"I will ... say very clearly that our security forces are mobilized day and night. Maximum mobilization [of French forces with reservists and drones will be watching the coast]."

"But above all, we need to seriously strengthen cooperation -- with Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain and the European Commission."

French President Emmanuel Macron

 

"Yesterday is sad and it is scary [the drowning of 31 migrants attempting to cross the Channel in an overloaded dinghy that deflated], but we have to go by boat, there is no other way."

"Maybe it's dangerous, maybe we die, but maybe it will be safe. We have to try our chance. It's a risk, we already know it is a risk."

Manzar, 28-year-old Kurd from Iran

Fire trucks arrive at Calais harbour Wednesday after at least 31 migrants died in the sinking of their boat off the coast of Calais.

 

When questioned why they would risk their lives on such a dangerous venture, some of the young men opting to leave Kurdistan (Iraq) in hopes of reaching the United Kingdom, speak of their disappointment of their country of origin. The large unemployment figures, the lack of opportunity, the corruption at high level, blaming prominent clans for their role in leading the autonomous region, the inequities and the misery they face in a geography rich with natural resources.

Their anger at their leaders and their determination to seek out opportunities for their futures elsewhere made them ripe for exploitation as human victims to ideological disparities and the ire felt by the president of Belarus at the condemnation heaped upon him, along with sanctions for the role he played in violating the voting and human rights of his population many of whom took to the streets in protest against a sham election returning him to power.

 

Mass protests over the discredited election led to a government crackdown, with people sent to prison or exiled   Getty Images

 

Belarusian President Lukashenko promised those anxious to cross into Europe that if they travelled to Minsk, a way could be found. That way was  to bus them in their hundreds to the border between Belarus and Poland, where they were encouraged to cut through the wire fencing and make their way through. The migrants made it clear their destination was not Poland, but the United Kingdom. Not just anywhere in Europe would do; the UK was their choice.

What resulted was a humanitarian tragedy, as all such movements of mass migration end up, with their destination country closing its borders to the masses of humanity camping out beyond their borders hoping for a miracle to transpire, that they would be welcomed, housed, fed, found employment and prosper, leaving their pasts of yearning for such opportunities behind in a fantasy reality that achieved all they had dreamed of.

The scene shifts from that catastrophe with its loss of lives and hopes and collapsed dreams, to the English Channel where for years, migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere gather with the determination to puncture Europe's defences and gain entry to the opportunities they are convinced awaits their arrival. The same spirit of hope and defiance that people from failed Central American states, Africans and Haitians bring with them when they gather at the border between Mexico and the United States.

France has pledged once again to increase its surveillance of its northern shores to ensure that migrants fail in their attempts to cross the Channel to Britain, their preferred destination. The migrants are unimpressed. Huddling in their makeshift camps they vow that no measure of security to keep them from realizing their aspirations will defeat them. And nor would fear of the venture before them, crossing a waterway full of commercial traffic nor weathering conditions at sea in small inflatable dinghies.

These are watercraft meant to carry no more than ten people, and double and  triple that number are ushered into the boats at a time by unscrupulous people smugglers doing their brisk business with no inconvenient thoughts of placing people in dire danger disturbing the more important thoughts of their extortionate fees. Desperate people leaving behind poverty and war in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the world of Islamic social incompetence, corruption and violence view the potential dangers of a sea crossing as nothing compared to the miseries of life they have endured.

When the 31 men, women and children drowned in their failed crossing, relations between France and Britain, already strained, took a deeper dive of anger and resentment; no one likes to take credit for the deaths of vulnerable people fleeing misery and finding death. Prime Minister Johnson feels France to be at fault, while President Macron understands the responsibility for the situation to be entirely Britain's. Finally it seems to have occurred to them that cooperation might achieve more.

Britain has set out five steps for the two countries to embark upon in an effort to ensure there are no further migrant deaths. 

• Joint patrols to prevent more boats from leaving French beaches;
• The use of sensors and radar;
• Immediate work on a returns agreement with France;
• A similar deal with the European Union.

Having left the EU in Brexit, Britain was no longer part of the bloc's system of returning migrants to the first member-state that was entered. 

"My thoughts and sympathies are, first of all with the victims and their families, and it's an appalling thing that they have suffered."

"But I also want to say that this disaster underscores how dangerous it is to cross the Channel in this way. And it also shows how vital it is that we now step up our efforts to break the business model of the gangsters who are sending people to sea in this way, and that's why it's so important that we accelerate if we possibly can all the measures contained in our borders ... so that we distinguish between people who come here legally, and people who come here illegally."

"[Authorities would] leave no stone unturned to the business proposition of the human traffickers and the gangsters ... who are literally getting away with murder."

"[It was time for Britain, France and Europe to] step up [and work together]." 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

A boat from a French volunteer sea rescue organization, Societe Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer, arrives Wednesday at Calais harbour carrying the bodies of migrants.

"Some people do not respect the country that is hosting them, and they strive to prove they are not looking for a passport to a better life."

"They will not leave [the island] because of the fire."

Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas 

 

"Under the stars, I'm going to sleep under the stars like all these people here."

"[I've] nowhere to go since everything burned so we slept outside and we'll continue here."

Leonie Raymon, refugee from Cameroon

 

"In the past few days we've been living through unprecedented situations with daily fires."

"We've reached our limits. We're anxious, we feel insecure, we're fed up, we don't know how to act anymore."

Moria's municipal community leader Yiannis Mastroyannis

 

"There is a terrible reality with these fires. Many children, women, men are in these camps in absolutely terrible conditions. We want to show solidarity with Greece that lives up to European values."

French President Emmanuel Macron 

"I recognize the difficult conditions. However, nothing can become an alibi for violent reactions to health checks. And, much more, for riots of this magnitude."

"The situation in Moria cannot continue because it is a matter of public health, humanity and national security at the same time."

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis

Migrants flee from the Moria refugee camp during second a fire, on the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece, on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

During a huge migration wave that swamped Europe in 2015-16, with migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia who left the nearby Turkish coast with the intention of entering Europe by way of Greece and Italy, the camp at Moria on the Greek Island of Lesbos was set up to accommodate several thousand people. It ended up with many more than it was intended to service, becoming a sprawling squalid camp, condemned by human rights groups. For those who flooded into Greece, the intention was to move on to wealthier European countries.

Some, like Germany, the destination of many of the migrants who knew of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's willing absorption of a million migrants was their target, but the state, under growing pressure from alarmed German citizens along with violent incidents emanating from a proportion of the migrants, reversed its earlier stance. Countries of the European Union mandated to accept a share of the migrants to relieve the burden on Italy and Greece, finally felt they had reached the limits of their absorption capacity and balked at accepting additional migrants.

 

Now, in the wake of a massive fire in the largest migrant camp for asylum seekers in Europe, 12,500 migrants formerly placed under coronavirus quarantine are without shelter. Authorities were faced with a humanitarian crisis that eclipsed the one that existed prior to the fire. At the same time Greek investigators are trying to figure out whether a connection existed between the conflagration and anger on the part of the migrants over an erupting camp outbreak of coronavirus.

 

Smoke rises at the burnt camp of Moria on the island of Lesbos on Wednesday the morning after a major fire broke out.

 

According to three eyewitnesses the fire began as a protest against mandatory new quarantine measures. The blaze broke out after migrants who tested positive for the virus or were exposed, refused to go into isolation, according to a semi-official Greek news agency. Arson is being investigated as a possible cause of the blaze. Overnight, people fled the camp, as tents and shipping containers became engulfed in flames. There were no injuries or deaths reported. But police surrounded the camp attempting to ensure that the migrants remained within the vicinity of the camp.

Moria had been a site where protests, fatal fires and chronic sickness took place, filled well beyond capacity, cited by international aid groups as being unsafe and inhumane. It remained in operation not because Greece wanted to continue hosting the migrants, but because there was simply nowhere else for them to go. They kept arriving because the previous waves had succeeded in distributing themselves around Europe. And more latterly, Turkey used them as a threat to coerce Europe to fund its own refugee camps.

 

"Events in Moria last night are unthinkable but, tragically, predictable as the dire situation on the islands has gone on for far too long", the Greece country director for the International Rescue Committee -- Dimitra Kalogeropoulou noted of the residents that had fled from the fire, but are "now left with nothing". 

Refugees and migrants with their children gather on a bridge on Wednesday after the fire at the camp.

Last week officials visiting the camp had identified the first three positive cornavirus case and a testing campaign that followed detected another 35 positive cases, leading to the camp being placed under lockdown. The new Greek government devised a blueprint to close Moria and other island centres to create more permanent structures, in the face of local resistance where the new permanent structures might be placed.

 

Some asylum seekers have been gradually transferred to the mainland. Other European Union countries have agreed to accept some of the most vulnerable among the migrants, unaccompanied minors in particular, to rescue them from a camp that ended up holding ten times the number of people it was originally designed to house.

People grasp for food on Thursday, September 10 after fires destroyed the Moria migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos