Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

CALAIS

Calais police fire tear gas as migrants storm trucks

French police on Monday fired tear gas at hundreds of migrants trying to force their way onto trucks in the northern port of Calais in a desperate bid to reach Britain.

Published: 20 October 2014 20:41 CEST

Calais police fire tear gas as migrants storm trucks

Police in Calais fired tear gas on Monday when hundreds of migrants tried to storm trucks. File Photo: Denis Charlet/AFP

Police in the Pas-de-Calais department where the port is located said they had to call in reinforcements to deal with the asylum seekers.

"Some 300 to 400 migrants wanted to climb aboard the trucks and the CRS (riot police) had to use tear gas to disperse them," a police souce said.

The line of trucks waiting to board ferries bound for Britain was longer than usual, and some migrants likely slipped into some of them unnoticed, the source added.

The port is struggling to stem a tide of illegal migrants trying to cross the Channel to Britain, which they see as having a favourable asylum policy, despite a slew of recent measures to tighten security.

The problem in Calais is not new — illegal camps of migrants have sprung up in the area since French authorities closed down the infamous Sangatte immigrant detention centre in 2002.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said last month that Britain had agreed to contribute up to €15 million (£12 million, $19 million) to a fund to help deal with the problem after Calais's mayor threatened to close the busy cross-Channel port.

France had long called on Britain to help pay for security measures at the port, where police say up to 1,500 migrants, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, are trying to slip into trucks bound for Dover.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

French police cause misery for migrants in Calais

A migrant camp is evacuated by police forces in Calais in February 2019. Photo: Philippe HUGUEN / AFP.

The 75-page report documents methods used by authorities to prevent the emergence of another major migrant settlement in Calais, five years after the demolition of the sprawling “Jungle” camp which housed up to 10,000 people at its peak.

Calais has for years been a rallying point for migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa trying to sneak across the English Channel to Britain.

Faced with growing public anti-migrant sentiment, President Emmanuel Macron’s government has waged a campaign to prevent new camps emerging.

Police tactics include systematically tearing down migrants’ tents in the woods, on wasteland or under bridges, regularly confiscating their belongings and harassing NGOs trying to provide them with aid, according to New York-based HRW.

“The authorities carry out these abusive practices with the primary purposes of forcing people to move elsewhere, without resolving their
migration status or lack of housing, or of deterring new arrivals,” it said in the report entitled “Enforced Misery: The Degrading Treatment of Migrant Children and Adults in Northern France”.

‘Harass and abuse’

NGOs estimate the number of migrants currently living around Calais at between 1,500 and 2,000, including numerous families. Local authorities estimate that only 500 remain in the area.

Last week, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin ordered the eviction of a camp housing 400 migrants near a hospital in Calais, which was presented as a danger to the hospital’s patients and staff.

On that occasion the migrants were taken to temporary shelters but often they are left to wander the streets.

“When the police arrive, we have five minutes to get out of the tent before they destroy everything,” a Kurdish woman from Iraq told HRW.

The interior ministry did not respond to AFP’s request for comment on the report.

The government argues that the camps are havens for people smugglers, who command extortionate fees to help migrants cross to Britain, either in a small boat crossing the Channel in the dead of night or stowed away on a truck crossing by ferry or through the Channel Tunnel.

NGOs argue that the tactics do nothing more than make migrants already difficult lives even more miserable.

The report quoted the Calais-based Human Rights Observers group as saying that in some cases cleaning crews cut migrants’ tents while people are still inside, in order to force them out.

“If the aim is to discourage migrants from gathering in northern France, these policies are a manifest failure and result in serious harm,” Benedicte Jeannerod, France director at Human Rights Watch, said.

French authorities “need a new approach to help people, not repeatedly harass and abuse them,” she added.

A total of 15,400 people attempted to cross the Channel in the first eight months of this year, a increase of 50 percent over the figure for the whole of 2020, according to French coast guard statistics.

“Exiles aren’t travelling to northern France because they’ve heard they can camp in the woods or stay under a bridge…They come because that’s where the border is,” Charlotte Kwantes, national coordinator of the Utopia 56 charity was quoted in the report as saying.

Url copied to clipboard!