The images are clear: a group of gendarme Enter the sea and, without hesitation, hole with a knife the inflatable boat full of migrants Ready to leave for England. In France, the images broadcast by the BBC, relaunched by Tg1 and positively welcomed from London in the battle to illegal immigration, are discussed in France. A hard, rustic intervention, like other times the gendarmes have shown they know how to do even between Ventimiglia And Beggarbut that surprises if you think that only a few years ago Paris swore that he wanted to “supervise” the Meloni government in Italy, accused of who knows what badness On illegal immigrants, and that Emmanuel Macron is considered the polar star of welcoming.
Interventions on the beaches and new methods of traffickers
Passeurs adopt this strategy more and more often for Around the policewhich often destroy the boats left on the shore. According to the French Ministry of the Interior, 17 people died since the beginning of 2025 during crossing attempts, while 2024 had marked the tragic record of 78 deaths.
Then something changed. The images released by the BBC showed the French police intervening in the low waters to stop an inflatable boat full of migrants, including children. The agents used knives to pierce the boat. The video was shot on the beach of Ecault in Saint-Étienne-Aau-Mont (Passo di Calais). London has welcomed this intervention positively, calling it a “stiffening” of the tactics adopted by the French authorities. Keir StormerBritish Labor Prime Minister, said: “What we saw today is an important moment”. His spokesman added that new tactics to stop the dinghy before departure could be crucial to curb the activities of Passeurs’s networks.
The British government pushes for a change in the operating methods of the French authorities. London asks that the gendarmes can intervene up to 300 meters from the coasts to stop the “taxi-boats”. Currently, the international navigation law allows authorities only to rescue in the sea. This limitation, according to the United Kingdom, hinders efforts to stop clandestine departures. That’s why the video shot by the BBC is making people discuss: the practice of sinking the boats full of migrants would in fact be prohibited by international maritime law according to which, once a boat is in the water, the authorities can only carry out rescue operations.
According to official statements, the French police would not have changed its rules that continue to prohibit the gendarmes to enter the water. However, the agents justified the intervention with the imminent danger that broke out a fight between immigrants to be able to climb the boat. “While the situation became more and more chaotic – writes the BBC – the officers who intervened on the scene clearly had the feeling that a limit had been exceeded, that the people on board were in danger and that there was a short opportunity to put the boat in relative safety out of use, while the traffickers, who could have reacted, were distracted by their attempts to restart the engine”.
Final question: but if the Italian police had done it, how many accusations of fascism, Nazism and racism against the government would we have read on the pages of all local progressive newspapers and beyond?
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