The English Channel human trafficking route has once again seen fatalities, after two adult women and one child died on a smuggler boat off the coast of northern France on Wednesday morning.
Two women in their 30s and a 10-year-old boy were declared dead by a medical team on Monday morning after a boat was reported to have capsized close to the French coast by the Blériot Plage beach near the port of Calais.
The smuggler boat was of the migrant ‘taxi’ type, a technique used by smugglers whereby the inflatable boat travels along the French coast picking up several smaller groups of migrants waiting in the water before heading north to the United Kingdom, reports Le Figaro. The weather in the English Channel was said to be good, with calm waters when the smuggler boat went into distress.
An air ambulance was dispatched to the scene, and an emergency medical team attempted to revive the three, who are said to have already received medical attention onboard the boat. The helicopter team declared the child and two women dead at the scene, reports the BBC.
Six rescue boats responded to the scene, and the remaining migrants aboard the smuggler boat were landed in the French port of Calais. Authorities believe 105 migrants were aboard the rubber inflatable.
As noted by European Union-funded news portal InfoMigrants, it is typical for migrants prevented from attempting a Channel crossing to be simply dispersed by police, with nothing preventing them from trying to cross the following day again.
Today’s fatalities follow three other deaths in the English Channel last week involving human trafficker ‘small boats’.
Europe’s migrant crisis continues to be characterised by the emergence of ruthless criminal gangs exploiting the weak borders and policies of Western nations to smuggle humans for profit, in unseaworthy boats at great risk to their customers’ lives. Exactly how many adults and children have been killed and raped by their criminal gang traffickers in the decade-long migrant crisis isn’t clear, but the United Nations’ International Organisation for Migration states several thousand have died and disappeared tring to reach Europe every year for the past decade.
The IOM claims around 37,000 migrants have died trying to get into Europe since 2014, and at least 22 are known to have died in the English Channel this year.
The British government is presently paying France three-quarters of a billion Euros to control its own borders and keep migrants away from it’s England-facing beaches. It points to migrant arrivals to Britain being down over 40 per cent so far this year as evidence the government’s plan is working, although whether the left-wing Labour government is essentially trying to take credit for migrant flows upstream slowing all cross Europe having a knock-on effect on arrivals has been debated.
Nevertheless, it appears certain that despite Downing Street’s ‘Smash The Gangs’ rhetoric, those smuggling gangs are becoming better organised and more effective, with those boats that do arrive being bigger than ever. The average number of men — and arrivals are overwhelmingly male, data shows — per boat has risen from just a dozen on a simple inflatable boat at the start of the crisis in 2020 to over 60 per voyage aboard on ever-larger, made-to-order craft from China and then smuggled overland through Europe today.
These mega-dinghies have contributed to some record days. 781 migrants arrived by small boat on Wednesday last week, a record for the year. Over 1,100 migrants are known to have come to Britain by small boat in the past week — although the return of unintercepted migrant arrivals is a reminder that undetected arrivals remain possible — and over 18,500 have come this year. According to data aggregator Migrant Tracker UK, over 83,000 migrants have come by small boat since Labour won the last General Election.
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