Thirteen migrants drown in worst tragedy of this year in the English Channel | El Diario Vasco

It is the worst humanitarian tragedy of this year in the English Channel. At least thirteen migrants drowned on Tuesday after a boat sank off the coast of Boulogne-sur-Mer, in the north of the French territory. In this border area between France and the United Kingdom, clandestine crossings have increased alarmingly and migrants and refugees are taking more and more risks due to the increased presence of police and border agents. With this tragic accident, the death toll rises to 37 since January 1. This makes 2024 the deadliest year in the channel.

The boat, with about 65 people on board, sank in the morning after having set sail a few hours earlier. A French state ship found it adrift and rescued its crew. Among the dead, three of them were minors. There were also several injured and missing. Most of them are from Eritrea, reported the prefecture – equivalent to the government delegation – of the Northern Pas-de-Calais. “All state services are mobilised to find the missing,” said the acting Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin.

The French leader blamed the tragedy on human traffickers. “They packed a small boat less than seven metres long with seventy people,” Darmanin told the media in Boulogne-sur-Mer. “The mafias that are behind this horrible and unscrupulous trafficking in human lives are putting more and more people on inflatable boats that are less and less suitable for sailing and sending them to the Channel, even when the weather is very bad,” lamented his British counterpart, Yvette Cooper.

Dangerous crossing

Tuesday’s shipwreck is reminiscent of another that occurred at the end of April. Three men, a woman and a girl under 7 drowned after the engine of the plastic boat they were travelling in broke down. There were up to 112 people crammed into it. The great danger of these crossings does not deter many of these migrants who dream of reaching British territory. Up to 21,615 of them have crossed the channel clandestinely since the beginning of the year, according to the UK administration.

The British government, especially when the conservative Rishi Sunak was in charge, put pressure on the French government in recent years to increase police presence in the area. Parliament in London finally adopted in April a controversial law to deport to Rwanda those foreigners who arrived clandestinely in the United Kingdom. It was a mainly dissuasive measure, but its effects were not reflected in May or June. A few weeks after his electoral victory, the new British prime minister, the Labour Party member Keir Starmer, announced in July that they would stop applying it.

The legislation on deportations to Rwanda did not stop sea crossings. NGOs present in the area accuse the French and British authorities of encouraging migrants to take increasingly dangerous routes, such as travelling by boat instead of trying to sneak into a lorry through the Channel Tunnel. Faced with a heavy police presence and a lack of reception centres in the area, many of them are living in small makeshift camps on the outskirts of Calais, Dunkirk and Boulogne-sur-Mer. “For their arrogance, their incompetence and their violence, the Ministry of the Interior and Gérald Darmanin must be held responsible,” said the association Utopia 56 on the social network X.

Not only has 2024 been marred by the sad record of deaths in that area, but it is also on track to be a record year in the number of crossings. It could exceed the 45,000 people who crossed the Franco-British border in 2022. Without the gravity – at least for now – of the Mediterranean, the English Channel has become another open-air cemetery. And the situation is getting worse year after year.