EU/Africa: Dinghy deaths continue, as Mauritania enters the picture
01 January 2006
In the first quarter of 2006 migrants continued losing their lives at sea during attempts to enter European territory, in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas and in the Atlantic Ocean, en route to the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands. Following the annual report for 2005 from the
Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía (APDHA), which documented the highest ever number of deaths on the Spanish “southern border” (368), the most important development regarded the route along the lengthy sea crossing (around 1,000 km) from the Mauritanian coast, where thousands may have died, according to estimates from Spanish security services and the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
- On 4 January, one person died when a small vessel sank near the island of Lesmos in Greece.
- On 21 January, three people froze to death in two dinghies found drifting off the island of Evia in Greece on their way from Turkey, which were carrying 57 undocumented migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
- On 23 January, three migrants died and five disappeared off the coast of Alhucemas (northern Morocco) in a shipwreck after they had set off in a Zodiac launch.
- On 30 January, off the coast of Oran (Algeria), nine people were deemed to have disappeared in an attempt to reach Spain.
- On 13 February, an Afghan migrant died of shock in Patras harbour in Greece, allegedly due to a beating that his cousin allegedly suffered at the hands of border guards after attempting to smuggle himself onto a ferry travelling to Italy.
- On 15 February, an unidentified migrant woman was found after having died of exposure to cold on Mount Falakon during an attempt to cross the Greek-Bulgarian border.
- On 18 February, nine people disappeared in a shipwreck off the Libyan coast, during an attempt to reach Italy.
- On 19 February, a 25-year old Afghan drowned near the coast of the islet of Ounosses, near Chios in Greece, when an inflatable dinghy in which six Afghans were attempting the crossing from Turkey sank.
- On 19 February, there were two deaths near the island of Alborán near the coast of Almería in a dinghy crossing attempt that ended with an operation by Salvamento Marítimo (the Sea Rescue service) in which 24 migrants were rescued during a storm.
- A similar incident during a storm two days later (21 February) ended with the rescuing of four migrants. The crew of the merchant ship that gave the alarm saw two people falling into the sea, whose deaths were confirmed, while a further 26 are believed to have disappeared, based on estimates of the number of passengers travelling in the dinghy.
- On 22 February, a ship flying a Panamanian flag
arrived in Puerto de la Luz y las Palmas (in the Canary islands) from the Ivory Coast with four dead stowaways on board, believed to have died of asphyxia.
- On 5 March, one man died and nine disappeared in a shipwreck off Ahrax Point in Malta, en route to Sicily, after having fled from Hal Far and Safi detention centres.
- On 7 March, 3 dead stowaways were found in a lorry
that arrived in Bari (Italy) on a ferry from Durazzo (Albania).
- A dead sub-Saharan migrant was found by the Guardia Civil near the port of the Spanish north African enclave of Melilla on 16 March.
- On 17 March, Moroccan authorities confirmed the disappearance of 13 youths after they had set off towards the Canary islands from the Western Saharan town of Laâyoune.
On 7 March, the first news surfaced of what was to become the major development during this quarter, the deaths of migrants attempting the crossing to the Canary islands during a mass influx from Mauritania. The death of 45 sub-Saharans who were travelling in two dinghies on 5 March that suffered shipwrecks en route to the Canary islands opposite the Mauritanian and Western Saharan coasts. APDHA responded to this development by arguing that border control measures implemented by Spanish authorities (particularly the Sistema Integral