Human rights probe after police ‘slash rubber dinghy’ taking migrants to UK | World | News

French police are facing a human rights investigation after footage emerged apparently showing officers using a knife to slash a migrant dinghy to stop it from crossing the Channel to Britain.

Video circulating on social media appears to show officers slicing through a rubber dinghy that had become beached on sand near Calais in northern France on Sunday. The vessel rapidly deflated, forcing more than 20 migrants back to shore.

Nobody was hurt during the incident, with water levels reported to be below knee height at the time.

Migrant charity Utopia 56 has condemned the act as unlawful, arguing that the boat was technically at sea and that lives were put at risk. Under French law, police are prohibited from intervening once a vessel is in the water, in order to safeguard those on board.

Utopia 56 has since lodged a report with France’s Defender of Rights, the nation’s leading human rights watchdog, and filed a formal complaint with the IGGN National Gendarmerie Inspectorate, the body responsible for investigating allegations against police officers.

Utopia 56 wrote on Instagram: “This video was shot by one of our volunteers on Sunday at Oye-Plage.

“You can see policemen slashing a boat already in the water while people are on board.

“This is an extremely dangerous practice for passengers but has been used regularly for several years.” A spokesman for the Pas-de-Calais gendarmerie stated that the intervention was “entirely within the law” as the vessel had essentially already come to rest on dry land.

“It wasn’t a boat in the water – it had run aground and suffered a flotation failure,” the spokesperson said.

“Officers neutralised the boat to prevent it from returning to sea and thus avoid further endangering the migrants’ lives during the crossing.”

Britain and France signed a £660 million agreement last month, pledging to intercept more vessels before they are launched upstream to collect migrants heading for the UK.

The cumulative number of crossings since the small boats crisis first emerged in 2018 stands at approximately 200,000. On Monday, 92 people arrived aboard two vessels, bringing the running total to 199,920, according to the Sun.

On Sunday, the bodies of a woman and a teenage girl were discovered on a migrant boat that had run aground on a French beach. Both are believed to have perished from crushing or suffocation after the vessel’s engine exploded. It is thought that both victims were Sudanese nationals.