A year ago the “Jungle” migrant camp near Calais was demolished. But the migrants haven’t really departed, not all of them. Some of them moved up the coast to Grande-Synthe, while others are still near Calais, sleeping rough.
Many thanks to Ava Lon for translating this TV report, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
| 00:00 | All that’s left is a huge field of sand and dirt. | |
| 00:04 | Quickly plowed, to make all traces of | |
| 00:08 | the former Calais Jungle disappear. Almost ten thousand migrants | |
| 00:12 | lived there. One year after the dismantlement, Christian Salome | |
| 00:16 | finds that the problem is still not solved. | |
| 00:20 | This shantytown had to be destroyed. It was a horrible thing; we all agree | |
| 00:24 | on it; the only thing we don’t agree on, and | |
| 00:28 | which was done, is that we need to take care of the people; one cannot just | |
| 00:32 | destroy the habitations… —Because three hundred meters further up [325 yds] the migrants are | |
| 00:36 | still there. Fewer of them. About a thousand between Calais | |
| 00:40 | and Grande-Synthe. They all stay here, because they only have one wish: | |
| 00:44 | get to the UK. The Afghans who come here all have | |
| 00:48 | family in England. In the woods and no one’s land they created a new | |
| 00:52 | jungle; but this time without sheds or tents. Muhammad, | |
| 00:56 | 36 years old, fled Afghanistan; arrived two months ago. | |
| 01:00 | Check this, check this, this is my life. | |
| 01:04 | Here we have nowhere to sleep. We don’t even have a shelter. | |
| 01:08 | I live for the last | |
| 01:12 | seven months in the jungle. It’s very difficult. I have no tent or | |
| 01:16 | sleeping bag. The bad people from the police took everything away from me. | |
| 01:20 | Because the two hundred and fifty | |
| 01:24 | CRS [national police] present in Calais were ordered to show “zero tolerance”. | |
| 01:28 | Tents, sleeping bags and blankets are systematically confiscated. | |
| 01:32 | The goal: to avoid the creation of a new camp. | |
| 01:37 | The other major mission of the police is prevent the migrants from getting in the trucks. | |
| 01:41 | Like the resting space, monitored 24/7. | |
| 01:45 | This causes us huge amounts of work. As much as when we had | |
| 01:49 | the Jungle. Why? Because our mission changes. We used to have | |
| 01:53 | between 15 and 20 roadblocks on the ring road. | |
| 01:57 | During the interview a migrant is passing through the net and goes towards a truck. | |
| 02:01 | There you have it! One more time you can see it | |
| 02:05 | My colleagues will certainly have to intervene in order to | |
| 02:09 | place him in the hands of the authorities, but again, we won’t be able to keep him. | |
| 02:13 | In other words: those “candidates for exile” will try their luck again once they are released. | |
| 02:17 | This truck driver is suffering because of that determination | |
| 02:21 | almost every day. — They pass through the fence | |
| 02:25 | and then they pass between the tractor and | |
| 02:29 | the container. The intrusions are captured by the monitoring cameras. | |
| 02:33 | On those pictures you can see a migrant leaving a truck when he realizes | |
| 02:37 | that it’s not going in the UK. This employer is talking about a cost of | |
| 02:41 | €2,000 per week. — Fixing the cut netting, | |
| 02:45 | the merchandise possibly damaged; all that is at the company’s expense. | |
| 02:49 | According to the associations and the police, 10-20 migrants manage | |
| 02:53 | to cross the Channel every day. The others are patiently waiting their turn, | |
| 02:57 | dreaming of those 50 last kilometers [31 miles] to travel to be able | |
| 03:01 | to start their new life, at last. |
Maggots….
“Bad people from the police”? How dare you! Did anybody ask you to come? No. So consider yourself happy to haven’t been shot on the spot and […]! And take every last of your kind with you.
I guess the old saying IS true, that “the wogs start in Calais”.