France moves refugees

CALAIS: France began clearing the sprawling “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais yesterday, with hundreds carrying suitcases queuing outside a hangar to be resettled in reception centres across the country.

The first buses departed less than an hour after immigration workers started the operation and officials predicted some 2 500 would leave on the first day.

Armed police fanned out around the warehouse and across the squalid shantytown after a night during which small groups of refugees burned toilet blocks and hurled stones at security forces in protest at the plans to dismantle the camp.

The Socialist government says it is closing the camp, home to 6 500 refugees fleeing war and poverty, on humanitarian grounds. It plans to relocate them to 450 centres across France.

“I hope this works out. I’m alone and I just have to study,” said Amadou Diallo from Guinea. “It doesn’t matter where I end up, I don’t really care.”

French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said that authorities had not needed to use force and that the large police presence at the camp yesterday was just for security.

Many of the refugees hail from countries like Afghanistan, Syria and Eritrea and had wanted to reach Britain, which bars most of them on the basis of EU rules requiring them to seek asylum in the first European country they set foot in.

But even as the process began, the fate of about 1 300 unaccompanied child refugees remained uncertain.

Discussions are under way with British authorities over who should take in children with no family ties in Britain, the interior ministry spokesman said, adding that 200 had left for Britain last week.

The refugees will be separated into families, adults, unaccompanied minors and vulnerable individuals, including elderly people and single women.

They will then be bused to the reception centres where they will receive medical checks and, if they have not already done so, decide whether to apply for asylum.

The far-right National Front party said the government plan would create mini-Calais camps across France.

Officials expected 60 buses to leave the camp. The government expects the evacuation will take at least a week. – Reuters

PICTURE: EPA MOVING OUT: Refugees pass bags over the fence of the short-term welcome centre in the makeshift camp called the ‘Jungle’ as its evacuation and dismantling began in Calais, France, yesterday.