A political storm is raging over desperate people crossing the Channel in small dinghies. Last month we saw the death of a young Sudanese man, Abdulfatah Hamdallah who drowned trying to cross from France to England. And in the same week, the death of a 16 year old boy, also thought to be Sudanese.
Several torture survivors we help at Freedom from Torture have travelled this way dating as far back as 2017 and the pandemic has led to more people making this dangerous journey due to the unavailability of other routes.
The deaths feels sadly inevitable, given the absence of safe and legal alternatives. Instead of fixing this, the government has stoked anti-migrant sentiment by painting those arriving as invaders, misrepresenting their reasons for coming here, and threatening to call in the Navy to push people back to France.
