FRANCE: The French Interior Minister, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, yesterday gave 100 Kurdish immigrants occupying a sailors' chapel in Calais an ultimatum to leave within 24 hours or face removal.
The announcement was made by the communist mayor of Calais, Mr Jacky Hénin, after a crisis meeting between officials from the Channel coast and Mr Sarkozy. The church has been occupied since Saturday. It has no toilets and many of the immigrants, who travelled from Iraq without baggage, suffer from scabies.
"We're going to tell them that in view of the sanitary conditions, they have 24 hours to accept the lodgings offered to them," Mr Hénin said. "Beyond that, the state is committed to assuming its responsibility." The French government runs a network of hostels for asylum-seekers, but the most of the more than 5,000 immigrants in the Calais area refuse to move to them because they want to remain within reach of Britain. About a dozen immigrants sneak across in ferries or trains every day. Since a refugee camp was opened at nearby Sangatte in 1999, at least 10 immigrants have died while attempting to cross the Channel.
Despite Mr Hénin's announcement - and a cordon of CRS riot police around the Church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul - it is unlikely Mr Sarkozy will use force to expel the Kurds. Six years ago, the previous right-wing government was severely criticised for using tear gas and baton-charges to end the occupation of a Paris church by illegal African immigrants.
The 100 Kurds crowded into the tiny chapel have only one demand: they want to register at the Sangatte refugee camp, which is operated by the Red Cross. Five thousand immigrants, the majority Kurdish, 25 per cent of them Afghans, hold passes for the Sangatte centre, originally a warehouse for the building of the Channel Tunnel. The 1,800 refugees who live inside the warehouse queue for hours for food, clothing and showers, but are able to use the camp as a "hotel" between nightly attempts to cross the Channel.
Britain has long accused France of helping illegal immigrants reach its shores, but the French say the possibility of working in Britain and the presence of family members already there are an irresistible magnet.
Mr Sarkozy last summer concluded an agreement to shut the Sangatte camp if Britain toughened its immigration laws. "Until last Tuesday, any asylum-seeker in Britain could work," Mr Sarkozy told Le Figaro. "Now that's finished. Britain kept its commitment," he said, alluding to a law passed in the House of Commons. "Now France must keep hers." Sangatte was closed to newcomers a week earlier than scheduled to avoid a last-minute rush of refugees. The centre is to be shut next April but the move is unlikely to stop the flow of immigrants. "To end the Sangatte problem, you'd have to close the Channel Tunnel," said Mr Hervé Algalarrondo of Le Nouvel Observateur.
In a separate case, a Bordeaux court freed 31 of the 38 Bulgarian squatters who were arrested last week with the intention of deporting them to Bulgaria. The empty warehouse they have lived in for more than six months is legally their private dwelling. And the European Convention on Human Rights forbids collective expulsions.
