Dozens of people who were trying to reach the Canary Islands disappeared this Wednesday as night fell at sea after the shipwreck of a canoe near the coast of Senegal, according to reports from residents of the town of Gandiol, from where the boat set sail. The same sources added that among them there are around thirty young girls. Throughout Thursday the news spread among the neighbors, who began to share photos of the supposedly deceased people. The body of a young woman has been recovered from the sea. The authorities are working on the exact count of missing people, according to sources from the Ministry of the Interior, a complex task because people from other regions of the country were also traveling on board.
The shipwreck occurred in the area whose local name can be translated as The Gap on Wednesday night, a dangerous exit to the sea from the Senegal River used by Saint Louis fishermen, who have been demanding its beacons for years to avoid accidents. According to local sources, the boat carrying a hundred young emigrants had set sail from Gandiol with the intention of reaching an even larger canoe that was waiting for them on the high seas and with which they intended to sail to the Canary Islands.
Senegal is one of the main departure points for the canoes that have arrived in the Canary Islands almost daily in recent months and has been the scene of serious shipwrecks this summer that have cost the lives of dozens of people. In recent months the presence of women and young girls had been increasing aboard these canoes.
One of the worst accidents this year took place last August when about 90 young people from the Senegalese town of Fass Boye died of hypothermia and dehydration at sea after being adrift for days following an engine problem. A Spanish ship rescued the 38 survivors and took them to the Cape Verde archipelago, where they received medical attention before returning to Senegal. A few days before, in July, the shipwreck of a canoe heading to the Canary Islands off the coast of Dakar caused around 17 deaths. In 2020, more than 100 young people died on a boat that had left Mbour and that broke up on the high seas after the explosion of a gas cylinder with which the migrants were cooking on board.
The constant departures of canoes from Senegal are at the origin of the intense migratory peak that the Canary Archipelago has been experiencing since the beginning of last summer. In 2023 alone, more than 25,000 people have arrived in the Canary Islands, 9,000 of them in this month of October, which has led the Government to declare an emergency situation and prepare the imminent opening of some 11,000 accommodation places in barracks, hotels and hostels on the Peninsula. Adult migrants who arrive in the Islands are referred to other autonomous communities, a procedure that has existed since 2000. Minors are welcomed in the Canary Islands.
Political and social crisis
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The political and social crisis that Senegal has been experiencing since 2020, which worsened in the first days of June of this year, is one of the reasons that explain this migratory rebound. A series of violent demonstrations that were harshly repressed by the Senegalese State and that caused at least fifty deaths ended with the imprisonment of the main opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, accused of insurrection, and the outlawing of his political party this summer. More than a thousand young people were arrested. Sonko, who has so far been eliminated from the presidential race for the February 2024 elections, had raised high hopes for change among thousands of young Senegalese, many of whom feel frustrated.
Similarly, the economic disruptions created by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have caused a rise in the prices of essential products, while Senegalese fishermen denounce the shortage of fish which they attribute to the presence of large industrial ships with a license granted by the Government of your country. The main departure points for the cayucos to the Canary Islands are Joal, Mbour, Kayar or Saint Louis, all of them fishing areas.
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