Police clear out trafficking ‘base camp’

FRENCH police cleared out, then bulldozed, a squalid forest camp near the northern city of Calais yesterday, detaining hundreds of illegal immigrants who had hoped to slip across the English Channel into Britain.

French Immigration Minister Eric Besson called the site — known as the Jungle — a “base camp for human traffickers”, who promise the migrants passage for enormous fees or dump them there after bringing them acrossEurope.

The people who camped here — mainly immigrants from Afghanistan — have strained relations between Britain and France and become a symbol of Europe’s struggle with illegal immigration.

A total of 278 people, nearly half of them minors, were detained in the first part of the operation, said Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, the top official for the Pas-de-Calais region.

Refugees, many apparently in their teens, carried knapsacks and blankets as they were led away in single lines by police.

Activists yelled at police with bullhorns. Some formed a human chain around the refugees and briefly scuffled with police as they took the men and boys one by one.

Some refugees sobbed as they were loaded on to buses, saying they wanted to stay there, voicing fears about being returned to Afghanistan.

Besson said there was no violence in the operation and all personal belongings were collected and being sorted in the Calais mosque. Thirty interpreters and a medical team helped authorities and 200 temporary beds were arranged for the immigrants.

Bulldozers were later brought in to raze the maze of makeshift tents built from sticks and sheets of plastic amid the sand and brush. Workers with chainsaws cut down the trees that had supported the tents.

While the encampment was squalid, it allowed them to keep hoping they would one day get to Britain, which is viewed as an easier place than France to make a life, even clandestinely, since it has generous benefits for the unemployed and a robust job market. The fact some Afghans speak a little English adds to its appeal over other EU nations.

Activist group Refugee Action called the police operation “horrific” and inhumane, but agreed the camp should not have been permitted to sprout up in the first place.

British Home Secretary Alan Johnson said authorities had halted 28,000 attempts to cross the English Channel illegally in the last year alone.

“I welcome the swift and decisive steps that the French government has taken today to close the ‘Jungle’ in Calais, action which will disrupt illegal immigration and people-trafficking routes,” Johnson said.