Calais is home to the “Jungle” camp, where thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa are staying in the port city, hoping to reach Britain by stowing away on trucks and trains through the Channel Tunnel.
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François Guennoc of Auberge des Migrants, a French aid group working in Calais, told The Guardian: “This wall is the latest extension to kilometres of fencing and security surveillance already in place”.
“We’ve done the fence”.
Reports suggest the wall will be made of smooth concrete that will make it harder to climb, but lined with plants to minimize the visual impact. He told lawmakers on Tuesday that its construction along the main highway to the port would start “very soon”.
“We need to provide shelters”, he said.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced Friday that the government would dismantle the camp “in a controlled operation” as soon as possible, but protesters want him to set a date.
“It is imperative that the money to pay for a wall would be much better spent on increasing security along the approach roads”, he said.
Phil Kerton from the organisation said: “I’m far from sure it’s the right answer, walls have proved pretty useless in the past, the Berlin Wall of course. people will just go around the end of it I believe”.
But how did these migrants get compared to animals in a jungle?
Up to 9,000 migrants from countries including Sudan, Syria and Eritrea are living in the “Jungle”, despite efforts to reduce numbers by dismantling the southern section of the camp earlier this year. They’re pressuring the government to dismantle a massive makeshift migrant camp.
The wall is expected to be four metres (13 ft) high and to be built along both sides of a 1-km (0.6 mile) stretch of road.
Mr Sarkozy said migrants who are seeking asylum in the United Kingdom should have their applications dealt with by British immigration authorities.
Truckers, one with a banner reading “We are truckers, not migrants traffickers; together free Calais, block a highway near Calais, northern France, Monday Sept. 5, 2016 to demand the closure of a Calais migrant camp as its population surges and tensions rise”.
Although many are sympathetic to the migrants’ plight, locals describe a growing fear of increasingly risky human smugglers as a tipping point for Calais residents. Well, the term “jungle” started with the migrants.
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Mr Burnett said the RHA had spoken to a representative of the French road transport union, the FNTR, to confirm this, and they were disa ppointed that “despite assurances that the action by Calais hauliers would take the form of a go-slow, this now appears not to be the case”.
