Dozens of migrant youths stranded for two days in the Calais “Jungle” as it was being demolished were offered transfers out of the camp on October 28, 2016, as France and Britain battled over who was to blame for their plight. The migrants, many of them minors, slept in some of the shelters left standing in a part of the slum that was razed in March, a prelude to this week’s massive clearance of the camp.
/ AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUEN
CALAIS, France (AFP) – by Gina DOGGETT and Baptiste BECQUART
Most of the migrants left wandering the Calais “Jungle” as it was being demolished were relocated Friday, including dozens of minors over whom France and Britain had traded barbs.
After being left to fend for themselves for two days in the deserted burnt-out shantytown, around 100 stragglers boarded buses for shelters around the country.
Around 50 minors, mostly Sudanese, were taken to a centre for refugee children, with another bus of 34 older youths leaving shortly afterwards.
Only around two dozen people from a group that slept the night in some of the makeshift structures left standing in a disused part of the Jungle were still unaccounted for.
Some had been refusing to budge from the site near Calais port, to which migrants have flocked for years in the hope of stowing away on a truck crossing the Channel to Britain.
They included a number of children, whose fate had sparked a war of words between France and Britain.
One of the last to leave Friday was Abdel Bassi, a Sudanese 17-year-old who had been clinging to dreams of a new life across the sea.
“All my friends are in England,” the teen said disconsolately.
France sees the Jungle — one of the most visible symbols of Europe’s migrant crisis — as a problem chiefly of Britain’s making given that most of the migrants were aiming to reach British shores.
On Thursday evening, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve reacted with “surprise” to a demand by his British counterpart Amber Rudd that children left in the Jungle were “properly protected.”
“These people… had been planning to migrate to the United Kingdom”, he said in a statement, insisting that France “had fulfilled its responsibilities out of solidarity and without trying to shy away” from its duty.
Mixed welcome
Britain has taken in 274 children from the Jungle since mid-October, mostly youngsters with relatives in the country.
Hundreds of others seeking admission to Britain under a scheme for vulnerable children are waiting to know their fate.
Around 1,500 minors have been taken into a container park next to the Jungle as a temporary measure.
A spokesman for the UN refugee agency UNHCR said Friday the agency had asked that “special arrangements be made to ensure the safety and welfare of children in the Jungle before it closed.
On Friday, demolition teams continued tearing down the once bustling settlement of tents and shacks where an estimated 6,000-plus people, mostly Afghans, Sudanese and Eritreans, had been living. Some set fires to their shacks on leaving.
Over 4,400 adults, mostly single men, have been moved to towns and villages around France.
They received a frosty reception in some French towns that have baulked at taking in foreigners in a climate of heightened tensions following a spate of terror attacks.
But others have welcomed them with open arms.
‘European problem’
More than one million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa poured into Europe last year, sowing divisions across the 28-nation bloc and fuelling the rise of far-right movements, including Germany’s Pegida and France’s National Front.
Most of the migrants in Calais had contacts in Britain and believed their job prospects there to be better than in France.
Aid groups estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 migrants left the Jungle before the evacuation began to avoid being trapped in France or deported.
Some are believed to be hiding out in the Calais area. Police in northern France told AFP they had also seen signs of a move south to Paris.
Charles Drane, coordinator of an NGO that helps asylum-seekers sleeping rough in northeast Paris said his charity was now feeding over 1,000 people a day, up from 700-800 a few days ago.
It was not clear however whether they included any Calais migrants.
French authorities have said those migrants who agree to be relocated can seek asylum in France. Those who refuse risk being detained and deported.
Catherine Ditte, who lives 20 metres (65 feet) from the Jungle in a house with a garden that was regularly crisscrossed by migrants trying to avoid detection by police, told AFP she would be “relieved when they are all gone”.
But evacuating the migrants would not resolve the refugee crisis, she told AFP, adding: “It’s a European problem that cannot be solved at the local level.”