by Georgina Mumford, spiked
Sexual abuse, torture and killings are everyday occurrences on illegal immigration routes.
On 16 September, 65 migrants were rescued from the Atlantic off the coast of Spain. Three dead bodies were also recovered. Just eight of the surviving migrants were female. Lanzarote emergency services have reported that one of these women was gang-raped by her fellow passengers during the perilous journey. Three men, aged 21, 25 and 30, have since been arrested in connection with the attack.
Following the grim revelations, Lanzarote emergency services chief Enrique Espinosa told Conricas Radio he was not surprised. He said he had witnessed equally disturbing events, including passengers throwing a crying two-year-old into the water. The allegation resembles a story reported in the Telegraph just last week, in which a father appeared to abandon his own child in the English Channel.
It will not come as a shock that female migrants, often vastly outnumbered by men on their journeys, face a high risk of abuse. According to a 2021 report produced by UN Women, ‘Migrant women often suffer violence multiple times by different perpetrators, with migrant smugglers among the most common perpetrators of gender-based violence’. In 2024, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime found that women on the Western and Central Mediterranean routes were about three times more likely to experience sexual violence than their male counterparts.