France moving more than 6000 migrants, destroying huge camp

More than 1,200 police and officials in France have begun the operation of clearing the camps – home to at least 7,000 refugees living in squalid, risky conditions.

Following sporadic outbreaks of unrest overnight, the migrants chose to stay in France while their asylum requests are considered. On Monday, some 3,000 of the camp residents lined up to be sorted onto buses that will disperse them to 451 different migration centers across the country. The evacuation process will take several days and authorities hope the camp will be demolished by the end of the week.

More than 2,000 have been taken to centres around France after the first day of the police operation with about 4,000 others still left.

They want to get to the United Kingdom, either to join up with relatives already living there or to seek work. “I think life down there is quite better, that’s why I want to go”.

But makeshift camps like the Jungle, whose occupants are mostly from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, and Sudan, are becoming less and less temporary.

Flyers distributed by French officials on Sunday instructed the refugees in several languages to gather at a designated warehouse from 0800 local time on Monday. The squalid living conditions and delays in processing asylum applications have caused the camp to become a symbol of Europe’s failure to resolve the worst displacement crisis in its post-war history.

Bulldozers will begin razing the camp this week, though demolition of “the Jungle” does not guarantee that camps will not pop up elsewhere, aid workers warn. We won’t let them come.

There are fears that some Jungle migrants are unlikely to go without a fight.

Television footage showed dozens of migrants lining up with their suitcases, waiting to be transported to reception centers where they will receive medical checks and start the procedure of applying for asylum. The centers are all far from the coast and the ports leading to the United Kingdom – the destination so many of these migrants desire. Reports this morning on Twitter indicate that the organisation of the camp’s evacuation has been minimal, with migrants facing long queues, minimal information and undignified treatment.

By Saturday, the number of minors given a one-way ticket to Britain under a fast-tracked process for children launched a week ago stood at 194, according to France Terre d’Asile, a charity helping in the process. They will be provisionally housed with other unaccompanied minors in containers in a part of the Jungle where families had been living.

As the men trailed out of the camp’s muddy streets and headed toward the registration center, the Jungle itself was eerily quiet – its once noisy vibrant streets turned suddenly into a ghost town.

Some doubt the camp’s dismantling will end the migrant influx into northern France which predates the slum.