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Calais: French strikers threaten to up the ante

As the head of a British truckers association says the army should be brought in to clear the blockade of Calais, French strikers have threatened to step up militant action in the days to come.

Published: 1 July 2015 17:07 CEST
Calais: French strikers threaten to up the ante
Could the Calais crisis be about to get worse? File photo: AFP

French strikers showed little sympathy for the thousands of truck drivers and tourists stranded on both sides of the channel on Wednesday as the they threatened to up the ante.

Workers from MyFerryLink battling to save their jobs have blockaded the port of Calais with two ferries since Monday leading to absolute “mayhem” on both sides of the Channel.

But things could be about to get worse with the French workers contract to run the MyFerryLink boats coming to an end at midnight on Wednesday and union leaders promising more action.

The head of the Syndicat Maritime Nord union Eric Vercoutre, who has been a spokesman for the strikers, has threatened to up the ante on Thursday and Friday, which could see them again try to block the Channel Tunnel.

Vercoutre says the thought of riot police intervening to break up their blockade of Calais does not scare them.

That could happen after midnight on Wednesday when the sailors will no longer have the right to occupy the MyFerryLink boats.

Earlier this week Vercoutre, the spokesman for the strikers said promising “to block everything” if they didn't get their way and has also warned of a “summer of much disruption.”

On Wednesday British police were forced to close off sections of motorway to park some 3,000 trucks waiting to board ferries to France on Wednesday as striking ferry workers blocked the port of Calais for a third consecutive day.

One section of motorway was full with 3,000  trucks and around half of a second section with capacity for another 2,300 was also filled as part of a contingency plan named “Operation Stack”.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron got on the phone French President François Hollande to discuss the ongoing crisis and the British ambassador to France, Sir Peter Ricketts was set to meet port authorities in Calais.

The British Road Haulage Association's chief executive Richard Burnett will not be impressed by the French strikers' threats of further action and complained the situation was turning into “absolute mayhem”.

“The UK and French governments must acknowledge their responsibilities to all Port of Calais users, move in and act. If this means deployment of the armed forces then so be it,” he said.

“Let's get this desperate mess sorted out now and talk about a long term solution afterwards. The scale of the current situation has to be seen to be believed,” he said.

Ellis Evans, a Welsh truck driver, told The Local that he's been stuck in queues for nearly nine hours. 
 
“There are trucks as far as I can see in front of me, and the queue is five miles long. And people are saying it's the hottest day of the year – the sun is right above us – it's not the kind of day you want to be stuck in a little tin box.”
 
He'd heard that he might be waiting up to 48 hours, with no facilities of any kind around, not even toilets, and while he'd heard that people were giving out water, he was yet to see any.
 
Despite suffering under the heat, Evans said he had some sympathy for the French strikers in Calais. 
 
“I can sympathise with them, they're losing their jobs, the rug has been pulled out from under their feet. But they're damaging local business and commerce, and there is a bit of animosity from some people stuck here towards there cause,” he said.
 
Peter Cullum from the British Road Haulage Association told The Local on Wednesday that the French government should act as the travel chaos was causing a security threat in a country already on high terror alert.

“I can't understand why they are not invoking this to keep traffic moving. It doesn't take a genius to work out that this is a security issue. At the moment people are stranded all over northern France.

He accused the MyFerryLink workers who have blockaded the port “of using typical French tactics to gain attention”. 

“The French government now needs to make a statement about what's going on,” he said. “It's getting silly now and no one can gain from this.

SEE ALSO: Travellers left to curse 'striking French' over Channel chaos

Teams of British coastguards were deployed to hand out some 5,000 bottles of water and 750 snack meals to truck drivers stuck for hours in the long tailbacks in sweltering temperatures.

A ticketing system is being implemented and only drivers with tickets can enter Dover itself.

“We sincerely regret the impact to the travelling public, freight and the Dover community of a situation that is beyond our control,” a Port of Dover spokesman said.

“We will continue to monitor the situation closely in liaison with our ferry partners and the Port of Calais in order to resume normal operations as soon as possible,” he added.

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POLICE

French police cause misery for migrants in Calais

French police are inflicting misery on migrants in the northern port of Calais, routinely tearing down their tents and forcing them to wander the streets as part of a deterrence policy, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report published on Thursday.

Published: 7 October 2021 12:30 CEST
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.

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