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Ranj Peshdari on the Calais shore, the day before his attempt to cross the English Channel, on January 25, 2022. Photo: Ranj Peshdari/Facebook
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Kurdish activist boarded a dinghy on Tuesday evening with around two dozen migrants, including at least two toddlers, in an attempt to cross the English Channel in order to highlight the desperate plight of migrants, and the great risks they face.
“Greetings to you, I am live on Instagram in French waters heading to Britain… my aim in taking this journey is to be with these Kurdish migrants as a Kurdish activist and that is why I have taken this big risk with my own life, we will be in the water for five hours,” Ranj Pwahdari, an activist who has reported on the Kurdish migrants crisis for years said in a video posted on his Instagram at 1:00am on Wednesday morning.
Peshdari has traveled across Europe - to countries including Greece, Belarus, Poland, and Germany - to highlight the plight of migrants stuck in often inhumane conditions. He is often the first point of contact for Kurdish families whose loved ones make the treacherous journeys from Turkey to Europe.
As Peshdari speaks, a woman can be seen wrapping a blanket around a toddler, while a young child is embraced by another woman looking on. “As you remember, a number of boats unfortunately drowned and a number of migrants died,” Peshdari says off camera, as he films the people inside the dinghy and a booming light that can be seen on the French side of the Channel. One passenger films the sea using a mobile phone.
Peshdari said in the video that he wanted to highlight the plight of migrants following the November tragedy in which a boat carrying 34 people including children capsized, killing 27. Two men survived and five are still missing in the sea.
The Kurdish families of the migrants are in the process of taking the British and French governments to court in order to establish what exactly happened in the early hours of November 24 after their loved ones made repeated phone calls to the French and British emergency services to come to their rescue.
More than 28,300 people crossed the English Channel in 2021 alone, three times the number from 2020 to reach the UK, most of them in dingy according to UK Home Office data. British authorities, including the Home Secretary, pledged to make the journey across the Channel in small boats “unviable.”
“You have taken a big risk by taking a dinghy,” one user wrote on Peshdari’s most recent update on Instagram.
“This is the ship that we can’t travel in,” a male voice can be heard from the boat as the dinghy passes by a ferry, as filmed by Peshdari. A woman asks how many hours the journey will take. “God willing, we will be in British waters in three hours,” another passenger on the boat responds.
“We are not that many, between 25 to 30 people… I don’t want to go to stay in the UK, I just want to know the conditions of these migrants,” Peshdari says.
Peshdari speaks to someone on the boat who says that the dinghy they are using is brand new. “Everyone was aware that the boat was brand new, we opened it in front of their eyes,” a male voice can be heard saying. Peshdari asks about the assistance given to them by the French or British police following the incident on November 24. “The French ship escorts us until we get to the international waters, sometimes they escort us, sometimes they don’t, it depends,” the voice continues.
“A thousand and three hundred people are watching live and there are 40k likes,” Peshdari says.
Based on his Instagram update, Peshdari appears to have been in Calais and Dunkirk for at least two days before taking the journey across the Channel. Photos on his Instagram show him with a group of Kurdish migrants Iran, as well as a family from Sulaimani province in the Kurdistan Region, including children.
A video posted on Tuesday shows dramatic footage of young migrants carrying a dinghy on their back at night as they cross a train track and then onto the French shore the following morning. A man wearing a red hat and carrying a toddler walks behind the group carrying the dinghy in Dunkirk, as a woman follows behind. In the next scene, tear gas is used against the group of migrants and Peshdari speaks to the camera.
“We have been here for ten hours, we came here around 8 in order to go to Britain but police raided the spot and punctured the boat and then used tear gas,” Peshdari said. “The migrants defended themselves and insisted that they wanted to go, and then the police used tear gas.” Peshdari says that the police used tear gas knowing there were children in the group and even a pregnant woman.
By Wednesday afternoon, it became clear that the small boat Peshdari was on had not managed to cross the Channel. After three and a half hours in the water, French authorities returned the migrants to France.
Updated at 5:45pm
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