A senior coroner in Kent has found that three men who were killed trying to cross the Channel were unlawfully killed. Mohamed Lamine Toure, Moussa Kouyae, and a third unnamed person were killed when a rubber dinghy holding 39 people “literally fell apart at the seams.”
The Guardian reported that:
The survivors were brought to shore in Dover after a UK fishing boat crew came across the sinking dinghy and rescued them, with help from the RNLI, air ambulance and UK Border Force.
The Guardian also reported that investigating police officer, DI Ross Gurden, said that each of the people on the dinghy were there:
of their own free will.
A disgrace in the Channel – and after
The officer’s comments are a disgrace. Before even examining any further facts of the case, we know that a number of desperate people got into a dilapidated dinghy in an attempt to cross the Channel. Why would someone do that? What must they be running from that is worse than risking an awful death at sea?
Gurden’s comments went unremarked in the Guardian report, a banal comment on the horror of sea crossings. They show a lack of empathy, but it’s a lack of empathy writ large across borders.
Ibrahima Bah, who piloted the boat, was sentenced to just under ten years detention “for manslaughter and facilitating illegal entry to the UK.” A fourth person, Hejratullah Ahmadi, also died but he was not included in the coroner’s inquest because he was part of the criminal trial of Bah. However, the Independent did note that:
Bah was also a migrant but he piloted the boat in lieu of payment to the people smugglers.
There must be some consideration of how and why Ibrahima had to be on that boat. Last month, a Free Ibrahima campaign statement read:
We are devastated at the Court of Appeal outcome which leaves Ibrahima imprisoned as a scapegoat for border policies which continue to cause people to die in the Channel. We will keep fighting for Ibrahima and others as they are criminalised for seeking safety and a better life in the UK.
The criminalisation of Ibrahima is typical of a broken and rotting system that punishes people trying to survive, and ignores the criminals in governments and border forces who view people dying in the sea as disposable non-humans.
A broken and rotting migrant system
Gurden’s remark that the people on the boat chose to be there call to mind poet Warsan Shire’s poem Home, and particularly the concluding stanza:
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i don’t know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here
Imagine, how hard you would have to run to risk drowning in a freezing cold body of water, knowing that if you somehow survive the plastic boat you’re crammed into with other desperate people, you’ll face border patrol, police officers, and a government who’ll make you pay through the nose for daring to survive on its shores. Imagine that, whether you live or die, you know that the people you encounter along your last ditch journey will claim you had a ‘choice.’
Is something really a choice if there is no other option?
If you stay, you’ll die.
If you go, you’ll die.
If you die, your memory will be left with the cold words of an officer who insists that you made a ‘choice’ with your “free will.”
And, the media that reports on your death, if you are even to be named, won’t bother to correct that officer’s callousness, because there are so many of you that have found a grave in the sea.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/ITV News
