LONDON: At least 28,300 people packed into small boats crossed the Channel from France to England’s south coast in 2021, an annual record that was three times the number of crossings a year earlier.
The leap in numbers, reported Tuesday by the Press Association news agency based on data from Britain’s Home Office, reflects the soaring number of migrants seeking to cross the world’s busiest shipping lane often in flimsy boats provided by people smugglers.
The risks were tragically underscored on Nov. 24, when at least 27 migrants drowned as their boat sank after leaving France. The crossings have become a source of tension between France and Britain.
As winter approached last year, November was the busiest month for crossings of the Channel, which is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) wide at its narrowest point, with 6,869 people reaching the UK On Nov. 11 alone, 1,185 people made the risky crossing in 33 boats.
The figures also show that the boats are getting larger, with an average of 28 people on board each vessel that arrived in the UK, up from just over 13 a year earlier.
Activists are calling for the British government to offer more opportunities to asylum-seekers in a bid to decrease the number of Channel crossings.
Tim Naor Hilton, chief executive at Refugee Action, said that the UK government’s policy will lead to more deaths in the Dover Strait.
“People will continue to cross the Channel in flimsy boats, and smugglers will continue to profit, unless ministers open up more routes for refugees to claim asylum here,” Naor Hilton said.
Clare Moseley, founder of charity Care4Calais which supports refugees living in northern France, agreed.
“If the government were serious about stopping people smugglers, it would create a safe way for people to claim asylum and put people smugglers out of business once and for all,” she said.
But Home Office minister Tom Pursglove said that “seeking asylum for protection should not involve people asylum shopping country to country, or risking their lives by lining the pockets of criminal gangs to cross the Channel.”
He said that planned government reforms to immigration law will criminalize entering the UK without permission and introduce life prison terms for people smugglers as well as strengthening powers of the country’s Border Force to stop and redirect boats and clearing the way for asylum-seekers to have their claims processed outside the UK
When the reforms were introduced to Parliament in July, Naor Hilton said they were “built on a deep lack of understanding of the reality of refugee migration.”
Record number of migrant boats crossed Channel in 2021
https://arab.news/bap7h
Record number of migrant boats crossed Channel in 2021
- The risks were tragically underscored on Nov. 24, when at least 27 migrants drowned as their boat sank after leaving France
- The crossings have become a source of tension between France and Britain
UK pays Guantanamo detainee ‘substantial’ compensation over US torture questions
- Abu Zubaydah has been held at Guantanamo Bay without charge for 20 years
- British security services knew he was subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation’ but failed to raise concerns for 4 years
LONDON: A Saudi-born Palestinian being held without trial by the US has received a “substantial” compensation payment from the UK government, the BBC reported.
Abu Zubaydah has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for almost 20 years following his capture in Pakistan in 2002, and was subjected to “enhanced interrogation” techniques by the CIA.
He was accused of being a senior member of Al-Qaeda in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the US. The allegations were later dropped but he remains in detention.
The compensation follows revelations that UK security services submitted questions to the US to be put to Abu Zubaydah by their US counterparts despite knowledge of his mistreatment.
He alleged that MI5 and MI6 had been “complicit” in torture, leading to a legal case and the subsequent compensation.
Dominic Grieve, the UK’s former attorney general, chaired a panel reviewing Abu Zubaydah’s case.
He described the compensation as “very unusual” but said the treatment of Abu Zubaydah had been “plainly” wrong, the BBC reported.
Grieve added that the security services had evidence that the “Americans were behaving in a way that should have given us cause for real concern,” and that “we (UK authorities) should have raised it with the US and, if necessary, closed down co-operation, but we failed to do that for a considerable period of time.”
Abu Zubaydah’s international legal counsel, Prof. Helen Duffy, said: “The compensation is important, it’s significant, but it’s insufficient.”
She added that more needs to be done to secure his release, stating: “These violations of his rights are not historic, they are ongoing.”
Duffy said Abu Zubaydah would continue to fight for his freedom, adding: “I am hopeful that the payment of the substantial sums will enable him to do that and to support himself when he’s in the outside world.”
He is one of 15 people still being held at Guantanamo, many without charge. Following his initial detention, he arrived at the prison camp having been the first person to be taken to a so-called CIA “black site.”
He spent time at six such locations, including in Lithuania and Poland, outside of US legal jurisdiction.
Internal MI6 messages revealed that the “enhanced interrogation” techniques he was subjected to would have “broken” the resolve of an estimated 98 percent of US special forces members had they been subjected to them.
CIA officers later decided he would be permanently cut off from the outside world, with then-President George W. Bush publicly saying Abu Zubaydah had been “plotting and planning murder.”
However, the US has since withdrawn the allegations and no longer says he was a member of Al-Qaeda.
A report by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded at least 83 times, was locked in a coffin-like box for extended periods, and had been regularly assaulted. Much of his treatment would be considered torture under UK law.
Despite knowledge of his treatment, it was four years before British security services raised concerns with their American counterparts, and their submission of questions within that period had “created a market” for the torture of detainees, Duffy said.
A 2018 report by the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee was deeply critical of the behavior of MI5 and MI6 in relation to Abu Zubaydah.
It also criticized conduct relating to Guantanamo detainee Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, widely regarded as a key architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, warning that the precedent set by Abu Zubaydah’s legal action could be used by Mohammed to bring a separate case against the UK.
MI5 and MI6 failed to comment on Abu Zubaydah’s case. Neither the UK government nor Mohammed’s legal team would comment on a possible case over his treatment.
