They were in a fishing vessel flying the flag of Sri Lanka.
Six migrants landed this Sunday in the port of Pointe-des-Galets, west of Reunion, we learned from the prefecture of the department.
These migrants disembarked without authorization to stay on French territory.
Their boat had been spotted in the middle of the morning when it was about ten kilometers off the northwest coast of the French island in the Indian Ocean, said the prefecture, alerted at the same time as the center regional operational monitoring and rescue (Cross).
A historic economic crisis in Sri Lanka
The six men were allowed to disembark after being questioned by law enforcement and examined by doctors, then taken to an accommodation site.
The prefecture did not immediately specify the place of embarkation of the six men nor their motivations.
Between March 2018 and April 2019, six boats and 273 people, including women and children, landed in similar conditions in Reunion from Sri Lanka.
All had then requested asylum from the French authorities.
A few dozen of them still live in Reunion.
The others had been expelled to their country of origin.
Sri Lanka has been ravaged for months by an economic crisis that is causing shortages of food, medicine and fuel, due to a lack of foreign currency needed to finance its imports.
After months of protests, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled his country in mid-July and then resigned.
Ranil Wickremesinghe succeeded him on July 20.
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