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AA / Paris / Ümit Dönmez
A white march was organized in Dunkirk (North), on the night between Thursday and Friday, in tribute to the 27 migrants who died a year ago after their boat sank in the Channel while trying to reach Britain.
Several hundred people gathered in Dunkirk and marched towards Malo-les-Bains beach, holding torches and waving a banner that read: “Your borders, our dead”.
The people gathered to pay tribute to the 27 victims of this shipwreck, one by one they pronounced the names of the latter.
As a reminder, on 24 November 2021, 27 bodies of migrants were found in the Channel, including those of six women and a girl, while only two survivors were rescued.
It is the deadliest shipwreck in the English Channel since the exiles tried to reach the United Kingdom in makeshift dinghies.
This disaster had aroused much emotion in France and across the Channel.
According to the revelations published on November 13 by the French newspaper “Le Monde”, the migrants called the French emergency services on several occasions for help. The latter waited for the exiles to pass through English waters without sending any means of rescue.
The phenomenon of channel crossings continues to grow. According to official British statistics, more than 40,000 people have reached England since the start of 2022 in makeshift canoes.
Since 2014, at least 203 people have died or gone missing, at sea or on land, trying to reach England from the northern coast of France.
– Agreement between France and the United Kingdom
As a reminder, France and the United Kingdom signed a new agreement this month to strengthen bilateral cooperation in the fight against illegal crossings of the Channel by migrants.
This agreement, which is part of the Sandhurst Treaty signed in January 2018 between the two countries, allows London to pay an amount of €72.2 million in 2022-2023 to France. In return, Paris will increase its security staff on French beaches from 800 to 900, from where the exiles travel to Britain.
According to the text of the agreement, Britain and France have set themselves the goal of deploying “technological and human resources”, including drones, to the French coast to better detect, monitor and intercept boats.
However, the document signed in Paris by Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, and Suella Braverman, her British counterpart, does not feature any quantified measure of boat transfers, which London had wanted.
“It is only by working together that we can hope to solve this complex problem. I would like to thank Gerald and his team for their work and their cooperation,” the British Home Secretary tweeted the same day in French. .
When asked by Anadolu Agency (AA) the next day, William Feuillard, coordinator of eight local associations in Calais that provide support to migrants, including “L’Auberge des Migrants”, lamented the reaction of politicians to the issue of migrants. in France and in Europe.
Feuillard assessed that the agreement between France and the United Kingdom to combat the illegal crossing of migrants will only have the consequence of increasing the risk of deadly crossings of the Channel for exile [*].
Also read:
* “”The Franco-British deal on migrants will only increase the risk of fatal crossings” (NGO)” – Anadolu Agency (AA), November 16, 2022
https://www.aa.com.tr/fr/monde/-laccord-franco-britannique-sur-les-migrants-ne-will-only-increase-the-risks-of-travers%C3%A9es-mortelles -ong /2740141
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