Death in the Channel: an avoidable tragedy?
It was the worst ever accident involving refugees trying to reach Britain by boat, said Adam Sage in The Times. Last Tuesday morning, Rasoul Iran-Nejad a 35-year-old Iranian Kurd, his 35-year-old wife Shiva Mohammad-Panahi, and their three children, aged nine, six and 15 months, were among seven people to drown when their boat capsized in the Channel. The family were on a small vessel crammed with migrants when it turned over in choppy seas off Dunkirk. Fifteen of those on board were rescued, but the family were trapped in the boat’s cabin, and were unable to escape. The incident takes the number of those to have died attempting the crossing this year to at least seven, up from four last year, while the overall number of people to have made the voyage across the Channel stands at 7,400 – almost four times the 2019 figure.
“The deaths did not come as a surprise,” said Lizzie Dearden in The Independent. They are a “grim consequence” of the UK’s harsh asylum policies. Under Home Secretary Priti Patel, a system is in place which “only allows migrants to apply for protection once on UK soil, but erects ever-higher barriers to reaching it”. It isn’t too late for ministers to change course and allow applications from abroad, said The Guardian. The number of asylum applications in the UK (35,566 in 2019) is a “small fraction” of that in France and Germany. Instead of “hostile posturing”, the Government could choose to adopt a more “rational policy based on international cooperation, respect for the law and human rights”. But “don’t hold your breath”.
It’s true that Britain could choose to process asylum claims in France instead, said The Times. This would discourage those seeking asylum for legitimate reasons from attempting the voyage. Even so, illegal migrants are likely to keep coming because they know that Britain has “a very poor record of repatriating failed asylum seekers”. Short of reforming the whole system, the best short-term solution would be to agree a post-Brexit funding deal with France to ensure more effective policing of the French coastline. Of course, that wouldn’t come cheap – but it may just be the price we must pay to “secure Britain’s borders and avoid further tragedies”.