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French police clear ‘security hazard’ migrant camp French police clear ‘security hazard’ migrant camp
(about 1 hour later)
French police began clearing about 1,000 people from a migrant camp near Dunkirk after a court ruled it was a health and security hazard. More than 700 people, including families and young children, have been evicted from a temporary migrant camp in France.
The mayor of Grande-Synthe opened up a sports hall to migrant families seeking shelter from the cold in December 2018. The removals in Dunkirk on Tuesday morning follow a court ruling that the encampment in a gymnasium and the surrounding field was a health and security hazard.
Since then, it has grown into a makeshift camp with about 800 people sleeping in tents pitched around the crammed gymnasium where 170 people, mostly Iraqi Kurds hoping to reach Britain, had been sheltering. The gymnasium opened to migrant families seeking shelter in December 2018. The encampment had grown rapidly in recent months and many pitched tents in the adjacent field when the gym became full.
The clearance operation began shortly after 8am on Tuesday (0600 GMT). Channel smugglers cram 30 migrants into boats made for six
Young men travelling alone were the first to board buses that will take them to shelters around the region, where they can apply for asylum. Families were to be moved later. Riot police arrived at 7am and placed a cordon around the camp to prevent people leaving. As more police vans arrived, people began to get out of their tents and pack their belongings. While most were aware of the evictions, some were surprised to to be suddenly surrounded by the local police, internal security forces and gendarmerie.
Northern France has long been a magnet for people seeking to smuggle themselves to Britain in the tens of thousands of trucks and cars that travel daily between the countries on ferries and trains. The eviction is the largest in more than a year and the camp’s imminent closure is thought to have led to an increase in the number of migrants crossing the Channel by boat. Charities say the other, much smaller, clear-outs in Dunkirk and Calais have made life unbearable for migrants.
The area around Grande-Synthe has traditionally drawn Iraqi Kurds and has been repeatedly cleared in recent years. Single men and families were taken in separate coaches. Police searched some men, asking them to lift their shirts, and confiscated razors and lighters from their bags. The operation was watched by officials from the UK Home Office, which has been approached for comment.
A court in the regional city of Lille ordered the gymnasium shut on 4 September after complaints from local authorities and residents about violence, rubbish and the presence of people-smugglers among the migrants. Araf Mohamed, 23, had been staying at the encampment for five days after leaving Syria “to find peace and security”. He said: “I have health problems. I was hit by a bomb explosion in Syria and lost hand,” before lifting up his shirt and pointing to scars on his stomach. “There are pieces of the bomb that I want to get removed in the UK.”
French authorities have had a policy of trying to prevent migrants forming camps since 2016 when they razed an illegal camp nicknamed the “Jungle” near the port of Calais, which was home to 10,000 people at its height. He said the conditions in the camp were terrible: “Last night we didn’t have a tent to sleep in and we went around asking people for one.”
But rights groups have criticised police tactics, and migrants have begun taking even greater risks to try to reach Britain, including trying to cross the Channel, the world’s busiest shipping lane, in small boats. Mohamed said although he had not been to the UK he was keen to live there. “I know the UK is a beautiful country and it’s safe. They give people their rights.”
In December, the French human rights ombudsman denounced the “extreme destitution” suffered by people camping out or sleeping under bridges in the Calais area. As he boarded a coach he said he did not know where he was being taken to. “We are hoping that they don’t take us to jail.” He later texted that his bus was being driven to Brest.
The ombudsman, Jacques Toubon, accused the authorities of trying to make migrants “invisible” by regularly tearing down their camps without providing them with viable alternatives. Abdullah Saman, 44, who travelled from Kirkuk in Iraq, was sleeping in a tent with his wife and three sons, aged four to 13. He said he would refuse to apply for asylum in France. When asked why, he pointed to a rat scuttling past his tent.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has pledged to speed up the asylum claims process for people deemed to be bona fide refugees, while vowing to accelerate the deportation of so-called economic migrants. “You know why. You know better than me, you see this situation,” he said. “It’s difficult to live here. There’s no work here, the language is difficult and there’s no guarantee of life.”
On Monday, he told his ministers that the government needed to tackle the issue of immigration head-on, warning: “By claiming to be humanist, sometimes we are too laxist.” Martina Villa, a communications executive at Doctors of the World, represented one of a handful of NGOs who saw the evictions. “It’s early to say now, but the beginning of the eviction seemed was very organised and structured,” she said.
“These evictions are a show of institutional violence, displacing people and forcing them to leave the only areas where they might have felt some safety, even if it was just tents. We are concerned about people not knowing where they are being taken and not having been able to access people we know have medical issues.”
Sarah Berry, 47, who volunteers for Care4Calais, said: “There are a lot of refugees very concerned they are not going to be taken to a reception centre but a deportation centre. We don’t know where they are being taken to. We’ve been kept in the dark.”
She said the evictions would not deter people from attempting to cross the Channel illegally to enter the UK. “The refugees’ situation at home hasn’t changed and the UK is still the end goal.”
Clare Maillot, who has worked with the local migrant charity Salam, said: “The refugees are quite happy and tranquil because this has happened time and time again. They get driven to the centres, but they always come back.”
FranceFrance
MigrationMigration
EuropeEurope
Immigration and asylum
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