Many people smugglers offer illegal crossing of the English Channel via TikTok

 

Dozens of accounts on TikTok maintained by smugglers offer refugees the ability to illegally cross the English Channel, with the price of such a trip between €2,250 and €13,450.

 

For six months, dozens of videos in Albanian promoting so-called trips from France to England have been posted daily on the social media platform. Their authors use the same marketing codes as tour operators, including idyllic London landscapes, smiling faces on spacious boats navigating calm waters, and upbeat music. Except these people are not exactly selling a weekend in London, but an illegal Channel crossing.

 

The messages posted by the smugglers on the social network could not be more explicit. They claim phrases like “Fast and safe transport, the best price on the market at £6,000,” or “Calais-Dover in two hours and thirty minutes, 1,000% safe crossing,” or “Another successful passage today, contact me in PM, there are departures every day.”

 

The StreetPress news outlet has identified at least 58 Albanian accounts offering crossings by boat, truck, or plane, for prices varying between £2,000 and £12,000 (€2,250 and €13,450). Some have several thousand followers.

 

 

In Albania, the phenomenon continues to grow on TikTok, becoming an uncontrollable trend. Each time an account is reported and closed by the application, the smuggling networks change identifiers to reappear immediately. The Chinese company can no longer keep up.

 

Thus, on the account “rruge per angli,” meaning “road to England” in Albanian, the author warns his detractors in a video: “To all those who report my accounts, I do not give up. I would reopen them.”

 

The number of videos is such that Albanian content creators have fun parodying the smugglers’ shots. They denounce with a certain cynicism the scam by replacing the boats with tractors, pedal boats, or inflatable buoys. Others prefer to ride the wave by imitating clandestine crossings with dubious humor.

 

Influencer Kejsilda Muca, who has more than 120,000 subscribers on TikTok, placed herself in the trunk of a Mercedes, laughing out loud, with the following message: “On the way to England, after I am refused the visa twice. The truck is old-fashioned.”

 

 

Created in 2010, Joq Albania, an entertainment and social news platform, seeks to raise awareness among young Albanians of the deadly risks of crossing the Channel.

 

“This phenomenon on TikTok has increased the number of young Albanians leaving for the United Kingdom. These videos have gone viral over the past six months. Previously, they traveled by truck,” explains Gent Çekeli, reporter and head of the independent news outlet.

 

According to the British interior ministry, Albanian refugees were the most numerous to cross the Channel by boat during the first half of 2022, just ahead of the Afghans, with 2,165 entries into England. In France, Albanians accounted for the highest number of people locked up in detention centers in 2021. Although Albania remained in sixth place among the countries of origin of asylum seekers in France, the majority of requests were rejected. Many then choose to make the journey to England in search of freedom and dignity.

 

 

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