About 80 people paid tribute in Calais (Pas-de-Calais) on Sunday to an Iraqi baby who died at the age of three days in September 2020, after the interception of his migrant mother, pregnant, by gendarmes on a beach in Pas-de-Calais.
Sitting on the ground around a small wooden plaque engraved with the name of Aleksandra, these people intended to demand "justice" for this baby "and for all the victims of the borders", while an investigation by the General Inspectorate of national police (IGPN) is pending for "failure to provide assistance" in this case.
This woman was part of a group of 18 Iraqis intercepted by the gendarmerie on the beach of Oye-Plage, while they were "on the verge of attempting to cross the Channel to reach the British coast aboard a boat. Zodiac-type motorized semi-rigid ”, had specified the prefecture at the time of the facts.
The family who went to England filed a complaint
"We are here to support the family and the complaint they filed," said Frances Timberlake, coordinator of the Refugee Women's Center.
Coordinator of the Calais branch of the Utopia56 association, Marguerite Combes expressed her "indignation at European and general policies which kill people at the border, in full consciousness and voluntarily".
A poem written by Aleksandra's mother, who has since gone to England with her Iraqi Kurdish family, was read, in which she recounts spending hours on the beach, about to give birth, before the gendarmes let them go .
According to declarations from the Pas-de-Calais prefecture last March, none of the migrants present on the beach then “expressed particular difficulties”, this Iraqi woman not having reported herself as being about to give birth. that later, with another gendarmerie patrol, which alerted the emergency services.
The version is challenged by the family lawyer and migrant defense associations.
They claim that the pregnant woman repeatedly asked to be taken to the hospital when she was on the beach, to no avail.
