Conditions in Calais: Desperation, deaths and police brutality
Life in Calais for people on the move is a near-constant battle against police harassment and violence, and the message from the French government has never been clearer; violence from the state is not only tolerated, it is rewarded.
As temperatures dropped below zero in late November, France’s notorious riot police, the Compagnie Républicaine de Sécurité (CRS), and border police, the Police aux Frontières (PAF), geared up for an eviction more devastating than usual.
People move their possessions after an eviction. Photo Credit: Abdul Saboor
Whilst smaller-scale evictions of living sites in Calais are carried out every 48 hours, causing anticipatory distress and extreme inconvenience at the very least, the mass evictions carried out in late November were symbolic of France’s increasingly hardline stance against those exercising their right to seek safety.
Targeting living sites across Calais, convoys of police moved the tents, bedding and belongings of hundreds of people on the move, who were then forced to spend the night outside in -2C° temperatures. Hundreds of people were also made to get onto buses to be taken to other areas of France. Anyone who refused was detained and taken to detention centres. In Calais, some have said that an eviction of this scale hasn’t been seen since the clearing of the Calais ‘jungle’ in 2016.
At the Collective Aid WASH Centre, Abdul, a person on the move from Sudan, shared his experiences of police violence in Calais during the recent evictions.
“The police here, they’re not police, they’re like mafia,” said Abdul. “They come to where we live and shine strong torches in our eyes and I can’t see anything. They took my bag and shoes, sometimes they take our phones and power banks; this has happened to my friends.”
Outside the scope of evictions, Abdul explained how people on the move are continuously targeted by cruel acts of police brutality, even whilst walking in the city centre.
“When they’re driving in their cars, they wait until there are blind spots with no cameras on the streets and they slow down and spray you with pepper spray,” said Abdul.
Living in fear, some communities have now relocated to areas outside of Calais, especially to avoid having their tents and belongings either destroyed or taken, meaning that some are forced to walk for over two hours before reaching the city centre, where access to food, water, medical care and washing services are within reach.
However, the consequences of evictions extend far beyond the shores of Calais. As people on the move become increasingly desperate amid the constant police violence, attempts to seek safety in the UK have proven deadly. After the mass evictions of late November, channel crossings on dangerously small boats increased, bringing the 2023 total to almost the second-highest level on record. Devastatingly, it was reported that a young man’s body was found on a beach just 50km south of Calais on 5 December. He is thought to have suffered a heart attack and died at sea. This was the twelfth death of a person on the move in less than two months.
For those familiar with the situation in northern France, it’s unfortunately not hard to believe that these blatant violations of human rights, resulting in preventable deaths at sea, have been acknowledged and commemorated by the highest level of the state.
Following his recent work on France’s harmful new Immigration Bill, Interior Minister Gerald Damarnin paid a visit to Calais, to decorate the very same police officers who routinely evict and harass people on the move in his home region of Hauts-de-France. Unsurprisingly, protestors from several organisations operating in Calais were met with aggression from the CRS, who not only pushed but also trapped protestors between lines of officers to prevent them from attending the ceremony.
Since Darmanin’s visit, the controversial legislation has passed in parliament, after tweaks were made to the already flawed bill to win support from the far-right’s National Rally.
The new Immigration Bill seeks to further erode the rights of asylum seekers in France across a range of areas, including the reduction of avenues to obtain citizenship, the removal of safeguards for those being forcibly removed from France, the weakening of appeal and due process rights, increased difficulties in family reunification, and notably, the introduction of preventative detention for selected asylum seekers.
One of the changes that will have a severe impact in Calais specifically, is the removal of access to state-funded emergency shelter for people with a deportation notice, unless the shelter is in administrative detention. Over the course of the next year, the government will also review current laws that allow people on the move access to state-funded medical care, the most basic necessity for an already-vulnerable population who are forced to live in precarious conditions, which in themselves lead directly to health problems
For an asylum seeker in Calais, they are often near the end point of their sometimes years-long journey across seas, borders and continents in the pursuit of safety. After being forced to flee their homes due to war and instability, it’s a cruel irony that France forces people on the move to continue to endure the violence they fled to begin with. History has proven time and time again that brutal deterrence methods will not prevent people from rightfully seeking asylum in safe countries, even if it means risking everything.
Words by Pavlina Hatzopoulos