According to Reuters, eye witnesses and police saw clashes between hundreds of migrants attempting to move along an access road and police there to stop them.
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A spokesman for France’s northern department of Nord said in a statement Thursday that “French authorities have expressed their utter disapproval following this initiative that does not comply with the usual working practices between France and Belgium”.
“We can not fathom this”. “It’s contrary to the rule of law and cooperation between the two countries”.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve summoned Belgium’s ambassador to France, Vincent Mertens de Wilmars, to “ask for an explanation [and] express his displeasure”, the Ministry said. Cazeneuve also spoke by telephone with his Belgian counterpart, Jan Jambon.
According to Belgian media, the undocumented migrants were detained Tuesday on Belgian territory.
PARIS/BRUSSELS France has protested vigorously to its northern neighbour after two Belgian policemen drove a group of illegal migrants into France and released them.
Leigh Daynes, executive director of Doctors of the World UK, said he had little confidence in government leaders in Britain and France to properly manage the dismantling of the camps, and that vulnerable migrants and refugees could face homelessness and even poorer living conditions.
According to Ypres’s police chief Georges Aeck, come nightfall, the police officers chose to give the migrants a “helping hand” by driving them back into France and dropping them off 50 metre from the border, which is illegal.
A lift in the right direction?
Speaking to broadcaster RTBF, Ypres police commissioner George Aeck said the officers were simply helping the migrants.
The two Belgian “Samaritans” were promptly arrested after a local Frenchman called the police after seeing the 13 migrants run out of the truck and head towards a corn field.
“So we took them.in the direction they wanted to go.”
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“We didn’t want to drop them off in a town they’d never been to before at night”.
