For a week, a hundred large rocks have appeared in the city center of Calais.
Not far from the station, on the quays of the Danube and the Meuse, these stones are essential on these lawns, where this summer again tents of migrants were planted.
Since then, their installation is impossible.
The rocks were installed not far from the station and the quays of the Danube and the Meuse.
SAMEER AL-DOUMY / AFP
Since the beginning of August, the town hall has been trying to evict this camp on a daily basis, according to information from Pablo Ovan, communication coordinator for the Human Rights Observers (HRO) association, collected by AFP.
Other areas of the center have been "
surrounded by rocks
", so as to "
make it more difficult for the associations to distribute
" food and material, he added.
52,000 migrants attempted to cross the Channel in 2021
For Mayor Natacha Bouchart (LR then joined LREM), the decision to install these rocks was difficult.
“
What am I doing?
I let it be?,
she gets annoyed with
La Voix du Nord
.
If we don't want awkward camps in the city center, I have to act.
There's no point in dismantling so that two hours later, they come to reinstall.
»
For more than ten years, the city of Calais has been on the front line of the ever-increasing flows of migrants wishing to reach the United Kingdom by crossing the Channel.
In 2021, according to figures from the French Office for Immigration and Integration, out of 52,000 attempts, 28,000 people succeeded in crossing the British border.
They would thus be several thousand families, children, single people wandering in the northern city while waiting for their turn.
Read alsoMigrants: in Calais, chronicles of 20 years that follow and look alike
An untenable situation for the city councilor and the inhabitants who commonly complain of "
noise nuisance
", "
feeling of insecurity and unsanitary
".
The town hall then decided to install in 2015, 70 kilometers of fences around the eurotunnel and the port.
70 kilometers of fences have been installed around the eurotunnel and the port of Calais.
PHILIPPE HUGUEN / AFP
Already representing several million euros per year, the management of the migration crisis has a cost for the State and communities.
The new rock-based operation has been costed by the town hall at 45,000 euros.
Associations, such as Utopia 56, for their part regretted that “
in parallel with this kind of system, nothing is implemented to offer real support to exiled people
”.
