Thread: French police routinely abuse Calais migrants, HRW reports

French police routinely abuse Calais migrants, HRW reports

ISTANBUL Published July 26, 2017


French police stand guard as migrants wait in front of a processing center to be registered in Calais, France.


French police are accused of degrading and inhumane treatment of migrants in Calais, using pepper spray on asylum seekers, including children, while they are asleep, HRW reports

Human Rights Watch (HRW) pressed France on Wednesday to end what it described as recurrent police violence against migrants who do not pose a threat in the northern town of Calais. In a report titled "Like Living in Hell," the U.S.-based rights group said police routinely abused migrants in the hope of having them leave the coastal city.

Based on interviews conducted with some 60 migrants in the area, HRW said police had used pepper spray on child and adult migrants while they were sleeping, regularly sprayed or confiscated sleeping bags and clothing and sometimes destroyed food and water.

"Such acts violate the prohibition on inhuman and degrading treatment as well as international standards on police conduct," HRW said.

"Local and national authorities should immediately and unequivocally direct police to adhere to international standards on the use of force and to refrain from conduct that interferes with aid delivery."

Hundreds of migrants and refugees have been returning to the port city despite the dismantling of the "Jungle" camp that housed thousands of people late last year. Dozens of police are still deployed permanently in the area where the camp once stood. Calais provides them with a base from which to try to cross illegally to Britain, the destination of choice for many who speak English or already have family or friends in the U.K.

Aid agencies and government officials estimate there are now as many as 600 migrants in the northern port area, where a vast shanty town sheltering up to 10,000 was razed by authorities last October.

A local court in June ordered authorities to provide drinking water, toilets and showers to migrants and to allow charities to hand out meals. At the same time, it upheld government decisions to deploy extra riot police and not to build a new reception center.

In March, the mayor of Calais signed a decree banning gatherings that could stop aid groups distributing meals on the grounds that it was causing a rise in ethnic tensions and conflict between rival groups of migrants.

Francois Guennoc, a spokesman for local charity Auberge des Migrants, said police officers were actively preventing volunteers from distributing food and water.

"Every day we are seeing manhunts, illegal police violence, harassment of refugees and the prevention of the distribution of water and meals," Guennoc said.

French president Emmanuel Macron last month promised migrants would be treated humanely after France's human rights watchdog was fiercely critical of the living conditions they face. Macron's government announced plans to create more than 12,000 places in reception centers for asylum seekers and refugees by 2019.

The numbers of refugees and migrants converging on Paris has increased since the closure last October of the sprawling migrant camp in the northern French port of Calais known as the "Jungle."

French police routinely abuse Calais migrants, HRW reports - Daily ...

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