French riot police yesterday rounded up scores of mainly Afghan migrants during a dawn raid on a makeshift camp known as the “Jungle” used as a base to make risky attempts to reach Britain.
Minor scuffles broke out between police, some with truncheons, and a few dozen activists who set up a human chain around the migrants in the Channel port of Calais.
French government official Pierre de Bousquet de Florian said 278 people were detained in the operation. He said nearly half of them had identified themselves as minors and would be taken to a migrant shelter while the adults were taken into custody.
PHOTO: AFP
The government prefect said police would tear down the shacks and tents set up on the sandy scrubland in Calais.
“Little by little, we are stamping out the belief among traffickers that the solution for migrants is in Calais, and that from Calais you get into Britain,” Bousquet told a news conference after the two-hour operation.
The “jungle” dwellers rose at dawn with the muezzin’s call, lining up to perform morning ablutions before bracing for the raid. They stood behind banners that pleaded with the authorities for shelter and protection.
Activists who were with them shouted: “No border, No nation, Stop deportation.”
But the men and boys followed without resistance, some in tears, as they were led out one by one by the police.
Asked if he was afraid, 18-year-old Bilal Hazarbauz smiled: “Maybe they will deport me to Afghanistan.”
“But where else can we go? This our home, there is no other place,” he said.
French Immigration Minister Eric Besson warned there would be more raids and that France would work with Belgium and the Netherlands to stamp out trafficking.
“Today was a very important operation,” Besson told RTL radio. “We will not let people-traffickers control the Channel coast.”
Thousands of mainly male migrants, from Afghanistan, Iraq and other troubled nations, have headed to Calais in the past decade to try to jump on a truck, ferry or a train crossing the Channel to Britain.
The “jungle” sprung up after the authorities closed a shelter at Sangatte, near Calais, in 2002 because of crime and British accusations that it was a magnet drawing migrants to cross the Channel.
French authorities say the tent city had become a haven for human-smuggling gangs and a no-go zone for locals, with appalling sanitary conditions blamed for an outbreak of scabies in the past few months.
Calais officials said the situation had become unbearable and denounced a spike in offenses against residents.
But activists denounced yesterday’s raid as a media stunt that would not stop migrants from heading to Calais and instead drive them further underground, making them easy prey for traffickers and criminal gangs.
“It’s a scandal,” said Jean-Claude Lenoir of the Salam migrant support group. “We can’t have soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and treat Afghans seeking refuge here with such little dignity.”
French authorities have said an “individual solution” will be found for each migrant — whether a voluntary return home, an asylum request or expulsion — insisting there would be no forced returns to unsafe countries.
But aid groups warn many will end up back on the streets after a few weeks.
“They are going to be scattered across the countryside, at the mercy of traffickers,” Lenoir said. “At least here the young people had built a kind of community. It’s tragic.”
From a peak of 700 mostly Afghan Pashtuns in the “jungle” in June, aid groups say two-thirds had fled ahead of the operation.
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