Crossing the Channel: difficult coastal surveillance

Text by: Alexis Bedu Follow

4 min

In the north of France, attempts to cross the Channel to reach England are increasingly important. A thousand people successfully passed aboard boats in July alone. London is putting pressure on Paris to strengthen surveillance on these hundred kilometers of coast where gendarmes and police are already hard at work. Report on the coast near Calais.

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A 16-year-old Sudanese man was found dead Wednesday morning on a beach in Sangatte near Calais. Every day, dozens of migrants are rescued, most often adrift on makeshift Zodiacs. Binoculars around his neck, gendarme Roger Lécuyer spends his summer watching the coast to "  avoid crossings and human tragedies  ", he explains. Day and night, gendarmerie patrols crisscross the beaches and paths from Dunkirk to the Bay of Somme. “  We are here on the beach of Saint-Gabriel where there have been attempts to depart migrants, says the reservist gendarme, it is easy for smugglers to drop migrants there. It is only 200 meters to walk, which allows them to be fast and efficient. "

The launch is completely destroyed, the stigma of a recent storm, "  it has become very dangerous but unfortunately that does not prevent people from wanting to leave  ", describes Roger Lécuyer.

The British authorities have asked France to do more in controlling this maritime border. London wants the Channel to become "impractical" for people wishing to cross illegally. On the French side, monitoring these 100 kilometers of coast permanently is very difficult, if not impossible. "  There are a certain number of places and possible accesses and unfortunately we cannot be everywhere, deplores Captain Thierry Hoste, deputy commander of the company of gendarmes in Ecuire, everything we do is difficult to quantify even if we made it possible to challenge and undermine the action of certain smugglers.  "

Since January 1, at least 900 smugglers have been intercepted by the French authorities after attempting this crossing, according to AFP. The sunny weather of recent months has allowed many passages - 4,500 in eight months, more than double the number of last year. The British army has announced the deployment of an additional surveillance aircraft to assist the coast guard. After the visit to France by British Secretary of State for Immigration Chris Philp, London and Paris announced that they were working on "  a new plan to close the migration route to the Channel  ".

This will not change anything, believes François Guennoc, vice-president of the Auberge des migrants association in Calais. “  Exiles and smugglers will always find ways to get through, and as a humanitarian association, we are very pessimistic about France's ability to resist British pressure. We are therefore preparing to last. In five years, in ten years, there will still be migrants in Calais. We will have put a few more obstacles on their roads but they will still be there. "

For the associations, the end of these human tragedies requires the revision of the asylum system in Europe.

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