ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A 24-year old woman from Dargala village in Erbil province was among the 27 people who drowned in the English Channel on Wednesday, Rudaw learnt on Friday, after she left the Kurdistan Region earlier this month to join her fiancé in the United Kingdom.
Baran Nuri Hamadamin died while trying to cross the English Channel in an inflatable small boat, Krmanj Ezzat, whose cousin is Baran’s father and a veteran Peshmerga, told Rudaw on Friday.
“After seeing her dead body [on his mobile], we have confirmed that she has died,” said Ezzat who is the former mayor of Soran district, now an independent administration.
One of Baran’s cousins, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, provided Rudaw English with details of her situation.
Baran became engaged to a Kurdish man from the UK earlier this year. Although her fiancé has British citizenship, the young woman had planned to illegally enter the country in order to join him.
She left Dargala village in northeast Erbil on November 2, joining two other Kurdish women who were also attempting to reach the UK to be with their fiancés.
The three arrived in Italy after travelling to Turkey on the same day. From there, they went to Germany, a country that thousands of other Iraqi Kurds have been attempting to reach over recent months as they look to escape despair, corruption, and repression, among other reasons.
Four days later, the women took a train to France. There, they met with Haval, the fiancé of one of the women, Muhabad, who helped them take the boat and waited for them on the English side of the Channel, according to Baran’s cousin. They never arrived.
“After failing to hear any news from them, he looked for them and later found out that the bodies of Muhabad [his fiancée] and Baran were among the dead,” said Ezzat.
Karzan migrated to the UK some years ago, and now works as a barber in Bournemouth. He returned to the Kurdistan Region in 2021 and became engaged to Baran in January. Karzan has UK citizenship but did not take his fiancée “because they were told that it [process of sponsoring spouse] would take up to six years,” said the cousin.
Baran and Karzan had planned to hold their wedding in the UK.
“After arriving [in France], we had no news of them for a few days,” Baran’s father told Rudaw’s Bakhtyar Qadir, calling on the Kurdistan Region authorities to help return the dead body of his daughter.
“They are kept in a hospital [morgue] in France for now,” he said.
Following the tragic death of the 27, most of whom are believed to be Kurds, France and the UK have called for new measures to limit migration across the Channel, although the countries are embroiled in a political dispute over what steps should be taken.
President Emmanuel Macron has criticised British PM Boris Johnson for tweeting an open letter of British requests to France on Thursday, with the French government cancelling talks between the two nations on the migrant crisis.
Kurdish migration activist Ranj Peshdari, speaking to Rudaw English from Germany, said most of the dead are from the Kurdistan Region, having made the journey to Europe from the Peshdar region in Sulaimani province.
“I’ve been told by people in Dunkirk that none of these individuals had life vests,” Peshdari recounted. “Despite this, the smuggler, a Dutch-Kurd, sent them on their way and promised them that their journey would be short.”
La Voix du Nord, a local paper on the northern French coast, reported that the inflatable boat carrying those who died was hit by a large ship. A fishing boat reported bodies close to English waters.
Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Masrour Barzani tweeted his condolences on Thursday, saying he was “deeply saddened by the tragic loss of 27 innocent lives in the English Channel last night.”
“Some of the victims appear to be Kurds. We are working to establish their identities. Our thoughts are with their families,” he said.
Additional reporting by Soran Hussein
