Thirteen month old girl who died on migrant boat to Canary Islands gets proper grave

A baby who drowned while trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands has been given a proper burial place.

Sahé Sephore was 13 months old when the boat she was travelling in with her mother foundered on rocks off Gran Canaria in May 2019 and she perished along with another woman.  

A photograph of Sahé was placed on a burial niche in a graveyard on the island where she died next to the words: “In memory of Sahe and all the children who lose their lives trying to come.”  

The Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid, which paid for the plaque for Sahé, decided to give her a dignified burial.  

Her mother, who is from the Ivory Coast, was among 30 people, including 11 women and three young girls, who were packed into a boat with insufficient food and water for a five day journey from West Africa to the Spanish archipelago.

The boat captain Abdallah Wazri, 29, a Moroccan citizen, was last month jailed for eight years and ordered to pay more than €160,000 in compensation after being convicted of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of crimes against foreign citizens.

The court in Gran Canaria heard that his passengers, who were from sub-Saharan Africa and north Africa, were charged about €1,000 each even though the boat was unsuited to the journey and the vessel lacked sufficient life jackets.

Sahé's mother was a protected witness in the trial because of fear of reprisals from people traffickers.

She told the court how when she and other migrants voiced doubts about the boat they were forced to travel in, she was beaten with a club and threatened with a knife.  

The mother sought to flee her own country after being forced to leave school aged 15 to marry a 42-year-old man.

At least 140 people travelling to the Canaries from Senegal died last month in the deadliest shipwreck recorded so far this year.  

UN refugee and migration agencies have warned of a huge rise in the number of people risking their lives to reach the Canaries.  

An estimated 414 people have died trying to reach the Canaries so far this year, almost double the 210 deaths recorded in 2019.

Nearly 17,000 people have arrived in the Spanish archipelago this year, a rise of more than 1,000% compared with the year before.  

Spain's interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska was meeting officials from the Moroccan government on Friday to discuss the worsening migration crisis in the Canary Islands as an increasing number of migrants are from the North African state.  

Over 2,000 people are camping out in tents on the dockside of the port of Mogán in conditions which an immigration judge has called "inhumane".