What if the police engaged in dangerous maneuvers to intercept migrants? After several months of investigation in the Strait of Pas-de-Calais, The world and its partners Lighthouse Reportsof The Observer and of Der Spiegel discovered situations bordering on legality in the fight against migratory crossings to the English coast.
Officially, it is prohibited for the police or the gendarmerie to intervene when inflatable boats (“small boats”) are at sea. In a directive from the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea, it is recalled that “the framework for the action of the means acting at sea (…) is that of search and rescue at sea” and that it “does not allow coercive actions to be carried out to combat illegal immigration”.
Voluntary canoe punctures
In fact, journalists have collected several testimonies telling the opposite, in particular of voluntary punctures of canoes at sea. The General Inspectorate of the National Police is notably seized of an investigation following the report of a customs coast guard, representing of the Solidaires union.
He says that in August 2023, a gendarme asked a crew member of the National Sea Rescue Society (SNSM) to help him break into a boat with around ten people on board, off the coast of the beach of Berck-sur-Mer, in Pas-de-Calais. The rescuer refused.
Two videos illustrate this trend in interception attempts. The first, broadcast on the social network TikTok in July 2023, shows a maritime gendarmerie RIB colliding twice with a migrant boat at full speed, off the coast of Boulogne-sur-Mer. Another, previously unpublished, films a crew of police officers turning, creating waves, to destabilize a “small boat” in the port of Dunkirk.
“Stop more boats”
“At no time are such instructions given or even suggested to the coordinated teams,” assures the maritime prefecture on a daily basis. The pressure from Great Britain is, however, increasingly strong since the payment, over three years, of 543 million euros to France to “stop more boats”.
Thus, a new directive allows the interception of these makeshift boats at sea, provided they operate “only during the day”, less than 200 meters from the coast, and in the case where “less than three people” are on board. .
This new tension is observed with an increasing number of confrontations on the beaches: 160 in 2023, while they were non-existent the previous year. Throwing projectiles against tear gas: 41 police officers and gendarmes were injured on this occasion.
In total, according to the Northern prefecture, twenty-four people have died by drowning since 2023 in or around the Strait of Pas de Calais.