Three Migrants Enter Spain’s Canary Islands from Nigeria Balanced on Ship’s Rudder
The Spanish coast guards rescued three migrants who stowed away on a tanker which arrived in the Canary Islands from Nigeria, news agency the Guardian reported.
These migrants balanced themselves on the rudder, just above the waterline, posing a risk to their lives.
The Spanish coast guard released a picture where the three migrants were pictured sitting on the rudder of the ship carrying oil and chemicals. The ship that the migrants stowed away on is called Alithini II.
The Maltese-flagged Alithini II reached the Las Palmas in Gran Canaria on Monday afternoon after completing a voyage spanning 11 days from Nigeria’s Lagos, the Guardian said citing Marine Traffic, a ship-tracking website.
The coast guard said the migrants were tended to by health services and treatment was given for dehydration and hypothermia.
A journalist and migration adviser to the Canary Islands government, Txema Santana, in a tweet pointed out that this will not be the last vessel and said stowaways do not have much luck.
“It is not the first and it will not be the last. Stowaways do not always have the same luck,” Santana tweeted. The Canary Islands have seen an influx of migrants who often cross through north Africa. Earlier they used routes in the Mediterranean sea but since late 2019 those routes are being avoided as checks have increased.
A similar incident occurred in October 2020 where four individuals stowed away on the rudder of an oil tanker from Lagos. They remained in hiding for 10 days before cops found them as the vessel reached Las Palmas.
The data by Spanish observers show that migration by sea to the archipelago jumped 51% in the first five months of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021.
More than 11,000 migrants crossed to the Canary Islands from several African countries in 2022 as of September 15, the Spanish government said.
Thousands of migrants die each year in such perilous voyages where rickety wooden boats and inflatable boats are used to allow them to cross into European nations.
Earlier this week, people took out demonstrations and paid tribute to the 27 migrants who died exactly a year ago in a Channel boat disaster which the French government said was preventable.
Wreaths were tossed into the water in Dunkirk as those gathered remembered the 27, of whom most were from Iraq, who died after their inflatable boat capsized in the middle of the shipping channel between France and the UK.
