Church refugees threaten suicide over eviction bid

DOZENS of desperate refugees occupying a church in the French port of Calais threatened to kill themselves yesterday if police moved to forcibly evict them.

The immigrants say they have nowhere else to go since a nearby Red Cross shelter was closed to new arrivals last week. They were given temporary refuge at Calais’ Saint-Pierre Saint-Paul church over the weekend.

They were given an ultimatum yesterday: leave the building or face forcible removal within 24 hours.

About 90 refugees, most of them Iraqi Kurds and Afghans, were still holed up inside the church, which has only one working toilet and one wash basin. Many are sick, and authorities suspect about 15 cases of scabies. They sleep on flimsy mattresses and wrap themselves in parkas or sleeping bags to keep warm at night.

Joel Loevilleux, the Calais president of the Human Rights League said the refugees threatened to kill themselves if police use force.

“These people have only one expectation and that is access to England,” Loevilleux said.

A refugee called Keroan, who called himself the group’s spokesman and spoke in broken English, said: “We don’t want to eat something, and we don’t want to do anything. We just need to stay in Calais and get into England.”

Police have surrounded the church, preventing more refugees from entering.

However, they allowed volunteers to bring food, such as cheese and water. The question of what to do with the refugees was the latest episode in a struggle between authorities and refugees who flock to Calais in hope of sneaking into Britain, where asylum laws are looser than in France.

A Red Cross centre in the nearby town of Sangatte has long served as a stepping stone for illegal immigrants trying to sneak through the Channel Tunnel. Many risk their lives to stow away on freight trains.

Officials in France and Britain are planning to close down the centre and, as a first step, said last week that it would stop accepting new refugees. The centre is to shut permanently in April.

Many illegal immigrants see Sangatte as their only hope of making a new life in Britain. Refugees at the church held up a hand-painted sign for television cameras: “We want to go to Sangatte or to die.”

Trying to convince the immigrants to leave, authorities offered them a five day safe-conduct to allow them to make asylum requests, said Isabelle Isaert, a spokesman for the prefecture in the Pas-de-Calais region.

Jacky Henin, Calais’ communist mayor, said Saint-Pierre Saint-Paul was not suitable for housing people and said they must leave. The Roman Catholic church has been shut to worshippers since this summer, and authorities have been studying it for suspected traces of asbestos.