Desperation and anger grow in France’s crowded migrant camps
Dunkirk: The police vans speed along a road on the edge of Loon-Plage, a small town in France, toward a camp of asylum seekers on a dusty strip of land near a canal. There are at least nine vans, and they are joined a moment later by gendarmes on motorbikes with sirens at full volume, all heading toward the camp near the beaches on the English Channel.
Within minutes, the vans line the road along an embankment that overlooks the camp. The gendarmes step onto the bitumen, holding helmets and riot shields. It is hard to be sure of their intent, but this is an early morning show of force to the hundreds of men below.
But there is no riot. None of the asylum seekers shows any alarm at this sudden arrival. Most display weariness and resignation. Some wander in small groups along tracks leading to other fields, or along the canal. A few keep cooking their morning meal on makeshift fireplaces.
This turns out to be an eviction – the second in a week – in a campaign by French authorities to disrupt the people smugglers in this area south of Dunkirk. The beaches here offer ideal locations to launch inflatable boats that can carry asylum seekers to England, and the British are blaming the French for allowing 43,000 of them to cross during the past year.
There is no sign that the eviction changes anything. The French do not arrest people for seeking asylum, so the people of this camp will move elsewhere until they gain a place on a boat. While the police try to stop boats leaving the beaches, and might even slash an inflatable craft to force asylum seekers back to shore, they stop once the boat is on its way.
All sides know and understand how this works. The asylum seekers know that if they can evade the French police and make it to open water, they are likely to be intercepted by British border authorities and taken to Dover or nearby ports. They will wait for their asylum claims to be decided, knowing that half the applicants have gained refugee status in the past.
A record number of migrants have completed the perilous journey to England by this point of the year.Credit: Getty Images
But the wind is up and the Channel is dangerous; there have been no asylum seeker boats for six days. Last week, 1441 asylum seekers made it to England after leaving on 21 boats. This means the camp at Loon-Plage is busy for a reason: it is a staging post for the beaches at Dunkirk, but there are no boats to catch.
Without a chance to leave, the asylum seekers wait in broken tents beneath trees, near a gully that serves as the sewer, sitting among the rubbish strewn by those who have come before them. This is the destitution of the desperate.
Almost all the asylum seekers are young men. I see one woman in the crowd, but she will not talk during the eviction. Only later, looking through blurred photographs, do I see a grainy image of someone else: it is a young girl holding a teddy bear.
French police do their best to disrupt the migrant boats – but stopping every one from leaving is an impossible task.Credit: Getty Images
‘You don’t make friends here’
Mahmoud, 24, plans to be on a boat soon. I meet him in Calais, a short drive south, in an empty concrete plaza where volunteers offer food to those passing through. Born in Libya, he left his family in the hope of joining a cousin in Britain. He tells me he spent two days on a boat in the Mediterranean without food or water. “The boat was no good, water was coming inside. Oil was finished. Italy helped us.” This did not stop him from arranging another boat to take him to England within a week or two.
A scar runs down his right cheek. He is exhausted after months of travelling, and he cannot be sure his claim for asylum will be accepted. “I hope, I pray,” he says. Could he go back to Libya? “No, I can’t. I have a problem with my family.” He will not say more.
A young man nearby is eating lamb stew with rice. Born in Yemen, he fled civil war and travelled through Belgium and the Netherlands before arriving in Calais, where he found a fellow Yemeni on the same journey. They form part of a group, but they are not friends. “You don’t make friends here,” he whispers. “You can’t trust anyone.”
A game of cat and mouse unfolds on France’s beaches as migrants attempt to evade detection. Credit: Getty Images
It is impossible to be sure how many asylum seekers wait in the towns along the Calais coast, and the volunteers who help them are reluctant to talk about the work they do. Most turn down interview requests, and it is easy to see why. The media attention does no good when public opinion has turned against the stream of young men moving through France in the hope of reaching England.
One week earlier, British Conservative politician Chris Philp toured one of the camps in the hope of asking questions of the asylum seekers and filming their answers. He had bottles thrown at him and said one of the men pulled out a machete. BBC journalists have gone incognito, with one of their own posing as an asylum seeker, in the hope of exposing the people smugglers.
Video footage of the boats shows young men racing to board the inflatables. Aired in Britain, it helps harden opinions against the asylum seekers. “Where are the women and children?” one protester said to me outside an asylum seeker hotel in London earlier this month.
“If there was women and children first, we’d be happy. The community would be happy to take them in.”
Out near the social housing blocks of Calais, on unused land near the hospital, more asylum seekers wait for their place on a boat. A small group of men, almost all of them from Africa, loiter on a dirt track that leads to one of the main roads, unseen by passing cars because they are hidden by tall grass and shrubs. One of them strides toward me as I walk up. “When is the food arriving?” he asks. I have turned up, unplanned, at the time a charity is due to deliver supplies.
A small child prepares to make the Channel crossing.Credit: Getty Images
Few want to talk. One man tells me to seek permission from the charity before asking any questions; he could find work one day as a press secretary. After so much media attention, asylum seekers are tired of being portrayed as a nameless horde walking across the continent, moved along like cattle until they reach the Channel.
One of them gives voice to the anger at being refused a place to settle. “I am a strong man. I can work. I am not stupid. I am as good as you,” he tells me. He is from the Gambia, he is 33, and he arrived in Europe at the age of 19. He dreams of the freedom of life in the UK and talks of the racism he has felt in his years in Europe.
French police boats look on as migrants wade into the sea to board inflatables that they hope will carry them to England.Credit: Getty Images
What is his name? “Tupac”, he says, borrowing from the American rapper who was killed in a drive-by shooting. He has a German girlfriend and two children, he says, and he was released from a German prison in May. What for? He is vague and makes his crime sound like a parking offence, then changes the subject.
He is belligerent and burning with anger at the world. He is the migrant the protesters in England fear the most: the young man, the criminal, who might be a threat to their families.
The land here looked empty when I arrived. Now it is full of faces. At least 150 asylum seekers have emerged from the grass and shrubs to join the queue for food. All of them are young men. When the charity arrives, its leader asks me to leave.
A young boy full of hope
I see a young boy running around the men as I walk back along the dirt. He has the only happy face in this crowd, seemingly untouched by the misery of the camp. Only when I watch him run toward the road do I see four women sitting in the shade of a tree.
His mother, Asmeret, has come with her son from Eritrea. They travelled by foot and by truck across Sudan to reach Libya and find a boat to Italy. They went days without food. She reads my questions in Tigrinya, and her English is limited, but I do not need Google Translate when she describes the dangers on the journey: she points her finger, raises her thumb and makes the sound of a gun.
Women and children are few and far between among the overwhelmingly young male migrants. Credit: Getty Images
Asmeret and her son, aged eight, are safer now that they have reached Europe, but she has paid €8000 – about $14,400 – to people smugglers to make it all the way to England. It seems an incredible amount, but it represents the investment of a lifetime in a future of freedom. She smiles when she talks about feeling safe in Europe, even though they live in tents. She is hoping to cross the Channel within weeks.
Does she know if she can trust the people smugglers? “No,” she says. She points to heaven. “Only Jesus knows.” Then she has to leave. She runs with the boy to join their group at a minibus on the road, where a charity is taking them to hot showers.
The boy’s name is Bisrat. I learn later that it means “good news” in Tigrinya. With one last boat journey, he and his mother may receive the good news that changes their lives. Other asylum seekers will follow them in the same hope.
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