Police shutting down major refugee camp in northern France

Police in France have been forcing some 1,000 refugees to leave a gymnasium in the vicinity of the northern port of Dunkirk following a court ruling that declared the makeshift camp a health and security hazard.

The clearance operation at the sports hall, located in Dunkirk’s Grande-Synthe suburb, began on September 10, less than a week after a court in the regional city of Lille ordered the gymnasium to be cleared and shut, AFP reported on Tuesday.

The court said at the time that the expulsion order was made following complaints it had received from local authorities and residents about violence, garbage, and the presence of people-smugglers among the refugees.

Back in December last year, the mayor of Grande-Synthe had opened up the gymnasium to the refugees’ families seeking shelter from the cold.

Since then, the sports hall had turned into a makeshift camp, home to some 170 people, mostly Iraqi Kurds striving to reach Britain. Some 800 people lived in tents around the crammed gymnasium.

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French police dismantle a camp home to 2,628 refugees in Paris that is struggling to accommodate asylum seekers.

In 2016, French authorities razed to the ground a squat — nicknamed the “Jungle” — in the vicinity of the port of Calais. It was home to 10,000 refugees at its height. Since then, French authorities have adopted a policy of trying to prevent refugees forming similar camps.

However, rights groups have lambasted police tactics in displacing refugees. Back in December last year, France’s human rights ombudsman, Jacques Toubon, condemned the “extreme destitution” suffered by people camping out or sleeping under bridges in the area.

At the time, he accused the country’s authorities of “trying to make (migrants) invisible” by regularly demolishing their camps without providing them with viable alternatives.

The situation in France is part of a wider refugee crisis across Europe, which has been struggling with its biggest influx of asylum seekers since World War II, as people flee conflict-ridden zones in Africa and the Middle East.

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