PARIS, Sept 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — French police are clearing nearly 1,000 migrants from a gymnasium near the northern port city of Dunkirk after a court ruled it was a health and security hazard.
The mayor of Grande-Synthe, a suburb of Dunkirk, last December opened up the sports hall to migrant families seeking shelter from the cold.
Since then, it has grown into a makeshift camp with approximately 800 people sleeping in tents pitched around the cramped gymnasium where some 170 people, mostly Iraqi Kurds hoping to reach the United Kingdom, had taken shelter.
A court in the regional city of Lille ordered the gymnasium shut on Sept 4 following complaints from local authorities and residents about violence, rubbish and the presence of people-smugglers among the migrants.
Tuesday’s clearance operation began shortly after 8am local time.
Young men travelling alone were the first to board buses that will take them to migrant shelters around the region, where they can apply for asylum. Families are to be moved later.
Northern France has long been a magnet for people seeking to smuggle themselves to the UK in the tens of thousands of trucks and cars that travel daily between the countries on ferries and trains.
The area around Grande-Synthe has traditionally drawn Iraqi Kurds and has been repeatedly cleared in recent years.
French authorities have had a policy of trying to prevent migrants from forming camps since 2016 when they razed a notorious tent camp known as the “Jungle” near the port of Calais which was home to 10,000 people at its height.
French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to speed up the asylum claims process for people deemed to be bona fide refugees while promising to accelerate the deportation of so-called economic migrants.
