France sees Channel migrant deaths as a result of Britain’s policies, citing the role of smugglers and risky crossings despite France’s efforts to control the situation.
“France sees Channel migrant deaths as a problem of Britain’s making,” with French officials increasingly pointing to Britain’s immigration policies as the driving force behind the crisis. Despite enhanced security measures, smugglers continue to exploit desperate migrants, causing tragedy on the northern coastlines.
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In the UK, officials have been keen to pursue-examine-and-castigate-the-smugglers narrative. In every case, every death is viewed as a crime driven by naked criminal intent. Which, of course, it is.
Again, some smugglers packed terrified fee-payers into what appear to be ever-skimpier vessels with virtually no lifejackets.
Police in northern France are doing the same. Fixated on the job of policing ever-growing swaths of militarised shoreline, Now they are beefed up with additional manpower, buggies, and night-vision gear as well as thermal imaging drones that can spot clusters of migrants hiding in the dunes.
They know, however, that as they become more widespread — much of it now funded by the British taxpayer – so too will efforts smugglers to come up with fresh ways across and all at ever-greater risk to those making the perilous crossing.
Gangs now launch their boats inland, from canals, or far down the French coast it will take them much longer to cross a busy stretch of water full of commercial shipping and tugged by powerful tides.
The gangs shove increasing numbers of souls into ever-decreasing and quite often inadequate inflatable craft – sometimes topping 90 in a vessel rated, just about or not at all officially even for much less than half that load. A problem made worse as the authorities began disrupting the flow of boats driven to this coast for several hundred miles across Europe.
Now, more often than not, smugglers resort to force. The beaches became stones against the police. There were knives flashed, too.
Earlier this week local gendarmes showed me police footage of what appeared to be another early-morning beach battle, as riot-shielded officers defended themselves under an incoming rain of rocks. In April, I saw a different battle first-hand.
The smugglers are trying only to purchase a couple of seconds so that they and their boats can get out there with the punters – at which point, fearing blame for exacerbating dangers people inevitably face crossing the open sea in tiny inflatable vessels, police seldom stop them.
While the police have their duties and dangers to deal with, when French politicians (and residents of seaside resort towns lined up along this coastline) react yet again to another new horror visitor — they do not ask about what can be done in terms of criminality on central Mediterranean boats. They instead want projective answers: What is still pushing large numbers from African countries toward an at-sea dinghy trip bearing near total fatal destiny?
But the sharper truth, delivered to me so frequently – by mayors whose towns have opened their doors and are now struggling under pressure that far exceeds local resources; by pensioners bracing themselves for a harsh winter cut off from propane deliveries because stockists on the mainland cannot afford restocking when they rarely receive payment; even couples walking dogs along beaches where corpses washed up this week – is simply: it’s Britain.
Recent British history in France is a story of camps around the Channel Tunnel and ferry ports, small boats making their way across Table Mountain has been likened to “21st-century apartheid” Read more But with many French people having spent decades watching this crisis unfold on what they see as their doorstep – from discontent over stowaways being found in lorries at Calais tightrope walkers trampling up Eiffel Tower – some have grown remarkably angry about how the state border was cut when only last week you could stick a fork into an apple pie.
Gerald Darmanin was in Boulogne on Tuesday to see for himself this reality of which he spoke so dispassionately.
He called illegal immigration a “tragedy”, but most of the PM’s soundbites focused on how it was perhaps unsurprising that young Eritreans, determined Sudanese and Afghans, Syrians, and Iraqis risk their lives to get here by boat if they are convinced this is where there jobs – even without proper papers.
As he has frequently done, Darmanin appealed again for a new migration pact between Britain and the European Union.
In so doing, he echoed a sentiment that has spread across France: no matter how great the effort to fight smugglers even more is needed. An asylum crisis is being directed via the demands of tens of thousands of migrants rather than by earn-a-buck motives made possible using to provide criminal collaborations.
That, and there is also a distinction to be drawn between the way Britain responds in these moments compared to France. It is visible in the front page stories of newspapers and television.
The UK small boat crisis may be big news, but in a France consumed by its domestic political tempests and quite simply over northern Europe’s refugee situation, even 12 Channel deaths can barely get headlines.
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