Smugglers have caused numerous deaths yet again on one of the many sea routes to Europe used by illegal migrants. Reports claim that as many as 51 people died on the way to the Spanish Canary Islands, including at least three children and eleven women.
Helena Maleno Garzon, an activist and founder of the migration NGO Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders), announced the shipwreck on Twitter on Saturday, July, 1st, indicating that the ship had set sail from the city of Tan Tan in Southern Morocco.
“From the boat that left Tan Tan, there are only four survivors who are hospitalised. Death at the border is caused by the lack of means of rescue and the scant collaboration between countries to defend the right to life,” Garzon said.
The reported deaths come as the Canary Island migrant route has seen a recent surge of activity, according to the newspaper El Mundo, which noted that within 15 days, smugglers had led as many as 89 people to their deaths while trying to reach the Spanish islands off the western coast of Africa.
In the first two weeks of June alone, an estimated 1,508 migrants arrived in the Canary Islands, compared to 4,406 in the first five months of this year. The total estimate of arrivals for June is speculated to be as high as 3,000.
José Antonio Rodríguez Verona, regional head of First Emergency Response for the immigrant population of the Red Cross commented on the recent surge of landings saying migrants were arriving in dugout canoes.
“We have assisted about 60 people, all men. Five have been transferred to health centres. One deceased man came,” Verona said, regarding a recent migrant landing on the islands.
“The months with the most arrivals have always been September and October, at the end of the year,” Verona said and added, “This year has started in June. We attribute it to the fact that there have been very good weather conditions.”
At least five boats remain missing in the Atlantic Ocean on the Canary Island route, with at least 266 people aboard them, with most of the migrants coming originally from Morocco and sub-Saharan African countries.
The Canary Island route is by far the most dangerous of the illegal routes to Spanish territory seeing the vast majority of deaths along Spanish migrant routes in any given year.
Last year, Caminando Fronteras claimed that as many as 4,400 migrants died trying to reach Spanish territory in 2021, stating the majority died trying to sail to the Canary Islands.
The Association for Human Rights of Andalusia stated last year that as many as one in ten women who try the perilous journey to the Canary Islands die, while the figure for men was around one in a hundred.
According to the association, the high rate of death among women is “due to the fact that women, often pregnant or accompanied by minors, are placed on long journeys in the centre of the boats, which in the event of a shipwreck limits their chances of survival, which are further reduced by the responsibility of saving their son or daughter.”
The deaths off of the Canary Islands come just weeks after another major shipwreck in the Mediterranean off the southern coast of Greece killed at least 79 people and possibly hundreds of others.
Greek authorities arrested nine men, all Egyptian nationals, accused of people smuggling following the tragedy. The men are alleged to have charged the migrants as much as $6,000 each for the deadly trip, which began in Egypt.
A relative of one of those aboard the boat claimed the smugglers had packed the boat with as many as 750 people, though estimates from survivors have varied between 400 and 600 migrants.
The boat was initially heading to Italy before it sank. Italy has seen a surge of illegal migrant arrivals this year, with the United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR recording 64,846 arrivals as of July 2nd.
One of the main destinations for migrants is the island of Lampedusa, between Tunisia and Sicily. The migrant hotspot, which is meant to only accommodate several hundred people, was reported to be eight times over capacity last weekend with over 3,000 people present at the facility.
