Africa-Press – Cape verde. Sixty-six migrants who were trying to cross the English Channel towards the United Kingdom were rescued today by French authorities, the country’s Maritime Prefecture announced.
In the morning, emergency services were “informed that a boat full of migrants was off the coast of Dieppe”. A Maritime Guard coastal boat “rescued the boat, which was in difficulty, during the afternoon”.
The crew recovered “66 shipwrecked crew members, including women and children”, according to the Maritime Prefecture.
The castaways were then “taken to the port of Dieppe, where they are being assisted by land rescue services and border police”, and are housed in a gym.
“State services are analyzing the administrative situation of migrants on a case-by-case basis. Three people have already been arrested by the national police and placed in custody on suspicion of being human traffickers,” the city council said in a press release.
Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the first migrants likely to be deported to Rwanda were arrested and placed in custody, the British Government announced today, with the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, welcoming the fact as a new stage in the application of a emblematic measure of its migration policy.
The Conservative Government has promised to put an end to these immigrant crossings. Since the beginning of the year, more than 7,500 people have arrived, a historic record for the first four months of the year.
On Monday, the United Kingdom deported the first asylum seeker to Rwanda, following its voluntary program for migrants who have been refused asylum, British media reported.
Organizations such as Doctors Without Borders rejected “for medical, ethical and humanitarian reasons” the bill approved in the UK House of Commons to transfer asylum seekers to Rwanda.
For the executive director of MSF in the United Kingdom, Natalie Roberts, this is “another dark chapter in the brutal British approach to migration”, based “on policies of deterrence, externalization and punishment of people seeking protection”.
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