CALAIS, France: Biniam Semay was on a boat carrying dozens of migrants across the Channel from France to England when the fragile vessel ripped apart, leaving his younger sister and 11 others dead.
About one hundred people gathered on Wednesday evening at a candlelight vigil in the northern French city of Calais to pay tribute to the 12 migrants who died on Tuesday in the deadliest such disaster this year.
The 34-year-old Eritrean recounted the “horrific” moment he lost his 18-year-old sister, whom he said had a “whole future ahead of her.”
“In four or five minutes, it was completely destroyed and sank,” he said, describing the moment the boat capsized plunging dozens into the English Channel’s treacherous waters.
He grabbed his sister’s hand and tried to find something to hang on to but a wave pushed them apart.
“Then the rescue ship came, and when they rescued me, I saw my sister... and she was already dead.”
“Only God knows how I survived,” he said.
Tuesday’s death toll is the highest since November 2021 when 27 migrants lost their lives in the Channel, an incident that sparked tensions between France and Britain over who needed to do more to prevent such disasters.
The two countries have for years sought to stop the flow of migrants, who pay smugglers thousands of euros per head for the passage to England from France aboard small boats.
On Monday alone, 351 migrants crossed in small boats, with 21,615 making the journey this year, according to UK government statistics.
Earlier this summer British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and France’s President Emmanuel Macron pledged to strengthen “cooperation” in handling the surge in undocumented migrant numbers.
But for some activists at the vigil, like Feyrouz Lajili, those efforts are falling short with this year’s death toll at 25, up from 12 last year.
“We’re angry and upset, not least because we feel these deaths could have been prevented,” said Lajili, project coordinator for international NGO Doctors Without Borders.
Steve Smith, head of the Care4Calais charity agreed, saying investment in security measures was “not reducing crossings.”
“It is simply pushing people to take ever increasing risks to do so,” he said.
Another survivor of Tuesday’s disaster said the first rescue boats to arrive on scene were too small to accommodate the 60 or so migrants in the water.
“There were a lot of girls and young boys, and I saw them die,” Amanuel from Eritrea, who did not provide his full name, told AFP.
He described struggling to hold on to what remained of the boat while others clung to him.
French authorities seek to stop migrants taking to the water but do not intervene once they are afloat except for rescue purposes, citing safety concerns.
All resources that could be mobilized on Tuesday were, said the French government’s junior minister for maritime affairs, Herve Berville.
But he added people need to know that “while this rescue operation is underway... it isn’t the only emergency at sea.”
One of the last to be rescued, Amanuel said he would not attempt the crossing again.
Others, like Muhammadullah, say they are not dissuaded by the risks.
Having fled Afghanistan to escape the Taliban, Muhammadullah, who also only gave one name, told AFP that he would have liked to stay in France but could not get the papers he needed to remain in the country.
So the only choice that remains is to attempt the crossing again, and soon.
“I don’t know else what to do,” he said, “there’s only England left.”
‘I saw them die’: Survivors recount migrant boat capsizing in Channel
https://arab.news/j7h25
‘I saw them die’: Survivors recount migrant boat capsizing in Channel
- About one hundred people gathered on Wednesday evening at a candlelight vigil in the northern French city of Calais to pay tribute to the 12 migrants who died
- The 34-year-old Eritrean recounted the “horrific” moment he lost his 18-year-old sister, whom he said had a “whole future ahead of her“
Mystery of CIA’s lost nuclear device haunts Himalayan villagers 60 years on
- Plutonium-fueled spy system was meant to monitor China’s nuclear activity after 1964 atomic tests
- Porter who took part in Nanda Devi mission warned family of ‘danger buried in snow’
NEW DELHI: Porters who helped American intelligence officers carry a nuclear spy system up the precarious slopes of Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak, returned home with stories that sent shockwaves through nearby villages, leaving many in fear that still holds six decades later.
A CIA team, working with India’s Intelligence Bureau, planned to install the device in the remote part of the Himalayas to monitor China, but a blizzard forced them to abandon the system before reaching the summit.
When they returned, the device was gone.
The spy system contained a large quantity of highly radioactive plutonium-238 — roughly a third of the amount used in the atomic bomb dropped by the US on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in the closing stages of the Second World War.
“The workers and porters who went with the CIA team in 1965 would tell the story of the nuclear device, and the villagers have been living in fear ever since,” said Narendra Rana from the Lata village near Nanda Devi’s peak.
His father, Dhan Singh Rana, was one of the porters who carried the device during the CIA’s mission in 1965.
“He told me there was a danger buried in the snow,” Rana said. “The villagers fear that as long as the device is buried in the snow, they are safe, but if it bursts, it will contaminate the air and water, and no one will be safe after that.”
During the Sino-Indian tensions in the 1960s, India cooperated with the US in surveillance after China conducted its first nuclear tests in 1964. The Nanda Devi mission was part of this cooperation and was classified for years. It only came under public scrutiny in 1978, when the story was broken by Outsider magazine.
The article caused an uproar in India, with lawmakers demanding the location of the nuclear device be revealed and calling for political accountability. The same year, then Prime Minister Morarji Desai set up a committee to assess whether nuclear material in the area near Nanda Devi could pollute the Ganges River, which originates there.
The Ganges is one of the world’s most crucial freshwater sources, with about 655 million people in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh depending on it for their essential needs.
The committee, chaired by prominent scientists, submitted its report a few months later, dismissing any cause for concerns, and establishing that even in the worst-case scenario of the device’s rupture, the river’s water would not be contaminated.
But for the villagers, the fear that the shell containing radioactive plutonium could break apart never goes away, and peace may only come once it is found.
Many believe the device, trapped within the glacier’s shifting ice, may have moved downhill over time.
Rana’s father told him that the device felt hot when it was carried, and he believed it might have melted its way into the glacier, remaining buried deep inside.
An imposing mass of rock and ice, Nanda Devi at 7,816 m is the second-highest mountain in India after Kangchenjunga.
When a glacier near the mountain burst in 2021, claiming over 200 lives, scientists explained that the disaster was due to global warming, but in nearby villages the incident was initially blamed on a nuclear explosion.
“They feared the device had burst. Those rescuing people were afraid they might die from radiation,” Rana said. “If any noise is heard, if any smoke appears in the sky, we start fearing a leak from the nuclear device.”
The latent fear surfaces whenever natural disasters strike or media coverage puts the missing device back in the spotlight. Most recently, a New York Times article on the CIA mission’s 60th anniversary reignited the unease.
“The apprehensions are genuine. After 1965, Americans came twice to search for the device. The villagers accompanied them, but it could not be found, which remains a concern for the local community,” said Atul Soti, an environmentalist in Joshimath, Uttarakhand, about 50 km from Nanda Devi.
“People are worried. They have repeatedly sought answers from the government, but no clear response has been provided so far. Periodically, the villagers voice their concerns, and they need a definitive government statement on this issue.”
Despite repeated queries whenever media attention arises, Indian officials have not released detailed updates since the Desai-appointed committee submitted its findings.
“The government should issue a white paper to address people’s concerns. The white paper will make it clear about the status of the device, and whether leakage from the device could pollute the Ganges River,” Soti told Arab News.
“The government should be clear. If the government is not reacting, then it further reinforces the fear.”
