Migrants from Calais’s refugee camps and local residents stood together to show support for those evicted from the makeshift encampments and denounce police towards the migrants.
At Sunday’s rally some migrants gave personal testimony of abuses suffered at the hands of the authorities.
“Police go inside and beat people. After sometimes some people would die, some people had big accidents,” said Lina, a migrant from Eritrea.
She said migrants like her, hoping to enter the United Kingdom via Channel Tunnel by stowing away on lorries, ferries, cares or trains, lived with the constant danger of being sent back to their home countries, where they face possible persecution.
For Sherif, another migrant from Eritrea, life in Calais is getting harder. “They close everything, they move us and they don’t care because when the police take us to the prison, they make us to stay two days or three days,” Sherif said in an interview.
One Nigerian migrant, Lido Ken, said police were “very violent” with migrants. “They normally beat us, spray us and [throw us] tear gas. Some of us get injuries and some of us die,” Lido added.
Since the late 1990s, migrants in Calais have slept in outdoor camps known as ‘jungles’. These were repeatedly raided or bulldozed by police before cropping up elsewhere.