Camps dismantled after French police standoff with migrants in Calais
Police in northern France moved in Wednesday on makeshift migrant
camps near the port of Calais, prompting a standoff with the defiant
residents -- many of whom have fled conflicts in Syria, Sudan and
Eritrea.
By late afternoon, a CNN
producer observed that the migrants' tents had all been destroyed. One
activist told CNN police were responsible. About a dozen police officers
remained, along with 50 to 60 migrants who didn't know where to go.
A local prefect
reportedly told the migrants they can stay at the camp until Thursday.
But Thursday is Ascension Day, a public holiday, so it's not clear if
the migrants will be cleared out before Friday.
Hundreds of migrants had
gathered in the ramshackle camps, some seeking to claim asylum in France
and others hoping to find a way to reach British soil.
Mattheu Adt of
international humanitarian organization Medecins du Monde, told CNN from
one of the camps that police had asked the migrants to move to an
undisclosed location, but that the migrants were refusing. Authorities
also asked the migrants to shower and decontaminate their clothes, amid
concern over an outbreak of the contagious skin condition, scabies, he
said.
Migrants refused to do that, Adt said, because of concerns their tattered tents would be gone when they returned.
"They fear they will be arrested at the showers," said Cécile Bossy, an activist with Medecins du Monde.
She said migrants were given scabies medication Tuesday night but didn't understand what it was for.
Adt said the makeshift
camp where he is located housed about 600 people, roughly half of them
Syrian, and between 200 and 300 Eritrean and Sudanese.
A spokesman for the
charity Secours Catholique in Calais confirmed that police had arrived
at about 6:30 a.m. local time at a camp and asked the migrants there to
board buses to go to "decontamination" areas.
Many of the migrants refused, he said.
Earlier, police
destroyed another camp -- which housed about 300 people -- with
bulldozers, he said. The migrants have been involved in discussions with
authorities but don't know where to go, he said.
Official: Dismantling under way
An official in Calais told CNN that authorities planned to dismantle the migrants' makeshift camps by the end of Thursday.
Roughly 550 migrants
lived in those camps, said Georges Bos, the associate chief of staff of
the Pas-de-Calais prefecture -- the local branch of the French
government.
"By tonight there will be no possibility left to go to these camps," he said.
Bos said authorities had
offered to take the migrants by bus to places where they could shower,
adding that dismantling the camps was necessary to prevent further
spread of scabies.
He said that the prefect
of the Pas-de-Calais region had told migrants their immigration status
would not be checked and that no arrests would be made.
It's not the first time
French authorities have sought to move on the migrants who congregate in
the area around Calais, many hoping to smuggle themselves into Britain
inside freight trucks going across the English Channel. A camp in
Sangatte was dismantled in 2002 and another known as the Jungle was
broken up in 2009.
But after each clearance effort, new makeshift camps spring up.
'Deafening silence'
Medecins du Monde is one
of a number of humanitarian and rights groups that signed an open
letter to French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Tuesday voicing concern
over the plight of the migrants.
"The situation in Calais
is worsening in a deafening silence," it said. "About 700 foreigners,
for the most part of Syrian, Afghan and Eritrean origin, fleeing
conflicts, violence and persecution, are installed in the town."
About 550 of those
migrants are living in makeshift camps, the letter said, having claimed
asylum in France or waiting to attempt the crossing to Britain. "They
live in catastrophic sanitary conditions which have encouraged the
development of a scabies epidemic."
The groups were
"stunned" last week to learn that authorities planned to clear the camps
and tackle the scabies outbreak on Wednesday, the letter said --
without coming up with any alternative place of shelter for the large
majority of people concerned.
"We can anticipate the
effects of this expulsion ... inappropriate medical care, people
wandering on the streets of Calais, daily police checks, violence,
despair and the taking of growing risks to attempt a passage to the
United Kingdom, which, since the start of the year, have already caused
the deaths of several exiles," it said.
The groups urge the
French government to come up with a plan to tackle the sanitary
situation in the camps while living up to its responsibility to protect
the migrants on its soil.
The letter was also sent to the French interior minister and the minister for health and social affairs.