ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The number of migrants shipwrecked off the coast of Calais requiring rescue assistance from French authorities tripled in 2021 from the previous year’s figures, data shared by France’s immigration office on Monday showed, adding to UK Home Office figures released last week depicting a threefold increase from 2020 in the number of people reaching the English coast in small boats last year.
"The number of people shipwrecked off the coast of Calais and taken to safety was 1,002 in 2021," the French Office for Immigration and Integration (OFII) told AFP on Monday, as reported by Le Monde; an increase of 194% of people getting into serious trouble at sea in an attempt to reach the English coast compared to the 341 migrants rescued in 2020.
According to figures provided by the British Home Office, compiled by PA Media last week, at least 28,395 people reached the English coast in small boats after illegally crossing the Channel in 2021; an increase of over three times the figure of crossings the year before, when around just 8,400 people made the perilous journey.
The data also implied that the vessels made to take these journeys are becoming larger, with an average number of 28 people on board each boat that arrived on the UK’s shores; another increase from the previous year’s figure of just over 13, and a trend which follows the reports of a dramatic rise in illegal people smuggling operations.
In November alone, around 6,900 people crossed the Channel to England, including 1,185 on a single record-breaking day.
Twenty seven people lost their lives on November 24, in the deadliest shipwreck in the Channel since the International Organization for Migration (IOM) began collecting figures in 2014, when the makeshift boat they had been attempting to reach the English coast fell into difficulties. There are only two survivors of the event, among them a Kurd.
Twenty four of those on board were Kurdish, the Summit (Lutka) Foundation for Refugee and Displaced Affairs confirmed to Rudaw English on Tuesday, noting that three of them remain missing.
The number of people living in makeshift camps on the northern coast of France while preparing to make the crossing to the UK also increased last year, with the OFII adding that the number of migrants "sheltered and directed in the national reception system” rose by 239% from 9,172 people in 2020, to 31,103 people over the last year.
Figures purporting to illustrate the efforts of the French authorities to accommodate and provide for growing numbers of migrants in the country have been met cynically by campaigners.
Responding to a post by the OFFI, sharing a statistic that the French state distributed 1,406 meals per day to migrants in Calais in 2021, the French-based migrant’s rights organisation Auberge Migrants replied that in Calais, the state also organised the harassment of exiles.
“In 2021, 1,226 expulsions took place and 5,794 tents and tarpaulins were seized,” the charity commented, crediting the human rights monitor Human Rights Observer for the additional figures.
There has been a growing backlash across the Channel in the UK, too, against refugees and asylum seekers reaching the country through illegal methods; the overwhelming way for individuals to attempt to claim asylum in a country that has increasingly limited safe and legal routes to sanctuary.
Earlier this week, the Guardian revealed that a 25-year-old Syrian asylum seeker who fled forcible conscription to Bashar al-Assad’s army in 2017, saying that he would have been forced to kill other Syrians, had been told by the Home Office that it was safe for him to be sent back.
In an astonishing precedent, the UK government rejected his asylum plea. He is now preparing to appeal the decision.
In October, Human Rights Watch published a report into retaliation in Assad’s still-functioning detention-torture centres, concluding that returning refugees face grave abuse.
Executive Director, Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth commented on the decision, stating that, “UK Home Secretary Priti Patel is living in a world of convenient fiction if she thinks Syrian refugees can be forced back safely.”
Recent returnees to Syria have described arrest, torture, beatings, harassment, electric shock and sexual abuse in custody at the hands of the Syrian regime and affiliated militias.
