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‘Your borders, our dead’: 25 years of lives lost in Calais [1]

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Date: 2024-02 

“Say their names so that we never forget: Bryar, Mhabad, Mohamed, Sirwan, Maryam, Bilind, Ahmad, Pshtiwan, Shakar...” One year to the day after 31 people died in a shipwreck off the coast of Dunkirk, an activist is standing on the beach, reading out the names of the victims.

Several hundred people – associations, activists, and ordinary residents – have braved the cold to take part in this tribute. Some hold candles, others torches. There’s a banner: “your borders, our dead”.

Once the names have been recited, Juliette Delaplace, an employee at Caritas France, begins to read letters from relatives of the victims. One is from Emu to her husband, Fikiru Shiferaw.

“You didn't deserve to die like that,” Emu wrote. “You didn't deserve to be treated like this in your last moments in this cruel world. I still hope that justice will be done.”

A minute's silence followed, then smoke bombs were set off that lit up the beach in bright red.

Shiferaw is one of 391 migrants who died on the border between the UK, France and Belgium between 1 January 1999 and 1 January 2024. This series has recounted their lives and deaths so that we too may never forget.

Memorials for the lost

Such ceremonies have now become commonplace. In Calais, activists have taken to meeting in a park near the town centre whenever a new death is announced.

“We were faced with an incredible series of deaths in 2014 and 2015,” said Flore, an activist in Calais. “We were all shocked, but we had the impression that all these deaths went unnoticed.”

So, together with other activists, she instituted the ritual of meeting after each death. “We had to make all these victims visible and denounce what was happening at the border,” she said.

“The aim of these commemorations is to mark time out for the most serious thing that can happen to people exiled at the border: death,” Delaplace explained further. She said it’s also a way of “alleviating the feeling of helplessness and solitude” that arises when a death is announced, by “getting together and taking care of each other”.

Anger for those still alive

Sometimes migrants take the lead in expressing grief, and anger.

In September 2021, Yasser Abdallah died while trying to climb into a truck. Aged 20 and Eritrean, he was well known to others and his death triggered a wave of anger and incomprehension inside the community. Some of his relatives refused to be satisfied with a commemoration and decided instead to organise a demonstration.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/your-borders-our-dead-remembering-25-years-of-migrant-victims-in-calais/

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