Boat registered in Lanka with 17 on board docks at Réunion

A fishing boat registered in Sri Lanka, with 17 people on board, docked Thursday evening at the Grand Port Maritime de La Réunion, in the northwest of the island, the prefecture announced in a press release.The boat had been spotted during the day by fishermen while sailing off the northern coast of the island.

The boat was then “accompanied to the quay of the Grand Port Maritime by the Maritime Gendarmerie”, indicates the prefecture. She docked at 5.45 p.m., with 17 people on board, including three women and a child.The migrants were taken in charge by the authorities to undergo a health check-up and be placed in a waiting area. “They will then be the subject of interviews with the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) to decide on their admission to stay.”, specifies the prefecture.

This migrant ship from Sri Lanka is the third to dock in Reunion in less than three months. On September 17, 46 people, including two women and six children, arrived on the island aboard a fishing boat. 39 of them were authorized by the courts to leave the waiting area, while the other seven were flown back to Sri Lanka. On July 31, six men had arrived on the island in the same way. They obtained the right to stay on French territory and to file an asylum application.

Between March 2018 and April 2019, six boats and 273 people, including women and children, from Sri Lanka arrived in Reunion. All have requested asylum in this French department in the Indian Ocean. A few dozen are still in Reunion. The others were sent back to their country. Nearly 4,000 km of ocean separate Reunion from Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million inhabitants undermined by a deep economic crisis.