French truckers and farmers almost shut down a main highway in Calais, France, to protest one of Europe’s largest growing migrant camps – a place widely known as “the Jungle”.
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Dubbed the “Great Wall of Calais” by some media, the 4m (13ft) wall will run for 1km (0.6 miles) along both sides of the main road to Calais port.
Many of them have attempted to reach the United Kingdom by boarding lorries as they approach ports or the Eurotunnel which connects France and England. “We’ve done the fence, now we are doing a wall”.
“While we understand the reason for the action, we can not condone it”, he said, citing the knock-on effects for truckers, the southern English county of Kent on the other side of the English Channel and people returning from their vacations in Europe.
Lorries and tractors are set to gather at Dunkirk, to the north of Calais and Bolougne to the south, at 7.30am (local time), according to the Road Haulage Association (RHA) chief executive Richard Burnett.
A spokesperson for the group said: “It is imperative that the money to pay for a wall would be much better spent on increasing security along approach roads”.
“We’re going to build a wall”.
To discourage migrants, authorities have poured in police officers and built high barbed-wire fences to keep people away from Eurotunnel freight trains, the port and the highway.
Since previous year, Calais has served as the location of the Jungle, notorious for its awful living conditions.
Construction of the wall is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
“Refugees are the first victims of the blockading of the border”, he said, a reference to a 2003 French-British accord that effectively puts the British border in Calais, where they are stopped from entering Britain, and puts the onus of the migrant plight on France.
It added that the drivers will stand their ground until they see action to dismantle the Jungle camp.
The concrete will be smooth, to curb attempts to climb it.
“We have also invested in space for 200 lorries at Calais so that they have somewhere safe to wait”, the minister also explained.
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Pressure has been growing on French authorities to tackle the camp, which has swelled in size in recent months, and talks took place between protest organisers and French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Friday.
