Britain sends scapegoats to the slaughter
Rights groups say the criminalising of asylumseekers will further harm the victims of smugglers.
Kiri Rupiah
Ibrahima Bah, a young Senegalese man, was convicted last month by a British court for the manslaughter of four passengers who drowned in the English Channel in December 2022
It’s the first time a migrant has been held criminally liable for harm caused to other passengers. Bah, 17 at the time, was steering a homemade boat from France to the United Kingdom when it began taking on water and ripped apart. There were at least 43 people on board, and four bodies have been recovered.
The Crown Prosecution Service argued that Bah could be held responsible for the deaths as he was part of a “criminal agreement” to pilot the vessel. And that he had failed in his “duty of care” to keep others onboard safe. Everyone else on board, unlike Bah, had paid thousands of euros for passage, prosecutors said.
Bah said he was forced, at gunpoint, to steer the boat, and was as much a victim of the people smugglers as those who were on the boat. During the trial, several survivors testified that if it wasn’t for Bah, there would have been more deaths and his actions when the boat started taking on water saved their lives.
While Bah is the first person to be held criminally liable, he is not the first to be prosecuted for steering the boats they were passengers on. Seeking asylum is not a crime. But the UK government has passed laws making it a crime to seek asylum after making a perilous journey to the British Isles. The country has also joined its European peers in making it nearly impossible for people to claim asylum legally.
Despite being party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the government continues to stoke anti-migrant violence and rhetoric. Human Rights Watch says these crossings won’t be ended by draconian laws. Instead, criminalisation, deterrence and expulsion lead to more deaths along far more dangerous and secret routes, and means of arrival.