“Say their names so that we never forget: Bryar, Mhabad, Mohamed, Sirwan, Maryam, Bilind, Ahmad, Pshtiwan, Shakar...” One year to the day after 31 people died in a shipwreck off the coast of Dunkirk, an activist is standing on the beach, reading out the names of the victims.

Several hundred people – associations, activists, and ordinary residents – have braved the cold to take part in this tribute. Some hold candles, others torches. There’s a banner: “your borders, our dead”.

Once the names have been recited, Juliette Delaplace, an employee at Caritas France, begins to read letters from relatives of the victims. One is from Emu to her husband, Fikiru Shiferaw.

“You didn't deserve to die like that,” Emu wrote. “You didn't deserve to be treated like this in your last moments in this cruel world. I still hope that justice will be done.”

A minute's silence followed, then smoke bombs were set off that lit up the beach in bright red.

Shiferaw is one of 391 migrants who died on the border between the UK, France and Belgium between 1 January 1999 and 1 January 2024. This series has recounted their lives and deaths so that we too may never forget.

Memorials for the lost

Such ceremonies have now become commonplace. In Calais, activists have taken to meeting in a park near the town centre whenever a new death is announced.

“We were faced with an incredible series of deaths in 2014 and 2015,” said Flore, an activist in Calais. “We were all shocked, but we had the impression that all these deaths went unnoticed.”

So, together with other activists, she instituted the ritual of meeting after each death. “We had to make all these victims visible and denounce what was happening at the border,” she said.

“The aim of these commemorations is to mark time out for the most serious thing that can happen to people exiled at the border: death,” Delaplace explained further. She said it’s also a way of “alleviating the feeling of helplessness and solitude” that arises when a death is announced, by “getting together and taking care of each other”.

Anger for those still alive

Sometimes migrants take the lead in expressing grief, and anger.

In September 2021, Yasser Abdallah died while trying to climb into a truck. Aged 20 and Eritrean, he was well known to others and his death triggered a wave of anger and incomprehension inside the community. Some of his relatives refused to be satisfied with a commemoration and decided instead to organise a demonstration.

“The migrants had portraits of Yasser printed to carry as banners, and several texts were written. It was a very powerful and painful moment,” recalled Delaplace. “They really wanted to denounce this death and the policies pursued at the border.”

One of the texts that was read out, ‘Message from the Calais refugees after the death of our brother’, said: “Every morning in Calais, there is a new ordeal. We live with the knowledge that our friends who are with us today may not be with us tomorrow. Death is in our eyes, fear and anxiety never leave our minds.”

Delaplace has witnessed many such commemorations. When Mohamed Khamisse Zakaria was killed by a car following a police intervention near the Eurotunnel site in November 2020, “The relatives asked for journalists to be present at the funeral,” she said. “They wrote a tribute published by Libération: they wanted us to hear about Mohamed's funeral.”

Entitled “La fin d’un rêve” (The end of a dream), the text finishes with: “As you know, we're here out of necessity, and have been through so much suffering on the road. Let the police and the government understand. Why chase us down the freeway, when scanners and security guards with dogs are already screening all the lorries entering England?”

For 25 years now they have been chased, and for 25 years the dead have piled up in Calais. “These deaths are the consequences of French and European migration policies,” Delaplace said. “The rallies we organise serve as a reminder that this is unacceptable.”

Mourning at home and abroad

Deaths in Calais affect families abroad, in Europe, and in the countries of origin. But sometimes the shockwave reaches much farther than that. “When a Sudanese migrant dies in Calais, sometimes the whole Sudanese community mobilises,” Flore said.

“After Ahmed Youssef Adam's death, the entire Zaghawa diaspora, of which he was a member, came from Germany and Belgium to pay their respects and attend the funeral,” Delaplace said. It was a private moment, but one in which a number of activists, invited by friends and family, took part.

“In difficult times like these, we feel together and numerous,” Flore said. “It makes you feel connected.”

In 2008, around midnight on October 15, two Eritreans approached a lorry parked near a train station, the trailer of which was slightly overhanging a canal. One of the men, Ramadan, tried to climb onto the truck to access the trailer, but slipped and fell into the water.

His companion could not swim, so instead he ran to a nearby café for help. One of the customers, Jean-Pierre Everaere, 47, dove in to try to save Ramadan. Both men drowned.

“Ramadan's friends came to the church in Aire-sur-la-Lys, Pas-de-Calais, to attend Jean-Pierre's funeral,” recalled Mariam Guerey, a Caritas France employee in Calais. “They even wrote a text in which Ramadan speaks to Jean-Pierre to thank him for trying to save him, and to tell him that their souls will be reunited in paradise.”

Ramadan's funeral took place a few days later, at the Saint-Omer Mosque. “Jean-Pierre's wife and children made a point of attending the ceremony,” Guerey said. “It was beautiful and crowded.”

Everaere was buried in Aire-sur-la-Lys, while Ramadan lies in the Muslim part of the Saint-Omer cemetery. In the final stanzas of the poem read at Everaere's funeral, Ramadan says to him: “We have both lost this life, but our hope in humanity is still alive.”

Flore is a pseudonym.

Explore the rest of the series

1. INTRODUCTION | 391 deaths in 25 years at the UK border
   MEMORIAL | Our cemetery of 391 migrant deaths
2. PORT | Dying by the ferries in Calais
3. TUNNEL | Drivers said Eurotunnel ‘a picture of war’
4. HOMICIDE | Punitive killings in Calais overlooked
5. POLICE | Police violence ‘rarely punished’ at the border
6. LORRIES | 20 years of dying in lorries but still ‘no change’
7. BOATS | The path to the ‘small boats’ crisis
8. SUICIDE | A border designed to create despair
9. REMEMBRANCE | 25 years of victims: ‘Your borders, our dead’
10. EXPLAINER | Channel border violence from a UK perspective