killed by fundamentalists. Others say that they were policemen during the previous government and that they received threats with the arrival of the Islamist group.
The objective, now, is to reach British territory by any means, start a new life and leave behind the violence that accompanied the thousands of kilometers traveled. Sadaqat, another 17-year-old survivor, shows the wounds on his hands. Next to him, Hajjomid, 21, assures that the worst thing was his passage through Bulgaria, where the dogs were thrown at him. But now, they no longer want to look back. “Either we get to the UK or we die,” they repeat when asked if they will keep trying after the accident. Shipwrecks rarely discourage crossings. On August 16, four days after the drama, 444 migrants arrived on the shores of England in eight different boats, according to official figures.
Most of the migrants hoping to cross the channel are from Afghanistan and Sudan, a country at war. But there are also people from Albania, Syria, Lebanon, Guinea, Eritrea and Yemen. To reach Calais, many had to cross the Mediterranean Sea, also by boat. And although they know that the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has toughened immigration policy, they see no other option. Since the reinforcement of security (walls, concertinas, canine brigades, cameras) to access the port and the Eurotunnel terminal by land, in 2018, more than 100,000 migrants crossed the maritime corridor, according to figures from the British authorities. So far this year there were almost 17,000 and in 2022 there were 45,000, much more than in the two previous years.
At the camp, Mohsin is now in charge of the phone. He’s the only one who still has it. Every hour he receives messages from family and friends of the survivors, whose mobile phones were confiscated by the police. The procedure is usual. The telephones can provide key elements to identify the traffickers, the Paris prosecutor’s office, in charge of investigating the shipwreck, explains to this newspaper. In the group, of about 15 people, there is a 13-year-old teenager. His uncle, who lives in London, calls him twice in two hours. He is worried and asks her to behave and not smoke.
As night falls, the group builds a small bonfire and prepares a dish of rice with chickpeas. To drink there is tea with milk and sugar. The food is distributed by Calais Food Collective, a small NGO that also places large water tanks in different parts of the city. Recently, he denounced that the police removed one from him in the middle of the center. Installing “any permanent infrastructure is impossible,” laments Chloé Magnan, 26, one of the team’s volunteers. Fanny Donnaint, another 23-year-old volunteer, adds: “There is no evolution. There is always a police presence and obstruction of our work.”
Neither Mohsin nor Aref Amir nor Hajjomid nor Sadaqat know how long they will remain there. For now, they try to accommodate the place where they live. Next to some blue tents, they have placed a blanket to sit on. After a long silence, they say that they hope that the bodies of their friends, the six deceased Afghans, can return to their country of origin.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
#Afghan #survivors #English #Channel #shipwreck #die