The day after the announcement of the creation of a night shelter in Calais by the government mediator, the priest Philippe Demeestère, 72-year-old Catholic Secours chaplain, announced Thursday, November 4 that he was putting an end to to his hunger strike that began twenty-five days ago to denounce the treatment of migrants in Calais.
The two activists, Anaïs Vogel and Ludovic Holbein, are continuing the strike movement, he said in a statement.
“I remain totally in solidarity with their determination, because the proposals made so far by the authorities do not take into account the itineraries of exiled people who are never allowed to speak. “
This strike, which began on October 11, “Represented for me a tool among others, to shake the immobilizations, to stop the infernal mechanism which subjects the exiled people to inhuman and degrading treatment on the grounds of Calais”, explained the Jesuit priest. From today, “I am resuming the work prior to the commissioning, in Calais, of a new winter shelter for the most vulnerable exiled people”, also announced the retiree at the origin in the last two years of the opening of winter reception places for refugees.
Creation of a “night shelter”
Sent to mediation in Calais by the government in recent days, the head of the French Office for Immigration and Integration, Didier Leschi, announced on Wednesday the creation of a “Night accommodation lock” of three hundred places, which “Will be open every day after the evacuations” of migrants. The people who will go there will then be “Oriented towards long-term accommodation outside Calais” the next morning, he said.
This structure should make it possible to keep the promises of the State, which undertook on Tuesday to propose “Systematically” accommodation for migrants displaced from their makeshift camps.
Mr. Leschi’s proposals were deemed insufficient by local associations, which denounce the living conditions of some 1,500 migrants currently present in Calais and continue to demand a “Moratorium” on the evacuations.