Migrant crisis: “In Calais, it’s getting worse and worse”
The camp of shame in GrandeSynthe. As in Calais, the local authorities are overwhelmed. © BelgaImage
Calais, 10 a.m., Decathlon store. The shelves of the sports equipment brand are stocked for the end of the year celebrations. A red carpet leads customers through a maze of promotions. Among the brand ideas offered is, on the digital leaflet of the, an Itiwit, a 2 to 3-seater inflatable kayak sold for 300 euros. A very practical object to take with you on a hike or to the beach: it is worn on the back. Other models are suggested among the “good Christmas”. However, these are absent from the shelves of the Calais store. “You see, we took them off sales because … it’s not really the season», Explains the salesman, whose expression indicates that he is evading the truth. Moreover, the paddles and surfboards which stand behind the employee contradict his point. “Who would want to kayak with this weather?He adds with a hypocritical smile.
Dinghy pierced: 27 victims
Because in Calais, the ghosts of the 27 migrants who died off the coast on November 24, aboard a pierced rubber dinghy, hover like serious problems. Le Monde, the New York Times, the Guardian, Liberation, the BBC… distill photos and stories as the bodies are identified. Maryam Hamadameen, a 24-year-old Kurdish woman who was about to join her fiancé. This Portsmouth barber recounted how he almost witnessed, live, via Snapchat, the sinking. “Four hours and eighteen minutes after they left, I lost her. They were in the middle of the English Channel, scooping the water out of the boat while waiting for help.”Kazal Hamad, a Kurdish forty-something from the Iraqi-Iranian border and her three children: Hadia, 22, who dreamed of a career as a teacher, Mubin, 16, who wanted to be a hairdresser and Hasti, 7, whose handsome childish gaze haunts the latest family photo published in numerous newspapers. Twenty-six of the twenty-ept bodies have been formally identified thanks to the investigative work of the Red Cross and the French gendarmerie. An exceptional mobilization justified by the scale of the tragedy. But behind this emblematic tragedy and which inflamed Franco-British relations – the two countries are blaming each other for not having dispatched help – hides a sad daily reality. Who doesn’t make the headlines.
“Since the beginning of this month, there are six missing, comment Juliette Delaplace, 30, salaried mission manager on the North coast for Secours Catholique. In Calais, one could have the impression that the situation is getting worse and worse. I think it’s not just an impression: it’s getting worse and worse. “If the port of Calais has always been a place of passage for illegal crossings – hiding in the holds of a ship is an immemorial practice – the end of the last century marks a new dynamic. In large part because of the commissioning of the Channel Tunnel The first reception center for migrants opened in Sangatte in 1999 and was organized by the Red Cross. Its closure three later marked the beginning of the region’s slow degradation in the region of people seeking asylum. “The French state is deploying more and more means to harm exiled people. The policy is dramatically clear. One: tackle the attachment points. There is eviction from camps and places of life every 48 hours. The authorities tear up the tents, destroy the poles and seize the sleeping gear. Two: hamper the work of associations. Since September 2020, we are at the 7th prefectural stop prohibiting the distribution of drinks and food.”This policy is reflected in urban planning: streets condemned, fences and barbed wire everywhere, many buildings walled up. “There are more and more areas in this city that are being deforested in order to deprive people of possible shelter.. “A stay in Calais along the dike will teach you, moreover, that you should not sleep too lightly to spend the night there. A Frontex plane is now patrolling there at low altitude.”The difficulty of survival, organized by the authorities, pushes people to take reckless risks to cross. On banned the sale of kayaks? Some will use paddles.” But there is more. A survey to be published in February 2022 among migrants from Calais shows that only a third of them actually want to go to Britain. The others, if we gave them the opportunity to regularize themselves – in France, Belgium, Germany… – stayed in those countries. “What makes people brave the dangers – like the 27 people of November 24 – is the unbearable life they are led here and the lack of prospects in continental Europe.“
Under an anonymous sign
The border with Great Britain is increasingly secure. “Since 1999, 340 people have lost their lives trying to cross. We do not count the missing. They are more and more numerous», Comments Juliette Delaplace darkly. Four days before our conversation, a trawler was off the coast of Calais, hauling up a corpse in its nets. Faced with the increasing number of disappearances, a collective of associations – the “deaths / disappearances” group – has been set up to help identify the remains and provide a dignified burial for the deceased. Those which could not be written end up in the northern cemetery of Calais under anonymous water.
“It happens with those who have been in the water for a long time. Among other things, because the members of the communities they were able to frequent are no longer in Calais.”The young woman describes a typology of deaths. Drowning, asphyxiation with carbon dioxide in the tents, crushed by truck or train, electrocution. A macabre enumeration which constitutes the hidden face of border control. “The most terrible are these anonymous graves», Comments Juliette Delaplace gently.
Tents cut out by locals
It must be recognized that the commitment of volunteers and employees of associations who try to help migrants does not represent the majority disposition of Calais residents. Hypocrisy, indifference, disgust… We did not really perceive leniency on the part of the local population towards the exiles. A beer taken in a bistro in the port allowed us to overhear a conversation between “civilians” who boasted of going to cut tents with a cutter and detonate Thunderflashes in them.
“A third of the population of Calais lives below the poverty line, explains Olivier Caron, Calaisien, president of the volunteer Pas-de-Calais delegation of Secours Catholique. One would have thought that people who know precariousness are more sensitive to exiles, destitute like them. Well no.“Olivier Caron also criticizes the attitude of the public authorities who capture the exiles”as if they were gulls. It is forbidden to feed them in the hope that they will go elsewhere. And we bristle the whole town with barbed wire so that they can’t land”. A bitter observation that encourages him even more to
work for “put a name”On all the victims of these perilous crossings. “Failure to identify a deceased migrant is yet another anonymous grave. This contributes to the dehumanization of this population.“
Also in Belgium
The partner newspapers of the Leading European Newspaper Alliance surveyed Europeans in ten countries on their perceptions of immigration. Result for Belgium: 48% of Belgians have known immigration as a threat to their identity, 44% not, 8% do not know. If the reception of migrants is not as fierce in our country as in Calais, one can wonder about the federal asylum policy, piloted by Sammy Mahdi, which, chronically, has “Calais” accents. At the Petit Château, at the moment, for lack of places, only men are sleeping outside at night. Sometimes children. This has been going on for months. “We have to be able to welcome everyone again,” Sammy Mahdi repeated again like an inoperative mantra.