Maryam Nuri, A Kurdish woman from Dargala village in Erbil province, Iraq, died trying to cross the Channel between France and Britain with 27 others and making a desperate attempt to join her fiancé in an inflatable boat.
Due to the bitter coincidence of a Kurdish woman being drowned in the Manche channel, which is also known as the English channel, 31 dead bodies have been found. Whilst Gérald Darmanin has said that only two of the passengers of this deadly boat have been salvaged and one dead body has also been missing.
Maryam Nuri, a 24-year-old Kurdish woman, was one of those present among these refugees and has lost her life. She is the first person among these people that the media has named. The Medias have quoted one of her relatives that Maryam has started this journey to join her fiancé. Her family believed that she chose England, dreaming of having a better life, but she passed away.
But A Kurdish woman died in the Manche channel. She is not the first person that has lost her life, dreaming of finding a better life in the west. According to the official British statistics, from the beginning of the current year until the present time, overly 25 thousand people have passed through the Manche channel. This case is three times more than 2020 statistics. Many refugees live in Calais, France, and are pursuing immigration to Britain.
To pass through the narrowest part of the Manche channel, which is 33 kilometres long, the Human traffickers took the illegal immigrants into small inflatable and rubber boats. They left them in the cold, wavy sea between France and Britain, where constantly is the passageway of cargo ships. According to announced figures by the traffickers and based on what some of the refugees have claimed, a journey of which the cost varies between 3 thousand to 7 thousand euros. This expense consists of renting tents on windy hills of northern France and providing plain food cooked on the fire lit under the slight rain of Calais, France.
Sometimes, but not always, this expense also includes offering a life vest and providing the necessary fuel for the engine boat. These prices are provided to the applicants via social media. Depending on the conditions of the journey getting more complicated in the middle of the trip, the prices get higher, and the refugees are inevitably spending more money.
Until some years ago, immigrants were passing through the sea lane of the Manche channel did not have that many applicants, and 39 illegal Vietnamese immigrants were killed behind a container truck, which has probably raised reluctance to use this route.
A Kurdish woman died in the Manche channel, and the media coverage made people rage about the mismanagement of Europe’s crisis of illegal immigration in the past two decades. This caused the French and British authorities to fault one another, and once again, Brexit intensified the tension between the two countries concerning the matter of illegal immigrants.
The British authorities find the efforts made by the French government and police insufficient and criticize Paris for rejecting their offer for the British border force and police to joint patrol with French police along the coast of France. In return, French authorities also say that London fuels the crisis by not having their laws modified because the immigrants know if they pass this channel, staying in Britain and finding a job will be easier for them.
The refugees tracked by the British will eventually be transferred to immigrant care centres, but they usually contact the smuggling networks again and instantly join the black markets. This is one of France’s most severe criticisms of the British confrontation with illegal immigrants. As that Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior of France, believes that the convenient attraction of the illegal immigrants by the British authorities and the country’s excellent tolerance against the illegal refugees has been the main reason for the increase in motivation for fatal passing through the Manche channel.
But who to blame? To answer this question, first, we should clarify why these people are inevitable to migrate? Since the early 21st century, two essential components have made immigration a security issue and changed the ways of controlling it. Firstly the effect of globalization on the augmentation of population movement and secondly, the incidents of September 11th, 2001 and the formation of the global coalition against terrorism.
When it became clear that the performers of terrorist attacks of America were all temporary or illegal immigrants, the United States included immigration services in its security system, and the US President of US banned immigration under the supervision of The United States Department of Homeland Security. After September 11th, American neoconservatives took the opportunity. By exaggerating in terrorism threat, successfully replaced this concept with Communism and filled the vacancy of security strategy caused by the ending of the cold war.
But the military presence of this country and its alliances in the Middle East since 2001. but this military presence gradually created the condition for humiliating the young generation of the middle east countries
The result was the re-growth of religious fundamentalism since 2011, of which the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria and authoritarians’ durability in Afghanistan are the main consequences. America’s military intervention in Iraq and absence of political authority after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government led the extremists and terrorists from different parts of the world to be transferred to Iraq and Syria. So as Noam Chomsky reasons, “Emersion and expansion of religious fundamentalism are one of the consequences of America’s attack on Iraq.” America deceived the world with the motto of fighting against terrorism while hasn’t performed any real action against terrorist thoughts and terrorism creating backgrounds. Likewise, the country’s presence in Afghanistan prevented a powerful government from forming there and eventually led the Taliban flag to be raised again.
These factors caused the civil war to be an everyday scene in a Middle East life, and therefore hundreds of thousands of refugees become homeless and lose their loved ones and proceed to safer places like Europe to pursue a better life. Thus, the refugees’ current challenge, including the recent incident that a Kurdish woman died in the Manche channel, is the consequence of West politics against the Middle East, especially their long-term military presence.
Unlike their announced position in the past decades, European countries like France and Britain concerning the refugees’ issue, which is based on human rights, have a political view. Immigration crisis can find this view in votes of parties like Marine Le Pen in France or AFD in Germany, which are anti-immigrant and have a racist bias towards the refugees. They claim that the refugees have threatened the security of European countries, and a rise in expenses will lead to identity conflict. Yet, the European authorities’ mechanisms to confront the existing problems have not had a good result so far. This is because of the absence of coordination and cooperation to manage the crisis and find a joint solution to exit the difficulty. Brexit and right-wing extremists and nationalists have made challenges more than before.
Immigration is highly dependent on matters like political stability, security and the dynamic economy of the countries. The Middle East has faced severe crises in the past years, which, more than any factor, is the outcome of the great powers’ intervention and the growth of terrorism and radical fundamentalism. The result of such a condition was the occurrence of wars and various disputes, which has continued until today and caused millions of people to be homeless and a lot to immigrate to Europe. A Kurdish woman who died in the Manche channel is the subject of the story of one of the thousands of people who proceeded on this deadly journey to pursue a better life.
