On the shores of Norway, they found the body of a Kurdish baby who drowned last year in the English Channel

Police have identified the body of a baby found off the coast of Norway as a An 18 month old Kurdish boy who drowned while crossing the Channel last year.

art estaba desaparecido desde el 27 de octubre pasado cuando un barco turístico que transportaba a su familia, incluidos el padre Rasoul y la madre Shiva, ambos de 35 años, su hermana Anita, de nueve años, y su hermano Armin, de seis, naufragó en the canal.

His body was found on New Years Day in Karmoy, in southwestern Norway, but it was not until Monday that it could be identified by DNA. Karmoy is approx. 1,448 kilometers from where the ship sank.

Police said the surviving relatives of Artin, who are in the Iranian town of Sardasht in western Iran, have been informed and his body will be brought back for burial.

Identification of Artin’s body comes amid a new wave of irregular migration to countries like UK, Spain and Italy. So far in 2021 at least 4,500 people have tried to reach England in search of refuge, and around a thousand last week.

Many of these migrations are by sea and in several shipwreck cases young children have been among the victims.

According to officials of the border forcesAt least 89 children were removed from the Channel on Sunday.

Fifteen other migrants who were also traveling on the ship where Artin drowned were taken to hospital. Investigations are still underway in several countries into the causes of the sinking.

The family of the little Kurdish boy left France, where they took refuge for a time in a tent while they were preparing how to start a new life in the UK, for which they reportedly paid smugglers around $ 30,628 to help them on their journey.

The family slept in a two-person tent in a makeshift camp in the forests of Puythouck which is home to at least 200 immigrants, mostly from Iraq and Iran. A pair of shoes, a frying pan and a toy were outside the store.

They eventually tried to cross in the hope of getting into a ‘faster’ asylum process and decent education for children in the UK.

A series of text messages, reportedly sent by Mohammad Panahi days before the family boarded the ship, including one saying they “had no choice” but to cross the Channel.

Another message read: “If we want to leave with a truck, we may need more money than we have”, the BBC reported.

In a third, he said: “I have a thousand pains in my heart and now that I have left Iran I would like to forget my past.”

Camp residents described hearing the desperate cries of the family in the days leading up to leaving for Britain as they fought over whether to cross. They told how distressed Shiva was about whether they had to transport the three little children across the Channel in such a small boat.

Ahmed, 30, who slept in the store next door, told the The daily mail: “The last night before leaving, the father was afraid for the children’s lives. They were all desperate and crying. And they were also worried about the money, because they had borrowed it and had to leave. They were really desperate. “

Added: “They just wanted their kids to go to school in England and have a better life.”

The Kurdish family was one of the many victims of ethnic and religious discrimination living in Iran, which is why thousands of people try to reach Europe every year with the help of smugglers.

The discrimination is partly based on religion, as the majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, while the majority of non-Kurdish Iranians are Shiites.

While Iranian law guarantees the equality of religions, in reality Sunni Muslims struggle to establish places of worship and schools for their children.

The town of Sardasht, where the drowned migrant family comes from, is one of the places most affected by airstrikes against the Kurdish population, with a death toll of 113 and thousands injured.

The latest chapter in Europe’s refugee crisis continues to leave heartbreaking stories and images, like those of the bodies of children found on Libyan beaches last week. The sad part is that Artin’s case may be the most recent, but everything indicates that it will not be the last.

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