Migrants try to cross the Channel to go to the United Kingdom, March 15, 2022. SAMEER AL-DOUMY / AFP
The associations for the aid of migrants from Dunkirk (North) denounced on Friday March 3 the dangerous conditions in which the exiles live in one of the largest camps on the coast, in the immediate vicinity of Seveso sites, due to the successive expulsions from their places. of life.
This camp is currentlylocated on a marshy plain, classified as a Seveso area (…) landlocked on either side between the Canal de Bourbourg, the D601, the dug channel, the railway line and the fences of Total», point out, among other associations, Utopia56, Médecins du Monde and the Auberge des migrants.
“Intolerable situation”
They denounce in a joint press release “an intolerable and unworthy situation organized by the state“. Contacted by AFP, the northern prefecture had not responded by late morning. On February 20, aaccidental degassingof chlorine in a factory in Loon-Plage had drowned under an irritating cloud the nearby migrant camp, before the leak was plugged.
The settlement in this area, belonging to the port of Dunkirk, follows according to the associations a major expulsion operation carried out on December 7, during which 500 migrants had to leave their camp at Loon-Plage and resettled in the neighboring town of Mardyck.
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More broadly, since the eviction in the fall of 2021 from a hangar in Grande-Synthe, migrants have been living in this area “in tents, far from everything: you have to travel 5 km to access public transport and the first shops, and more than 16 km to get to the nearest health center“, they lament.
The access road to the current camp has also been plowed, complicating their interventions, in particular for the distribution of meals and drinking water, while the State does not organize any distribution in this area, they add.
According to Fabien Touchard, coordinator of the Grande-Synthe branch of Utopia56, about 200 migrants are currently living in this camp, with the hope of crossing to England, but their number varies a lot from one week to another and s grows on average in 2023 from 400 to 500.
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