Paris, Sep 22 (DPA) French police moved Tuesday to raze a makeshift camp for illegal immigrants around the northern port city of Calais that once housed some 1,400 people from Afghanistan, Eritrea and other countries.
Tuesday’s operation by hundreds of police officers was the final step in a months-long undertaking by the French government to destroy the camp – known as The Jungle – that has seen the number of asylum seekers there drop to about 250.
Most of the immigrants watched as the police began to destroy what had been their homes. Some of them held banners reading, “We need shelter and protection” and “We want peace”.
However, dozens of pro-immigrant activists tried to block police as they descended on the camp. They were quickly removed.
The operation was France’s second attempt to resolve a chronic immigration conflict with Britain, which the migrants had been hoping to reach. The British coast lies about 35 km away.
In 2002, then interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy had closed a Red Cross camp near the opening of the Channel Tunnel, at Sangatte. According to Red Cross figures, the camp had seen 67,000 illegals pass through its doors in three years.
Most of the asylum seekers in The Jungle were Afghan, and many of them were minors.
Fifteen-year-old Sail Pardes, from eastern Afghanistan, said that conditions had been rough at the camp, but that the hardship was worth it.
“It’s been too hard. A lot of the time we are hungry and we don’t sleep much,” he said. “The most important thing is to get to England. I want to go to school and become a better person.”
It remained unclear what would happen to the immigrants evicted from The Jungle. Some of them are to be returned to their last port of transit, which in most cases was in Greece.
According to regional authorities, since Jan 1, about 180 migrants have accepted an offer to be deported with the incentive of a small sum of money.
Since May, 170 of the illegals from The Jungle have applied for asylum in France, authorities said.
However, activists believe that many of them will simply move on to Paris, which already has a large population of Afghan asylum seekers and not enough beds available for them.
