A fisherman in the French port city of Calais claims to have witnessed people smugglers pushing migrants into the waters of the English Channel before he rescued several from drowning.
Local Calais fisherman Olivier Folcke claimed he witnessed people smugglers pushing migrants overboard in the English Channel last weekend as around 1,200 migrants attempted to cross into the UK on Saturday and Sunday.
💬 "Ils ont pris trois migrants, ils les ont jetés à l'eau"
Le témoignage d'un pêcheur qui a sauvé trois migrants de la noyade près de Calais ⤵ pic.twitter.com/Q1lrDUIUcN
— BFMTV (@BFMTV) November 13, 2022
“All of a sudden, we saw the smugglers pushing three migrants into the water, without life jackets. Their clothes were filling with water, they were panicking and screaming,” Folcke told French media, Ouest France reports.
“When we pulled them out of the water, it was very complicated because they had no strength in their wrists they were paralyzed by the cold,” he said and added, “At least two of the three were going to drown.”
“I managed to carry them as best I could to get them into the boat. We put towels on them and then we came back very quickly to Calais,” he said and told French media that the migrants were later taken care of by local paramedics.
The deadly cost of the open borders approach to illegal immigration:https://t.co/RyYtKhoAuD
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) October 27, 2022
According to a report from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) earlier this year, an estimated 3,000 or more migrants died of drowning trying to reach Europe over the course of 2021 as people smugglers led many to their deaths aboard unseaworthy boats.
Reports of people smugglers abusing and even murdering migrants trying to reach Europe are also not uncommon, with the body of a man shot dead by smugglers being found aboard a boat in September by a migrant taxi NGO.
Migrants on the boat claimed that smugglers had shot the man and killed him prior to the boat launching from North Africa and forced the migrants to take the body of the man with them on their voyage across the Mediterranean.
Don't call it an 'invasion'! https://t.co/SU1wsfFtFY
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 13, 2022
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