It’s squalid and dangerous, crowded and muddy — and home to thousands of migrants desperate to reach Britain. ADVERTISING It’s squalid and dangerous, crowded and muddy — and home to thousands of migrants desperate to reach Britain. French officials said
It’s squalid and dangerous, crowded and muddy — and home to thousands of migrants desperate to reach Britain.
French officials said Friday the sprawling encampment known as “the Jungle,” outside the port city of Calais, will be closed in the next few days and its inhabitants sent to hundreds of reception centers across the country — a move that threatens to set off a new wave of anti-migrant sentiment.
The camp has been seen as a symbol of the failure of President Francois Hollande’s government to deal with the migrant crisis roiling all of Europe. Human rights activists decry miserable living conditions in the camp, and inhabitants are often injured or killed trying to make their way to Britain aboard trains or trucks heading into the Eurotunnel under the English Channel.
In French towns where the migrants will spend up to four months awaiting a determination as to whether they can apply for asylum or are to be sent home, there are already signs of angry dissent. Many of the migrants are from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; others, including many from African nations, are trying to escape desperate poverty.
In one small southern town, Beziers, the far-right mayor caused a stir recently when he put up posters reading ominously: “They’re coming.” Demonstrations have been staged in other communities, despite efforts by French officials to calm fears.
The camp and the fate of its inhabitants have already emerged as contentious issues in France’s presidential elections, to be held next year.
After Britain’s June vote to exit the European Union, there has been a groundswell of sentiment in France in favor of revoking an agreement that essentially puts Britain’s southern frontier on French soil, allowing British officials to carry out border checks there.
French center-right politician Alain Juppe, considered the presidential front-runner, said this week that such checks should take place on the English side of the channel.
“We cannot accept making the selection on French territory of people that Britain does or doesn’t want,” he told the Guardian newspaper. “It’s up to Britain to do that job.”
Far-right politicians have long seized on the burdens and disruptions caused by the camp, adding fuel to fears galvanized by a string of terrorist attacks. Those attacks included the July truck rampage in the Riviera city of Nice carried out by a Tunisian deliveryman, and the slaying of a French priest by two teenagers of Algerian descent who claimed allegiance to Islamic State.
