Claiming that they were prevented from documenting the evacuation of migrant camps near Calais, independent reporters Louis Witter and Simon Hamy filed an appeal for interim relief on Monday.
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“Until now, there were only two countries that had prevented me from working: the Hungary of Viktor Orban and the Morocco of Mohammed VI. Now there is France. “Independent photojournalist Louis Witter, 25, has been covering migration crises for six years. Monday, January 4, before the administrative court of Lille, the reporter denounced, with his colleague Simon Hamy, the “obstacle” to the freedom to inform which they believe represents the impossibility of accessing evacuations from migrant camps on the coast of the North and Pas-de-Calais.
In a request for interim relief, both ask the court to order the prefectures to “authorize them to access the various sites” of evacuation to carry out their reports. At issue, in particular: several episodes during which the two journalists say they were prevented from exercising their profession.
Tuesday, December 29, 2020, in the early morning, the photojournalist and his freelance editor colleague followed the evacuation of ‘a migrant camp in Grande-Synthe. After checking their identity documents and press cards, “photographed by what appeared to be the personal telephone of the police”, they told the president of the court, the police forbade them to go to the – beyond a security perimeter. “This ban on filming and photographing was made verbally and physically with the hand on the lens of the camera, in addition to the headlight of a police van pointed at us”, specifies Louis Witter.
On five occasions, on December 29 and 30, they were thus refused access to the dismantled sites in Grande-Synthe, Calais and Coquelles. The National Union of Journalists (SNJ), the profession’s leading organization, “condemned these obstruction and intimidation practices”. The lawyer for the two journalists, M e Henry-François Cattoir, denounces a serious violation of the freedom to inform. “It would therefore be necessary, as implied [the Minister of the Interior, Gerald] Darmanin, an accreditation to follow police operations now?”, He pretends to wonder at the hearing.
“What’s in the way?”
On his Twitter account , the photojournalist Louis Witter had broadcast Tuesday, December 29 telephoto images of the tents of migrants slashed with a knife by a man in charge according to him of “cleaning” the migrant camp.
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