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Suicides in Calais: a border designed to create despair [1]

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Date: 2024-02 

"I used to meet Foad at every meal distribution we organised,” Yolaine Bernard, a member of the migrant solidarity group Salam, said. The 29-year-old from Sudan had been living on the streets around Calais for months. “I watched him sink deeper and deeper every day."

At some point "Foad didn't want to talk anymore,” Bernard continued. “He stayed away. He even stopped eating with the other camp residents."

On a cold morning in January 2023, after distributing breakfast in the camp, Bernard and other volunteers got back into their van and drove away. They stopped at a nearby railway crossing. The barriers were down and a train whistle was sounding in the distance.

The train whistle continued to blow. Bernard looked up, and after a moment realised Foad was standing in the middle of the tracks, arms raised to the sky and talking to himself.

Panic-stricken, she struggled to sound her horn. "I wanted to take off my seat belt, but I didn't have time to open my door,” she said. "Foad waved his hands at us, as if he wanted to say goodbye."

Foad Dango is one of the 391 migrants who disappeared on the France-Belgium-UK border between 1 January 1999 and 1 January 2024, and whose lives and deaths are recounted in this series.

At their limits

Dango’s death shocked Bernard, but it did not surprise her. She said it wasn’t the first time she had come across migrants who were "sliding very slowly". She feels powerless to respond to their distress. "It's all due to the life we make them lead," she said.

Serena Colagrande, the communications manager for Doctors Without Borders in France, said it’s not just life in Calais that pushes migrants to their limits. It’s all they’ve gone through before they get there as well.

"Certain experiences lived in the country of origin or along the migratory route, particularly in transit countries such as Libya, could prove traumatic for the migrants we meet in Calais," Colagrande said.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/migrant-suicides-in-calais-a-border-designed-to-create-despair/

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