Sinking of migrants: in Calais and Dunkirk, gatherings in tribute to victims

Migrant support has observed a minute of silence and deployed a banner with the names of most of the 309 people who have died at this border between France and Great Britain since 1999, according to an associative count.

Le Monde with AFP

About 200 people, mainly associative activists and some exiles, gathered, Thursday, November 25, at the beginning of the evening in Calais to pay tribute to the migrants dead the day before in a sinking.

We are several hundred gathered tonight in Calais, Dunkerque and Paris. Tribute to the 27 people deceased … https://t.co/osrvby6vu9

– utopia_56 (@utopia 56)

Twenty-four hours after this drama, “we met because 27 singular people, with their families and friends, their dreams and their hopes, have disappeared yesterday,” explained during this commemoration in The center of Calais Juliette Delaplace, Local Manager of the Catholic Rescue Mission to the Exiles.

 Migrants' activists and members of the rights of migrant rights light candles in front of a banner on which we can read

Minute of silence

Migrant support, united since 6:30 pm, have observed a minute of silence and deployed a banner wearing the names of most of the 309 people who have died at this border between France and Great Britain since 1999 , according to an associative count. This wears the number of deaths at 336, with the victims of the sinking on Wednesday, according to this count.

“I feel very sad. I did not know them, but I came to say to my brothers [migrants] to be careful,” said France-Press Faysal, a 30-year-old Sudanese lives in the streets of Calais for four months. He who also wanted to try the crossing to Great Britain is changing his mind, he says, “I see there are a lot of deaths”.

Dunkirk, November 25, 2021. A Dunkirk, November 25, 2021. Johanna Geron / Reuters

“We must indignal “

Dunkirk also, further on the coast, some 150 people found themselves in front of the stele of human rights, the appeal of the collective Retostering: for respect for fundamental rights.

Among them, the mayors of Dunkirk, Patrice Vergiette (various left), and of Grande-Synthe, Martial Beyaert (Socialist Party), whose locality welcomes, like Calais, permanent flows of migrants.

“We should be indignant over the French and British policy that puts exiled situation of having only recourse that smugglers, scandal smugglers,” he told Bernard Champagne on behalf of the League of human rights.

m. Vergriete, for his part, called for “a system of distribution of asylum applications at the European level”, a system that would avoid putting the exiles “in the hands of smuggling mafias.”

/Media reports.