The human cost of the migrant crisis
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2021
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last Wednesday, 27 people died crossing the Channel from France in a small, inflatable dinghy. On the same day, many more did make it, landing on the beach in Kent. What is it actually like for the people trying to find their way to safety? And what are politicians doing to tackle these dangerous journeys?
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Guests:
- Emma Yeomans, reporter, The Times.
- Tom Ball, reporter, The Times.
- Matt Dathan, home affairs editor, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Clips: CBC, Channel 4 News, BBC.
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Transcript
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| 0:28.8 | on Sundays or mine only. |
| 0:35.9 | It was in the dead of night last Tuesday, a group of men, women and children were clinging |
| 0:42.7 | to a flimsy inflatable boat surrounded by the freezing channel. Their hopes and dreams for |
| 0:50.6 | the future in tatters around them. Both the engines stopped working with a run out of fuel |
| 0:56.4 | and they'd also sprung a leak. From the accounts of the two survivors, eventually the boats |
| 1:01.2 | completely sunken people in the water, clinging on to whatever they could to the remains of the boat, |
| 1:07.1 | life jackets, their possessions and so on. And they're in the water for several hours, |
| 1:11.6 | the water was freezing, it was dark and eventually after several hours of this some people just |
| 1:17.5 | couldn't hang on any longer. Even as they were drowning, the people on the boat had become |
| 1:24.4 | embroiled in a game of political tag between Britain and France. |
| 1:28.8 | One of the survivors said they had first called the French authorities who told them they couldn't |
| 1:34.7 | do anything because they're now in British waters. They then called the British authorities who |
| 1:42.0 | they claim ignored them which is a claim that has been rebuffed by the UK government. |
| 1:47.6 | If it's true then I think a certain amount of culpability does rest with agencies who |
| 1:52.8 | did nothing to act. At 2pm last Wednesday a fisherman alerted the authorities |
| 1:59.9 | after seeing bodies floating in the channel. We now know 27 people died on that boat. |
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