Channel Migrants
Radio Television Suisse | 15min

Postproduction Script

00'00 Dungeness, UK

VO: These migrants were lucky. They just crossed the channel on this fragile boat and arrived alive in England. They don't know it yet but that same night, 27 other migrants who shared the same dream as them died almost at the same place while trying to cross. It was the worst shipwreck that the Channel has ever seen, but certainly not the last. Illegal crossings have exploded, multiplied by 10 in 2 years, with migrants taking ever more risks.

00’38 Title: Channel migrants

A week later, Calais already seems to be moving on. A handful of demonstrators to remember the victims, some of whom now have a face. Maryam on her way to join her fiancé and this family from Iraqi Kurdistan.... Abdul had photographed them just before they left. Originally from Afghanistan, Abdul himself lived in a camp, today he is French and takes pictures of the camps ...... it is while crossing one of them that he came across this family .... a mother and her 3 children aged 22, 16 and 7 who were about to board this boat.

01’25 Abdul Saboor, photographer

Abdul: They were a beautiful, generous family, they welcomed us into the camp, invited us to sit by the fire, gave us tea and chips when that packet of chips was all they had to eat. When they talked about going to the UK, they were very excited....the boy wanted to be a barber, his sister a teacher. When we talked about the risks of going to the sea, the mother answered yes we are afraid, yes it is dangerous but my country Iraq is also dangerous......... there is no life there. By crossing, maybe we will die but maybe we will find a future.

02’09 Images: BBC Persian

Mohamed was with them on the boat. This Somali is one of only 2 survivors....he has just left hospital.

02’18 Mohamed, survivor of the shipwreck

Mohamed: We left at about 10pm....we had already been sailing for three and a half hours when the water started to enter the boat. The water went up and up and after about 30 minutes the boat turned over. It was so cold, the water was so cold. I saw people dying in front of my eyes, families...children as young as 5 years old, a pregnant woman.

VO: Everyone in the Calais camps has heard about this shipwreck....but it doesn't seem to change anything. In this one, it's mostly Sudanese who are trying to survive between the railway and a piece of forest....while waiting to cross the channel. Every 2 days, they wait for the gendarmerie to come and dislodge them and confiscate the tents.....every 2 days they dismantle to protect their equipment. Ahmed is fed up with feeling constantly harassed.

03’25 Ahmed, Sudanese asylum seeker

Ahmed: You will see in 5-10 minutes what the police do. They take our tents in this weather...it's 5 degrees...maybe 6 ....it's freezing...and the police take our shelters.

VO: This engineer fled Sudan after being arrested for a video that was too critical of the government.  He hopes to get refugee status in the UK

Interviewer: Why do you want to go to England?

Ahmed: In England, the government helps all migrants, more than other European governments. We need England's help.....we need freedom, we need security....we need England to accept us and to be able to live in safety ....they said abbas, that means police.

VO: The gendarmes arrive en masse and dislodge the migrants.

Policeman: We’re going to ask you to step outside the perimeter.

Interviewer: Why?

Policeman: Because this is a police operation. Outsiders need to get outside the perimeter.

Interviewer: What will happen to these people?

Policeman: You are asked to leave.

VO: The police leave, and the migrants set up their tents in the same place. They are joined by an association which provides mobile phone charging and music. Ahmed is not discouraged. He has been on the road for 11 months and has only 34 unfortunate kilometres left to reach the destination of his dreams.

05’18 Ahmed, Sudanese asylum seeker

Ahmed: I’ve made three attempts. We bought a boat with several people, each one paid 3 or 400 because we don't have enough money to pay a smuggler. We took the boat out to sea but the waves grew from 20 cm to 1 m and that pushed us back to the shore and the police took our boat.

Interviewer: And you will try again after the winter?

Ahmed: No not after the winter. In 10 days! We looked on google and saw that in 10 days the waves will be 60 cm...it's not really ideal but it will be lucky for us...in 10 days

VO: We hadn't seen anything yet in terms of dismantling the camp. 2 hours later in Grande-Synthe, a few dozen kilometres north, another camp is visited by the police.....access is blocked....we can only see 5 buses evacuating migrants and taking them to an unknown destination, somewhere in France, where they can apply for asylum. Outside, we meet Geneviève, a French-Swiss woman from the Chablais region. Her association has asked her to monitor the police operation.

06’55 Geneviève Mermin-Martinez

Geneviève: I worked in the humanitarian field in Africa and in the refugee camps. I asked myself if it was right to go so far, when in my country, refugees are not treated well.

Interviewer: What was your reaction to the news of the shipwreck?

Geneviève: I don't think that we've hit the worst yet, because with everything that's been going on for the last two years, the bottom is getting deeper and more serious. I was very sad. I felt sorry for the families. Many are in doubt and have no identification. It's a tragedy for the families not to know what happened to their loved ones.

VO: The bodies of the 27 victims of the shipwreck lie here in the Lille morgue, awaiting identification...on Wednesday, several Afghan families arrive in the hope of being able to identify the bodies of 3 friends who have been missing since the night of 24 November. Coming from Paris and England, families will not be allowed to see the bodies before a DNA sample is taken. On the way out, Ghafoor seems pretty sure that his cousin was on the boat.

08’12 Ghafoor Mangan, cousin of a missing person

Ghafoor: They were 3 friends together, 3 disappeared .... they said they wanted to go to England and we haven't heard from them for a week.

VO: One of the other 2 friends phoned in the middle of the night to relatives in England and said he was in the sea and that help should be sent. In the middle of the afternoon, the police finally lifted the blockade of the Grande Synthe camp. We enter with the volunteers of the Salam association who come here every day to serve meals.

Philippe: There are 50 people left. They have nothing, everything has been destroyed. The tents have been destroyed; their personal belongings are scattered. The police set fire to their belongings. Unbelievable.

VO: The migrants who are still there hid during the police intervention or refused to get on the buses...they are taking back possession of their camp...but everything they had built as a makeshift shelter has been demolished by the police...they can only rely on the help of volunteers.

09’40 Philippe Bernard, Salam association

Philippe: This is distressing. In a democracy like France. I am ashamed to be French.

VO: Kawa has just found his tent gutted by the police....he will try to rebuild as best he can... but his determination to take to the sea is only strengthened.

10’01 Kawa, Iranian asylum seeker

Kawa: We die...we are only bodies, we have no soul.

Interviewer: Are you afraid to take the boat?

Kawa: No, we are already dead...look at how we live

Interviewer: Did you see what happened last week?

Kawa: Yes, it doesn't change my mind

VO: Kawa says he is a Christian from Iran, he has been waiting for years in vain for a refugee status in Europe, he thinks that his only chance is now on the other side of the Channel. He will entrust his life and that of his father to smugglers.

Kawa: We don't buy a boat, someone does it for us.

Interviewer: Is it expensive to pay these people?

Kawa: Yes, very expensive, you pay with your life.

Interviewer: You pay with your life and also in cash how much?

Kawa: 3000 pounds.

Interviewer: Per person?

Kawa: Yes. I don't care if I die in the sea really.

VO: Nothing seems to be able to make him give up, neither he nor the others.....to try to limit the number of deaths, an association has launched a prevention campaign....the day after the dismantling, Celeste and Julien go to see the migrants individually to try to inform them about the precautions to take before the crossing.

Celeste: This is to send your GPS coordinates...if there is a problem you can call 112 on the phone. Do you have one?

11’37 Céleste Grange-Piras, Utopia56 association

Céleste: We tell them not to go, but it doesn’t work. They are here to go. They tell us. We’re not here to stop them from leaving nor to encourage them to do so. These are adults making their choice.

12’06 Dover, UK

VO: On the other side of the Channel, whatever they think, they are not welcome anymore. In Britain, these volunteers are scouring the coast to make sure the authorities don't push back migrants....the threat is that of ‘push-back’, and for the past few months the government has been threatening to send the boats back to French waters to stem the flow.

12’26 Kim Bryan, Channel rescue organisation

Kim: In September, some of our volunteers watched border guards just below the cliff here...they were doing what we call ‘push-backs’.....there was an inflatable boat and on either side a jet ski...and the jet skis were pushing the boat back. It was just a training exercise, but we are more worried because the Home Office said they were going to start using push-backs. We are very worried that they will do that. You saw the sea today, it is a danger to human life.

VO: In addition to the threat of push-backs, parliament is set to pass a law next week criminalising these illegal arrivals.... From now on, those who arrive illegally by sea would be penalised in their asylum applications. Bilal thought he had found El Dorado...this Syrian arrived by boat a little over a month ago....after crossing Europe, he was convinced that the United Kingdom was the country where he would be best received.

13’27 Bilal, Syrian asylum seeker

Bilal: What made me come to Britain is that once you have the residence permit and the passport, you can ask for family reunification, and bring your parents too. I would like to bring my mother. The European Union doesn't allow that, they only allow the wife and children to come. The other reason to come here is the language, it's easier to learn English quickly.

VO: But as the weeks go by, Bilal is losing hope. After risking his life crossing the Channel, he had thought his troubles were over.

Bilal: According to the security staff here, you have to wait 3 months, 6 months, maybe a year, you don't know...it depends on your luck...but I've had enough, it's long enough to be away from my family, I just want to work and live like any other father.

VO: A life like everyone else that more and more migrants aspire to...this week the sea was very rough and prevented most of the crossings but on Thursday the waves will go down and others hope to try their luck.

Credits:

Sébastien Faure

Mathilde Bonnassieux

Christian Jaquenod

Frédérique Zingaro

Yannick Berlie

Brigitte Duc

Laurent Jespersen

Benoît Mayer