This week the CCF's founder and trustee David Burrowes MP (Enfield Southgate) visited the Calais Jungle as the French authorities started dismantling the camp.
Below statement from David Burrowes MP:
On Monday 29th February, on the invitation of Dr Ali Demirbag and Association of Turkish Speaking Health Professionals in the UK (ITSEB) I visited Calais and Dunkirk to see the conditions of the camps and how migrants and refugees were being treated. We were joined by representatives of Medicins Sans Frontiers, Help Refugees UK and journalists.
The camp at Dunkirk was shocking. The conditions are appalling and inhumane. Migrants and refugees are living in tents on a swamp where wood or any other material is forbidden. If it was not for the humanitarian assistance of volunteers and Medicins Sans Frontier the migrants would have nothing. Turkish refugee camps which I understand are of a good humanitarian standard are a world apart from the appalling conditions of these camps.
In Dunkirk there are many Kurdish families from Iraq, including children only a few months old. The overwhelming view is that they want to come to the UK because that is where they consider it is safe. They arrived in Calais by people traffickers and travelled through Turkey. We met with one family who have a 6 month year old child with a complicated fracture of his left leg which needs medical assistance.
We then visited a new Medicins Sans Frontiers camp with purpose built shelters which showed a more humane way to house migrants compared to Dunkirk. We then moved onto the so called Calais Jungle whilst receiving reports of the French riot police forcibly removing migrants from the southern part of the camp. We arrived at the camp and saw the contrasting sights of Afghani young men playing cricket and then further inside the camp riot police battling with migrants and refugees, and using water cannon.
The response by the French authorities is harsh and inhumane. It is a policing response not a humanitarian response. Wherever they have come from and wherever they will end up these are human beings who should be treated with dignity and respect. There has so far been a lack of dignity and respect which drives these people into the hands of traffickers.
There is a particular concern about unaccompanied minors who are vulnerable and are going missing which puts them at risk of being trafficked. The U.K. Government has taken a lead in providing the most international aid for refugees, apart from the US; we have also pledged to accept 20,000 Syrian refugees, which should be the minimum. Finally on January 28th the Government pledged to provide more expertise and resources to help unaccompanied minors in Europe, as well as support the resettlement of minors with a family connection to the UK. Citizens UK has identified at least 50 minors with a UK connection and it is vital that action is taken now to properly process and identify children who need refuge and resettlement in the UK.
In Dunkirk and Calais we saw the consequences of a catastrophic failure in Europe to handle the migration and refugee crisis. There needs to be greater international support and co-operation before migrants and refugees enter Europe so that they can be registered and identified and their claims processed. Host countries need to be clear about the numbers of refugees that they are willing to accommodate. It should not be left to the people smugglers and traffickers to exploit these vulnerable people. Once migrants are in Europe, particularly minors need to be identified and supported into places of safety and legal routes for refuge, to avoid them going missing as around 10,000 have done.
The U.K. has a duty to match its words with practice and to step up its family reunion processes for these vulnerable children.
I will continue to work with ITSEB to support a humanitarian approach to the migrant and refugee crisis. I am grateful to Dr Ali Demirbag and ITSEB in their initiative of the visit. I look forward to discussing this and other issues at the Medicine Day event in the evening of Mach 16th. Please contact my office for more information.
David Burrowes MP