On Thursday, authorities reported the second death in two days of a person trying to seek asylum in the UK, forced to cross the Channel in deeply unsafe conditions.
Once again, we mourn the deaths of two people whose names we do not know.
We do not know what their hopes were, their dreams for a new life in the UK, or what terrible things they were fleeing from that left them with no choice but to risk the journey that cost their lives. We don’t know what brought them joy, what their hobbies, passions, skills and talents were.
We don’t know who their loved ones are, and whether they know what has happened to them yet, or if they are still waiting for a phone call from them that will never come.
What we do know is that these men were killed by border policies that abandoned them in the Channel.
We know that they deserved a safe path to reach the UK to ask for our help, and that refusing them this safe route forced them into the water.
When our Government claims it will save lives in the channel by “smashing the gangs”, what can it say to the loved ones of a young man who, according to the initial reports from French NGO Utopia 56, cobbled together a makeshift boat, making the journey alone, looking for nothing but safety?
These tragedies prove again what we already know: people will always need to flee war and persecution, we cannot prevent them from travelling, our only choice is whether to abandon them to deadly journeys or offer a safe, managed route.
Our leaders must take responsibility for every single one of these devastating, avoidable deaths.
They must commit to understanding the true effect of their border policies on the people who are forced to cross the Channel, and build a new approach that lets people exercise their human right to seek sanctuary without risking their lives.
When we say we need to fight for asylum rights, this is what we mean. The universal human right to seek asylum does not exist, if some people have to risk death in order to claim it.
