Clearing the “Jungle”: The Calais Refugee Operation

We don’t know yet where we are going, but it will obviously be better than the Jungle, which was made for animals, not humans.

— Wahid, Afghan refugee, PRI, October 24, 2016

It grew out as an organic consequence of failure – a failure on the part of Europe’s authorities to come to some measure of proportionate and even handed procedures to assess and process desperate refugees who have very little intention of returning back to their countries.

Calais’ informal camp, which came to be known as the Jungle, had 7,000 residents from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other countries, living in squalid conditions, an assemblage perched tantalisingly close to the English coast.  Since Monday, more than 4,000 individuals have been moved.  The operation has involved the tearing down of wooden shacks and the deployment of diggers to remove debris.

Aware of the political message it might convey, French authorities have insisted on a dismantling process to be done essentially by hand.  This has merely cloaked the cynicism further, as it would make little difference to some of the residents determined to make a fist of keeping the “Jungle” tradition alive in some form.  The promise of sub-camps sprouting in the environs of the Channel coast is already being made.

The Jungle tradition has not merely seen residents dig in their heels in the hope of making a stand, but local, sometimes violent resistance.  Forms of violence, in short, have proliferated, be…

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