Pushed out of the Jungle
Refugees battle to protect their makeshift home from destruction
By Sakhr Al-Makhadhi
The mud gets everywhere — on your clothes, in your hair. There are few spots in the refugee camp in northern France known as the Jungle that aren’t waterlogged. It’s mid-winter and the main route through this makeshift camp in Calais is ankle-deep in water. Outdoor water taps (refugees and migrants usually wash in cold water in public) leak onto the path, adding to the misery.
For many of the estimated 3,000 residents, the Jungle is a dead end. Some have fled war zones and trekked across Europe; others have been smuggled across borders in trucks or risked their lives on rubber boats in the Mediterranean. They are 18 miles from the United Kingdom, a destination just over the horizon. Few of them have any chance of getting there.
And now, French authorities are trying to close the camp.
On a hill above the camp is a highway leading to the port where ships sail to the UK. Parked along the highway are three police vans. When traffic builds up, groups of migrants and refugees climb the hill in the hope of sneaking on to a UK-bound truck. But the cops stand and wait. Volunteers say the police often fire tear gas at people running up the hill to push them back to the camp.
The Jungle is not an official refugee camp. In fact, there’s almost no state presence here. It’s a containment center. Over the past few years, police have been chasing out refugees from different parts of Calais. The last time I visited, a small group of Syrians was evicted during a dawn raid. They moved into tents by a disused railway line, lining up for food dished out by volunteers every night. Now, that patch of grass has also been fenced off.
At the time, the UNHCR spokesperson in France told me that letting refugees sleep outside was unacceptable, and they should have an alternative. But the only alternative for many is the Jungle, where they play a game of cat-and-mouse with the police, trying to escape.
Though many residents are deeply unhappy with life in the camp, they still oppose a decision by French authorities to close the camp because of the lack of other alternatives. They were initially told to leave the Jungle by the evening of Feb. 23. But a last-minute court injunction temporarily halted the eviction because of the risk to children living alone in the camp.
Many residents of the Jungle have been living in limbo for months. With the threat of their makeshift homes being demolished, their future is now even more uncertain.
