French police bulldoze migrant camp near Calais

By NICOLAS GARRIGA, Associated Press Writer

CALAIS, France – French police bulldozed a squalid, sprawling forest camp known as the "jungle" near the northern city of Calais on Tuesday, detaining hundreds of illegal migrants who had hoped to slip across the English Channel into Britain.

French Immigration Minister Eric Besson, who visited the site Tuesday, called it a "base camp for human traffickers" and said he would return the rule of law to the northern French coast.

The people camped here — mainly migrants from Afghanistan — have strained relations between Britain and France and become a symbol of Europe's struggle with illegal migration.

A total of 278 people — nearly half of them minors — were detained in the first part of the operation, said Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, the top official for the Pas-de-Calais region.

"This operation is not targeting the migrants themselves, it is targeting the logistics of the human traffickers ... who exploit them," he said.

Refugees in jeans and sweatshirts, many appearing to be in their teens, carried knapsacks and blankets as they were led away in single lines by police. Activists yelled at the police with bullhorns, forming a human chain around some refugees, and briefly scuffled with police as they took the men and boys one by one.

Several refugees appeared despondent about their fate, sobbing quietly as they squatted in the sand or stood in police lines.

Besson said there was no violence in the operation and all personal belongings were collected and were being sorted out in the Calais mosque. Thirty interpreters and a medical team were helping authorities with the operation and 200 temporary beds were arranged for the migrants, the regional administration said.

After the people were cleared out, authorities brought in bulldozers to raze the maze of makeshift tents built from sticks and sheets of plastic amid the sand and brush. Workers with chain saws cut down the trees and scrub brush that had supported the tents.

Activist group Refugee Action called the police operation "horrific" and inhumane but agreed the camp should not have been permitted to sprout up in the first place.

"They should never have been allowed to rot there like this. It's appalling neglect and has allowed false expectation to be built up," said Sandy Buchan, the group's chief executive.

British Home Secretary Alan Johnson said he was "delighted" that the camp was being closed. Britain has ruled out taking the migrants in, and Johnson said genuine refugees should apply for asylum in the country where they entered the EU.

Most of the migrants reached Calais after costly and dangerous clandestine journeys across Asia and Europe, by foot or hidden in trucks and boats.

The migrants try to elude the elaborate border security network, including heat sensors and infrared cameras, at the port of Calais or the Channel tunnel that carries Eurostar trains and other undersea traffic to Britain. Nearly a decade ago, many thousands made it across by slipping inside or under trucks traveling through the tunnel. Today only a few make it, but enough to sustain hope.

Britain is viewed as an easier place than France to make a life, even clandestinely, a view perpetuated by traffickers and family members or friends already there.

Besson said other, smaller camps scattered around the region — sheltering Iraqi Kurds and illegal migrants from other trouble spots — would also be cleared out Tuesday and in the coming days.

He said each migrant was being offered individual options, and that to date 180 have agreed to return to their countries and 170 started applying for asylum in France. The others will be expelled from France, primarily to Greece, the point where most of the migrants first entered the European Union.

Besson brushed off criticism that France was just passing the problem of illegal migrants on to Greek authorities.

French activist group CSP59 said, "Expelling them will do nothing, just disperse them."

As many as 1,000 people at a time have called the "jungle" their home, but after Besson's announcement their numbers dwindled.

In the camp before the raid, piles of garbage littered the scrubland. The illegal migrants, some as young as 14, baked flat bread over a fire in a tin drum. The only amenities were a spigot of water at the entrance, a homemade toilet hidden behind plastic and, in a scrupulously cleared area, a mosque made of blue tarp and ringed with pots of flowers.

In 2002, authorities dismantled a Red Cross-run camp in nearby Sangatte, which had been used by illegal migrants as a springboard for sneaking across the Channel. The migrants kept coming back even after the camp was shut down.