“Going out to sea in 7C water means going to your death,” Jacques Billant, prefect of the Pas-de-Calais region, told reporters. “With a lifespan limited to 10 minutes in the event of capsizing.”
Five migrants died on Sunday after a small boat overturned off the French coast. Around 70 people were trying to get aboard as it set out from a beach near Wimereux, south of Calais, and trouble began almost at once. The boat left the shore for England at about 02:00 local time (01:00 GMT), the French maritime prefecture said. Dozens had been trying to board as it pulled away.
A tugboat patrolling the coast reached the scene and found the bodies. Around 50 firefighters and several police vehicles were sent out, according to the regional paper La Voix du Nord, with several boats and a French Navy helicopter helping in the water. Survivors were taken to a local community centre. One person was in critical condition at a hospital in Boulogne-sur-Mer, and another had injuries that were not life-threatening.
The UK Coastguard played no part. The boat went down in French waters, very close to the beach.
Billant said criminal networks were putting migrants in danger. Post-mortem examinations will establish whether the five drowned or died of “thermal shock.” The public prosecutor’s office in Boulogne-sur-Mer has opened an investigation into “aggravated manslaughter.”
Reaction in London
Foreign Secretary David Cameron called the deaths “heartbreaking” in an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. He said Britain had done “a huge amount” to back French authorities on policing and intelligence. He also argued that passing the government’s Rwanda bill, which would send some asylum seekers to the African country, was “essential” to save lives and stop small-boat crossings.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is trying to revive the plan after the Supreme Court ruled the earlier scheme unlawful, and Tory MPs are pressing him over it. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, on the same programme, called the deaths a “tragic loss of life.” He said, “I absolutely agree we need to stop these Channel crossings,” but rejected the Rwanda plan as a “gimmick” and said Britain should “go after the criminal gangs that are running this vile trade.”
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said the deaths “must be a wake-up call to take decisive action,” including safe routes for people fleeing war-torn countries.
The numbers
No crossings were recorded for nearly four weeks up to 12 January. The Home Office put that down to poor weather. In the same stretch a year earlier, 503 migrants were detected in the Channel. The provisional total for 2023, 29,437 crossings, is below the 45,774 recorded for 2022, the highest since figures began to be collected in 2018.
France’s Court of Accounts, which audits state spending, has described the intelligence given to French police as often “first level” and “very general.”
Sources
- Five migrants die trying to cross English Channel in boat
- Five migrants die attempting Channel crossing
Sources
- Five migrants die trying to cross English Channel in boat
- Five migrants die attempting Channel crossing
