Wednesday 17th November 2021
After migrants’ misfortunes
Decathlon stores stop selling kayaks
Tens of thousands of migrants are waiting in the refugee camps around Calais, and in recent days more and more of them have tried to cross to Great Britain. After several shipwrecks, the sporting goods chain Decathlon is taking kayaks out of its range in two cities.
The sporting goods retailer Decathlon has stopped selling kayaks in the branches of two cities in the north of France because the boats could be used by migrants for their crossing to Great Britain. In the shops of Calais and Grande-Synthe, kayaks are no longer being sold “due to the current situation,” the Decathlon press office told the AFP news agency on Tuesday, thereby confirming reports in the local press.
The reason given was that the pleasure craft were unsuitable for crossing the English Channel and that people could endanger their lives if they tried anyway. Products that “increase safety at sea, such as vests, paddles or thermal protection” will continue to be sold in Calais and Grande-Synthe, added the press office. Accordingly, the suggestion to remove the kayaks from the offer had come from the shops themselves.
Three refugees who tried to cross the English Channel in kayaks have been missing since Friday. The day before, two kayaks floating off the coast of Calais were discovered and two castaways were rescued. Between Calais and Dover, the water is about 45 kilometers wide.
Between January and the end of September, almost 30,000 migrants tried to cross the English Channel into Great Britain. In the past few weeks the number of attempts, and with it the number of accidents, has increased significantly, which has increased tensions with the British government. Over 1,000 people tried to cross from the mainland on Thursday alone.
Home Secretary Gérald Darmanin and his British colleague Priti Patel said on Tuesday that they wanted to intensify their cooperation to end the “dangerous crossings”. On the same day, security forces cleared a wild refugee camp in Grande-Synthe, where more than 1,000 people lived. In addition, 272 people were rescued from the sea off the coast of France. They had tried to get to England by makeshift boats.