The mediation initiated for a week in the face of the hunger strike of a Jesuit priest and two activists bute on the systematic dismantling policy led by the authorities.
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Nothing seems to be able to stand against the desire of England. Tuesday 2 November, according to our information, more than 800 people have crossed the Channel from the French coast on board small boats. A record figure that demonstrates how cold nor the living conditions in the Hauts-de-France camps dissuad migrants from wanting to join the United Kingdom by an eminently dangerous way. Since the beginning of the year, they have been around 20,000 people who have succeeded this crossing. And nearly 6,000 who had to be rescued because they were in distress at sea.
Tuesday night, while emergency operations were still ongoing in the strait, the hunger strike started on October 11 by the Chaplain of Secours Catholique in Calais (Pas-de-Calais) and two activists – who denounce the dismantling of migrant camps – continued, at the Saint-Pierre Church of the city. “They are starting to be tired but remain determined,” says Clara Houin, the Association Network Support for Migrants.
A little earlier in the day, a new attempt at mediation conducted with them and associations that support them by Didier Leschi, director of the French office of immigration and integration (OFII), had ended in failure. Mandated by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, he wants to believe that “the dialogue continues”. “The final point of divergence is the question of the camps, reports Mr Leschi. The associations say that we must leave people on the spot during the winter truce. That’s the hard point.”
A “Attate to Human Dignity” policy
Since the dismantling, in October 2016, the Calais Bidonville, in which were up to 10,000 people, the authorities want to prevent the city from becoming a “fixation point” and, to do this, expel continually the informal places of life that organized there. According to fluctuating and divergent estimates, there would be today between 550 and 1,500 people scattered in different places of Calais and the surrounding municipalities, while waiting for a passage overlap. In February, the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) reported that there were in 2020 more than 1,000 shelter dismantlements, a policy it considered “attack at human dignity”.
The strikers of hunger demand the suspension of these evictions during the winter truce. Faced with that, the state has advanced several proposals, such as preventing people upstream of evacuations, letting them a time to recover their business or systematically offer them a place of accommodation, but outside Calais. In vain. While waiting for an issue, Didier Leschi announces that he goes well and already “implement [his] recommendations”.
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