CALAIS, France (AP) Demolition crews are set to move into a sprawling slum camp in Calais, where thousands of migrants dream of getting to Britain, as French authorities try to close an embarrassing and often shocking chapter in Europe’s migrant crisis.
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Charities working in the Jungle had been nervously awaiting a ruling from a court in Lille, where they had challenged the eviction order.
The prefecture, which announced plans to raze the camp on February 12, said bulldozers would not touch the camp’s makeshift churches, mosques and a just-opened school.
Earlier on Thursday, the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said the eviction would be gradual.
“Carrying out a brutal eviction in the south part of Calais with bulldozers was never envisaged”, he said on Thursday.
“Homes and shelters will be destroyed without there being enough spaces in the new accommodation for people to move into”.
Emotions were running high in the camp on the outskirts of the northern French port city of Calais near the entrance to the Channel tunnel, with many residents refusing to leave despite a 7 p.m. GMT deadline to vacate its southern half.
Those living in the camp, mainly from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa, hope to cross the Channel to reach Britain.
“They are the government… we can’t fight with them”, he said. “Our census revealed 3,455 refugees will be evicted and it was stated in court that only 1,156 alternative places are now available across France”.
The groups said their court action had resulted in agreement by the French authorities to allow the social structure of the camp to remain, including schools, a library, youth centre and women and children’s centre.
“The UK government has a legal and moral duty to reunite unaccompanied children with their families in the UK, and we urge them to do this as quickly as possible”.
The campaign followed a landmark court ruling last month that found that the United Kingdom must give safe passage to four vulnerable Syrian nationals – three of them minors – who had been living in the camp but have family in the UK. Critics contend that closing the camp may not solve the problem. Numerous small camps have been bulldozed inside the city. “I don’t know how I’m going to get there but I have to do it”. There is a lack of information. They are going to go to another camp, in Dunkirk or elsewhere, where conditions are even worse.
But British hauliers welcomed the judgment. The Freight Transport Association (FTA) said disruption caused by migrants cost the United Kingdom freight industry £89bn worth of United Kingdom trade which passes through the cross-Channel ports annually.
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Aid workers fear migrants and refugees will head to other squalid camps in France if mass evictions go ahead at the Jungle site in Calais.
