Sunday Times
By Edin Hamzic
18/03/2001

MORE than 20 Kurdish refugees from the ship that beached off southern France four weeks
ago are believed to have come to Britain.

They are said to have completed the final leg of their five-week journey from Iraq with the
aid of smugglers operating from a Red Cross camp at Sangatte, near Calais. Thirty more
Kurds from the ship remain in the camp waiting to cross the Channel.

The ship, East Sea, crashed into rocks on the Cote d'Azur on February 17 with 911
Iraqi-Kurdish refugees crammed into its hold. The crew, part of the smuggling ring, fled in
small boats from the wreck.

Earlier last week one of the women from the ship, who gave her name only as Atije for fear
that British immigration officers might deport her when she arrives at Dover, described how
gangs of smugglers arrived at their camp near Frejus in the south of France days after the
beaching.

They offered to transport them to Calais and other ports in northern France and Belgium
before smuggling them into Britain, she said.

"I paid them $500 for the trip. I was put into a van and then a lorry and driven with four
other people to Calais, but many were put on trains," she said.

Atije, 38, was a nurse in Iraq but said that she decided to leave when her father and brother
were killed by Iraqi police two years ago.

"I had to leave and I heard that life in England was great; that is why I'm going there. I
travelled on the ship, in a van and I am ready to do anything to get there," she said.

She hoped to cross into Britain in the next few days and had paid the smugglers $4,000.
"They told me that they'll get me on a lorry on the train and the rest is up to me."

Last night, Atije could not be found at the camp and one of her friends said: "Atije's gone.
She left on Thursday with four more people and we have heard
that they've all got to England."

Last month Jack Straw, the home secretary, said that any of the Kurds from the East Sea
who came to Britain would be deported. He also attacked the French government for failing
to deal with the refugees.

Stern warnings from Straw seem to have had little effect on the immigrants. The camp is
unguarded and refugees have freedom of movement. If French police catch them trying to
cross the Channel, they just return them to the camp, where they are again free to leave.

Another Kurd at the camp, Shiraz Hami, 19, was hoping to come to Britain this weekend.
Like many of his friends, he has access to money.

Hami says he can afford to travel into Calais by taxi and when the cold nights got too much,
he booked into a local hotel. He has been at the campfour months and left north Iraq in the
summer of 1999. This weekend he says he will make his way to England illegally and meet
his mother in London.

John Tincey, a spokesman for the Immigration Service Union, was not surprised. He said
that despite new security checks introduced by the French in December, record numbers of
illegal immigrants were getting through. "The only way to fight them [smugglers] is to
continuously upgrade the security - but that costs money."

Last night three Romanian refugees who were among nine who arrived in Britain stowed
beneath a Eurostar train were still at large after escaping from Oakington detention centre
near Cambridge more than a week ago.
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com