Post by HardTimeTrucker on Sept 25, 2009 19:57:43 GMT -5
www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2649008.ece
Cops clear 'Jungle’
Another base is sure to emerge
By OLIVER HARVEY -- Chief Feature Writer
SO, this squalid staging post on the international people-smuggling route to Britain has finally been bulldozed.
Last month I went undercover in the sprawling Jungle to expose the brutal racketeers thriving there.
I found desperate migrants charged £4,500 by organised gangs for the promise of getting into Britain.
There were genuine asylum-seekers, some just 12, fleeing war and tyranny. Others were economic migrants seeking a better life.
They were divided on ethnic lines within the filthy shanty town of cardboard and plastic - with camps for Kurds, Afghans, Iranians and Chinese.
Many living in the stench of rotting food and excrement had the skin disease scabies.
The governments of France and Britain, who blame each other for the misery of the Jungle, were both behind its destruction.
However, as with the closure of the Sangatte camp in 2002, nothing will be solved.
The desperate souls will simply set up another ramshackle base elsewhere on the Channel coast.
And tonight the lorry parks of the French ports will be as busy as ever with asylum-seekers - unshaken in the belief that Britain is their promised land.
'Jungle' camp cleared
By ALEX PEAKE
in Calais
Published: 23 Sep 2009
HUNDREDS of migrants hell-bent on sneaking into Britain battled armed cops yesterday - as the fed-up French BULLDOZED their Calais shanty town.
Police circled the infamous, sprawling camp dubbed The Jungle before dramatically storming it at dawn to arrest those inside.
The country's elite CRS riot squad joined border police and gendarmes as more than 600 cops swarmed to round up migrants waiting for a chance to hide on UK-bound lorries.
Punches were thrown as camp dwellers were dragged kicking and screaming from the stinking six-acre woodland site beside a grim industrial area. Others burst into tears at realising there was nowhere to flee - even though all 278 who were arrested will be allowed to apply for asylum in France or be given all-expenses paid trips back to their homelands.
Defiant Juma Ahamdzai, 25, who arrived in The Jungle a month ago from Baglan in Afghanistan, pleaded on behalf of his fellow asylum-seekers how the UK is their one and ONLY promised land.
He said: "All of us want to go to England. When you get to England they give you a house, clothes, benefits, food, everything - a better life."
A fellow Afghan, 26 - who gave his name as Omar - said after his epic trip from Kabul: "The police can try to stop us as much as they like - nothing will stop us getting to England."
Yasin Ahmed, 23, from northern Iraq, said: "In France there is nothing, no hope for us.
"In England there's freedom, there's human rights and they give you free doctors, food and money. My dream is to see Liverpool FC playing football."
Paris sent in the army of cops after immigration minister Eric Besson branded the camp next to "Diesel Alley" - a highway where Chunnel-bound truckers fill up with cheap fuel - "a base for people traffickers".
He hailed the blitz a total success. Britain's Home Secretary Alan Johnson said he was "delighted". But even as bulldozers yesterday moved in to raze the shanty town constructed of rotting wood, plastic and tarpaulin NEW camps began springing up nearby.
Many of The Jungle's inhabitants had already fled - because France made no secret of the looming raid.
Cleared away ... a bulldozer moves in
Human rights activists had moved in with banners to defend the camp, chanting: "No border, no nation, stop deportation." Close to two dozen were arrested amid scuffles.
The worst troubled flared around the shanty town's makeshift mosque.
The migrants carted off in a convoy of vans yesterday were mainly young men. Half claimed to be minors under the age of 16 fleeing war-torn Afghanistan or Iraq. They included kids as young as nine.
As police moved in, army units were held in reserve near the Channel Tunnel to guard the entrance.
Migrants began setting up The Jungle after their previous camp at Sangatte was shut down in December 2002.
A journalism student aged 31 who went there last year to highlight the plight of its inhabitants was pinned down and raped in one of the shacks.
Camp ... migrants wanted to come to England
Yesterday the pressure group Refugee Action admitted the shanty town was a hell-hole - but slammed the police operation as a "horrific" farce.
Spokesman Dan Hodges said: "By signalling the closure in advance, most refugees have vanished, leaving only the children, sick and elderly."
It also emerged last night that up to 65 migrants were squatting or camping in woods - in similar appalling conditions - in another part of the port.
Asylum seekers fleeing The Jungle blasted the French for not giving them homes. Iraqi Nazar Mohammed, 21, from Kirkuk, moaned: "It is no life. But we need to come here first."
He insisted: "I want to live in England. It's safer than my city, which has many bombings and shootings. I'd rather be in England in a cemetery than in The Jungle."
Fellow Iraqi Aso Ahmed, 21, said: "I would prefer to be in a prison in England than in The Jungle. This place is dirty and full of rats."
An Afghan who gave his name as Khan said: "If you seek asylum in France they take your fingerprints and take you to The Jungle."
The 30-year-old said it was different in the UK, explaining: "If you don't speak English they bring an interpreter and listen to you nicely and ask you what is your problem."
Cops clear 'Jungle’
Another base is sure to emerge
By OLIVER HARVEY -- Chief Feature Writer
SO, this squalid staging post on the international people-smuggling route to Britain has finally been bulldozed.
Last month I went undercover in the sprawling Jungle to expose the brutal racketeers thriving there.
I found desperate migrants charged £4,500 by organised gangs for the promise of getting into Britain.
There were genuine asylum-seekers, some just 12, fleeing war and tyranny. Others were economic migrants seeking a better life.
They were divided on ethnic lines within the filthy shanty town of cardboard and plastic - with camps for Kurds, Afghans, Iranians and Chinese.
Many living in the stench of rotting food and excrement had the skin disease scabies.
The governments of France and Britain, who blame each other for the misery of the Jungle, were both behind its destruction.
However, as with the closure of the Sangatte camp in 2002, nothing will be solved.
The desperate souls will simply set up another ramshackle base elsewhere on the Channel coast.
And tonight the lorry parks of the French ports will be as busy as ever with asylum-seekers - unshaken in the belief that Britain is their promised land.
'Jungle' camp cleared
By ALEX PEAKE
in Calais
Published: 23 Sep 2009
HUNDREDS of migrants hell-bent on sneaking into Britain battled armed cops yesterday - as the fed-up French BULLDOZED their Calais shanty town.
Police circled the infamous, sprawling camp dubbed The Jungle before dramatically storming it at dawn to arrest those inside.
The country's elite CRS riot squad joined border police and gendarmes as more than 600 cops swarmed to round up migrants waiting for a chance to hide on UK-bound lorries.
Punches were thrown as camp dwellers were dragged kicking and screaming from the stinking six-acre woodland site beside a grim industrial area. Others burst into tears at realising there was nowhere to flee - even though all 278 who were arrested will be allowed to apply for asylum in France or be given all-expenses paid trips back to their homelands.
Defiant Juma Ahamdzai, 25, who arrived in The Jungle a month ago from Baglan in Afghanistan, pleaded on behalf of his fellow asylum-seekers how the UK is their one and ONLY promised land.
He said: "All of us want to go to England. When you get to England they give you a house, clothes, benefits, food, everything - a better life."
A fellow Afghan, 26 - who gave his name as Omar - said after his epic trip from Kabul: "The police can try to stop us as much as they like - nothing will stop us getting to England."
Yasin Ahmed, 23, from northern Iraq, said: "In France there is nothing, no hope for us.
"In England there's freedom, there's human rights and they give you free doctors, food and money. My dream is to see Liverpool FC playing football."
Paris sent in the army of cops after immigration minister Eric Besson branded the camp next to "Diesel Alley" - a highway where Chunnel-bound truckers fill up with cheap fuel - "a base for people traffickers".
He hailed the blitz a total success. Britain's Home Secretary Alan Johnson said he was "delighted". But even as bulldozers yesterday moved in to raze the shanty town constructed of rotting wood, plastic and tarpaulin NEW camps began springing up nearby.
Many of The Jungle's inhabitants had already fled - because France made no secret of the looming raid.
Cleared away ... a bulldozer moves in
Human rights activists had moved in with banners to defend the camp, chanting: "No border, no nation, stop deportation." Close to two dozen were arrested amid scuffles.
The worst troubled flared around the shanty town's makeshift mosque.
The migrants carted off in a convoy of vans yesterday were mainly young men. Half claimed to be minors under the age of 16 fleeing war-torn Afghanistan or Iraq. They included kids as young as nine.
As police moved in, army units were held in reserve near the Channel Tunnel to guard the entrance.
Migrants began setting up The Jungle after their previous camp at Sangatte was shut down in December 2002.
A journalism student aged 31 who went there last year to highlight the plight of its inhabitants was pinned down and raped in one of the shacks.
Camp ... migrants wanted to come to England
Yesterday the pressure group Refugee Action admitted the shanty town was a hell-hole - but slammed the police operation as a "horrific" farce.
Spokesman Dan Hodges said: "By signalling the closure in advance, most refugees have vanished, leaving only the children, sick and elderly."
It also emerged last night that up to 65 migrants were squatting or camping in woods - in similar appalling conditions - in another part of the port.
Asylum seekers fleeing The Jungle blasted the French for not giving them homes. Iraqi Nazar Mohammed, 21, from Kirkuk, moaned: "It is no life. But we need to come here first."
He insisted: "I want to live in England. It's safer than my city, which has many bombings and shootings. I'd rather be in England in a cemetery than in The Jungle."
Fellow Iraqi Aso Ahmed, 21, said: "I would prefer to be in a prison in England than in The Jungle. This place is dirty and full of rats."
An Afghan who gave his name as Khan said: "If you seek asylum in France they take your fingerprints and take you to The Jungle."
The 30-year-old said it was different in the UK, explaining: "If you don't speak English they bring an interpreter and listen to you nicely and ask you what is your problem."