Senegal

Spanish rescuers found 78 boat people off the Canary Islands, 300 are still missing. The death toll is increasing rapidly.

Luckily, these boat people were found by Spanish helpers off the Canary Islands Photo: Borja Suarez / Reuters

BERLIN taz | Another refugee drama in the Atlantic draws renewed attention to one of the longest maritime escape routes in the world. On Tuesday, three boats from Senegal were still missing on their way to the Canary Islands, which belong to Spain, along with their estimated 300 passengers.

Spanish rescuers picked up a boat with 78 people off the Canary Islands on Monday, who took them to the island of Gran Canaria in the care of the Red Cross, but contrary to initial reports, it was not one of the three boats whose disappearance the Spanish aid organization Caminando Fronteras had previously reported.

According to the organization, a boat with 200 passengers left the Senegalese port of Kafountine on June 27. Two other boats, each carrying 50 and 60 people, had left the same port shortly before. There is no trace of all of them.

The migratory route from West Africa across the Atlantic to the Canary Islands has been used for decades, although boats have to travel around 1,500 kilometers across the sea between Senegal’s capital Dakar and the Canary Islands.

The alternative, the overland route to the north, is usually impractical. Neither the border from Senegal to Mauritania nor that from Mauritania to Western Sahara annexed by Morocco is easily passable. For the most part, refugees are systematically prevented from landing on Moroccan territory, and black Africans who are apprehended are deported.

Cause of flight in Senegal

The recently increasing popularity of the sea route is reflected in the rapidly increasing number of deaths: In 2022, the UN migration authority IOM registered 559 drowned people on the Atlantic route, in the first half of 2023 already 778, 332 of them in June alone; the number of unreported cases is likely to be high.

Spain’s police are helping Senegal make it harder for people to leave the country illegally — and that’s forcing migrants down off-the-beaten-track routes. From the port of Kafountine in the southern part of Senegal, which is separated from the rest of the country by Gambia, the distance to the Canary Islands is even 1,700 kilometers.

In the Casamance region, between Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, rebel groups are active and are driving people to flee. It is also the home of Senegal’s opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, whose supporters are facing reprisals. Some are said to be among the now-missing boat people. Many migrants from neighboring countries also leave Kafountine.

Kafountine gained notoriety in June 2022 when a fishing boat carrying 140 passengers capsized on departure and 15 of the 140 passengers drowned. In December, a boat full of migrants exploded when someone lit a cigarette next to the petrol tank. After such incidents, the survivors are usually hunted down, arrested and deported by Senegal’s police.

2023-07-11 16:16:28
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