Brussels, 14/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - On this Tuesday afternoon, on the first day of December, the sun is shining and a light breeze is blowing through this lonely corner of Calais. But as a legacy of the rain the day before, there is mud under the feet of the 60 or so men queueing up at a lorry to collect a small bag of vegetables and seasoning. Of a range of different ages and nationalities, Somalians, Iraqis and Iranians, they await their turn patiently and are rewarded with carrots, rice and cartons of milk. Tomorrow, at the same time, they will do the same thing again.
Time seems to stand still in what is known as the 'jungle' of Calais, this enormous ad hoc camp which was cobbled together in the spring by the French government by the side of the motorway which leads to the Channel Tunnel. The aim was to collect together the various 'jungles' which were popping up all over the centre of the city. A 'camp' or, more accurately, a 'shantytown' open to the skies, arranged around the former Jules Ferry holiday camp and tantalisingly close to the motorway, on which hundreds of lorries heading to the United Kingdom thunder past every day.
This evening, a small group of men will try to make their way into the tunnel once again. This has become a fact of life in the camp and CRS (police) vans regularly turn up en masse to try to prevent these attempts. Like many thousands of others - the number of migrants is estimated to be at least 4,500 in the jungle - K, 27, who comes from South Sudan, will end up succeeding in reaching English soil. He says that he has family there, but he speaks only German. “I arrived in Germany, I stayed there for two years. I didn't find work and the Germans are racist”, he says abruptly, declining to elaborate.
In Calais, people stay on average for “anywhere between two days and over four years in some cases, depending on how successful they are”, explains Claudine, a volunteer from the association SALAM. There are some people who are a bit better off, from the middle classes, who are able to use more discreet means of crossing, and there are those who try to get into the lorries. However, surveillance has tightened up and getting a free ride is now “much harder”, explains Philippe Wansson, of the network Migreurop. Networks of smugglers and mafia certainly have the perfect customer base in the 'jungle'.
Everybody in the camp is 'illegal' and have not made asylum applications in France, where they have no wish to stay. Nor have they been sent back to their countries of origin. In some cases, this is because of war or violence. In others, it is because the Dublin Regulation does not apply, and the associations incidentally accuse the French authorities of deliberately allowing the situation of these people to grow even worse, in the midst of a huge legal grey area.
In the 'jungle', the lucky ones live in huts paid for largely out of donations and a few public subsidies from the mayor's office or the region. It costs the association Auberge des migrants' ('Shelter for Migrants') €19,000 a year. But in November, the costs rose to €100,000, one of its senior officers, Christian Salomé, explained, for the huts in particular. Others live in tents, also paid for out of donations to associations, but in some cases “they don't last more than a week due to the weather”, Claudine adds.
To kill time in the 'jungle', some people borrow bicycles provided by the associations to go into the city. Others, mainly young men, meet at the ad hoc cafes of the jungle, where they drink tea with milk, recharge their smart phones or possibly even to watch a DVD. Others have opened restaurants or their own little grocery shops, where you can get anything and pay what you can. A real informal economy has grown up in the camp.
The charities put the numbers of men in Calais at 4,000 plus around 400 women, more than 100 of whom live in the Jules Ferry centre, which is open only to women and children. There are between 150 and 200 children, according to the associations, 50 of whom are living in the Jules Ferry centre. The other children live in the camp with their families. In winter, when the temperature plummets to -5°C, the Jules Ferry centre opens its doors to a greater number, with its capacity of 1,500 places. You have to be there by 8: 00 p.m. and leave by 8: 00 a.m. When temperatures are milder, the centre does not open. It only opens during the day to serve nearly 2,500 hot meals a day.
Most of the men in Calais are young and come mainly from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are also a good many Iranians, Ethiopians, Eritreans, not to mention Syrians, according to the associations. Some of these Syrians live in what is known as the 'buffer' area, which has been temporarily set up in a corner of the camp until another camp is built, with 12 new 'containers' with the capacity to host up to 1,500 people. This buffer area, which is cleaner and better organised, is managed by the association Vie active, whose 'guards' rigorously block access to journalists.
You also meet young girls in the streets of the 'jungle' and a few families with children, like the little girl, not even two years old, being held in the arms of her Iranian mother. This Tuesday, they are going somewhere which is only for women, a kind of family planning centre, but without a doctor. Next door, a sports centre is reserved for children and this afternoon, there are four or five adolescent boys, of a variety of origins as well, playing football.
Women who are about to give birth go to the Jules Ferry centre and are usually taken to a hospital. But for other healthcare needs and vaccinations, makeshift 'clinics' have sprung up over the camp, such as the one run by the British charity organisation Hands International. One of its senior figures, S, tells us that they are mainly seeing cases of flu and that fortunately, there have been no cases of any more serious disease. “But there would certainly be a cholera risk, if the weather was a bit milder”, this British aid worker said.
Indeed, although the organisation Médecins du Monde collects the rubbish once a week, most waste piles up around the tents. On top of these open-air dustbins, there is also a series of prefabs serving as lavatories, emitting their foul smells in certain areas of the camp. The charity workers tell us that the local authorities do not organise any waste collection, so that the migrants regularly have to make bonfires to get rid of the rubbish, which has on occasion started fires when the wind has carried the flames towards the tents. In early November, however, the courts ordered a waste collection system to be set in place in the jungle.
This situation, which is far and away beyond comparison with anything else in France, shocked the MEPs of the Radical Left, who came to see the 'jungle' for themselves a few days before the French regional elections. Almost inevitably, half of all voters in Calais put a cross in the Front National box in the first round of the elections. A heartbreaking outcome for the local communist family, who came to welcome the GUE/NGL delegation, and a “situation which is unworthy” of France, as French MEP Marie-Christine Vergiat put it. She said that the situation in Calais is quite simply worse than in “most refugee camps outside the EU”. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)