Lifeguards to protect beach where five friends died

Lifeguards will patrol Camber Sands over the bank holiday weekend after five young friends died during a day trip to the coast.

The local council accepted an offer from the RNLI to provide a temporary team of up to six lifeguards at Camber Sands, near Rye in East Sussex.

The RNLI also said a team will be on hand to provide safety information to all beach-goers until Monday.

Sussex Police, meanwhile, formally identified the five men who died on Wednesday. They were: Kenugen Saththiyanathan, 18, known as Ken and his brother Kobikanthan, 22, known as Kobi, both from Erith, south-east London; Nitharsan Ravi, 22, from Plumstead; Gurushanth Srithavarajah, 27, from Welling, both south-east London; and Inthushan Sriskantharasa, 23, from Grays, Essex.

Relations of some of the men have criticised the lack of lifeguards at Camber and suggested they may have stood a chance of survival if the beach had been manned.

Mr Ravi’s family said they felt “very angry” at the lack of response from the authorities following the death of another man, Brazilian Gustavo Silva Da Cruz, 19, at Camber last month.

SIR – The attempted burkini ban was not the real issue in France (report, August 26) but the insularity in Islam. Modern Islam has a culture clash with all other modern societies and most Muslims seem unwilling to make the transition or to enlighten their own religion. The French are fed up with it.

Western society wants to move on from Victorian hatred of human sexuality, which is exactly what garments such as burkinis represent – no society is advanced by institutional fear of the female body.

What is the point of wearing a burkini to the beach anyway? It looks hot, increases the risk of drowning and certainly won’t help a woman’s vitamin D levels.

You could argue that banning the burkini was just as silly as the outfit (and illiberal too) but people in Europe remember deep sexism and religious oppression. Enforcing “modest” behaviour or dress is often the thin end of the wedge for religious fanatics to increase slowly their control over society. We saw what happened in Iran after 1979 and we don’t want it. Emilie Lamplough Trowbridge, Wiltshire SIR – My first thought on seeing deeply unsettling pictures of French police surrounding a lady on a beach, resulting in her removing items of clothing as she sat at their feet, was that it reminded me of brutal religious police who enforce dress codes in certain Islamic countries, not least the hisbah police employed by Daesh.

Yet if the French wished to act as recruiting-sergeants for the latter, they were going the right way about it. Let us hope such policies do not creep into this country. Tim Coles Carlton, Bedfordshire SIR – Fines given to Muslim women on the beaches of France were in line with the way the French have treated these people for the last 60 years.

Since giving their North African territories independence, the French have treated Muslim immigrants as an underclass. Unless they do more to integrate these people I can see nothing but further violence. Brian Dickinson Newcastle upon Tyne