REPORT FROM ANN KERRIGAN, Former Pendle Councillor on a visit to Calais and Dunkerque. A personal view of the reality of the situation, and her offer of a solution.
I went to Calais on Wednesday 24th February with my friend Eva Kawafi. We worked in the distribution centre for the Auberge des Migrants and we also litter picked at the Dunkerque camp as well as visiting the Jungle on two occasions. In the distribution centre were volunteers from France, Germany, the UK and other parts of Europe too.
The refugees that we met were lovely, traumatised, friendly people. They have tried their best to make community hubs which is so important for displaced people. We ate in the Afghan area and drank tea in the Iranian area. Never did we feel unsafe, everywhere we were welcomed. People shook our hands, hugged us and talked to us.
There is a school in the Calais camp where the French teachers work. These teachers are passionate about the refugee children and feel that the media ignores them and tries to depict the French as hating the refugees. They told us that local people in Calais welcome refugees into their homes to shower, eat and just relax. There are more children in the camp than is depicted, a census was carried out by the voluntary organisations because of the impending move to containers and the numbers appear to be ignored. There is a great fear that once the containers are full, other refugees in Calais will be moved to camps like that at Dunkerque. The communities will be split and for the children, that will create even more trauma and vulnerability.
Just as importantly the refugees are not kept informed of what is being planned for them and the image of being fingerprinted to access and leave the container area is very frightening. The new camp is surrounded by barbed wire and to be honest it looks like a concentration camp. I didn’t notice any windows in the containers, maybe I just couldn’t see them though!
The camp at Dunkerque makes the Jungle look like a holiday camp.
It is squalid, the only image I could conjure was that of the trenches during the first world war (just from descriptions I have read). There are even more children at Dunkerque. They live in rat infested tents with toilets that ooze sewage and they need constant changes of clothing as the mud just eats everything they wear. All the refugees we saw had coughs, trench cough, camp cough!
It is a hideous indictment on our society that we can turn our backs on human beings in crisis. History will not be kind when it judges us. We cannot just accept that though. These poor human beings should be allowed to come to the UK. I have many friends (myself included) who will happily give a home to a family or young man. Why not allow us that chance? We will feed them and help them and we are prepared to accept responsibility too.