FRANCE: French gendarmes peaceably expelled 99 Kurdish Iraqi and Afghan immigrants from a chapel in the Channel port of Calais at dawn yesterday. It follows a four-day occupation during which the refugees insisted they wanted "to go to Sangatte or to die".
The Red Cross-operated camp at Sangatte, next to the Eurotunnel crossing, stopped admitting new arrivals on November 5th.
Although two-thirds of the men in the Church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul finally agreed to apply for asylum in France, they remain, in the words of Ms Corinne Perthuis, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, "hostages of their dream of England".
"I won't stay in France even if they grant me asylum," an Iraqi named Samir said.
Up to 40 aspiring immigrants to Britain arrive in Calais each day, according to Father Jean-Pierre Boutoille, the priest who opened the small chapel to the refugees last weekend. "There were 11 of them under the rain at one o'clock in the morning. I had to welcome them as a Christian. The next day there were 40, then 120 . . ."
Father Jean-Pierre requested an expulsion order when sanitary conditions in the church became unbearable. Several of the immigrants threatened to commit suicide if riot police intervened so humanitarian workers removed all medication and cutlery from the church before the gendarmes entered.
