Migrants in Calais handled ‘like Jews in Nazi Germany’
PARALLELS can be drawn between the way refugees have been managed like “cattle” in the Calais Jungle camp and the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, a charity head has said.
French authorities are due to start demolishing the settlement today, with buses expected to start transporting the majority of the camp’s estimated 6,500 residents to temporary accommodation centres elsewhere in France.
Clare Moseley, founder of the Care4Calais refugee crisis charity which has been delivering aid to people in the camp, said: “I would not want to trivialise what happened to the Jews because it was so awful, but there are parallels that can be drawn.
“The way that the French people treat the refugees sometimes can feel very much like cattle, it can feel very dehumanising.”
Speaking of the shipping containers housing some of the camp’s residents, she said: “When they allocate them they just allocate the spaces with no thought for who the people are as individuals, so they mix communities, they mix ages ... Nobody ever gets an unbroken night’s sleep, nobody ever feels safe.
“It’s very much a production line of sleep here, get food there – but no thought for the social side, so there is a feeling that they treat them like cattle rather than like people.”
Camp residents taken to the temporary reception centres will have to claim asylum in France within a set period of time or face deportation. Those who refuse to leave Calais risk being arrested and deported.
Ms Moseley said she was hopeful the demolition would take place without violent altercations, despite clashes between the police and camp residents on Saturday evening.