Quelle: The Guardian

Charities say 4-metre-high wall, funded by UK government, will endanger lives as desperate people take bigger risks

Charities say the wall will force people to take even greater risks. Photograph: AP

Work has begun on a £1.9m wall to block migrants and asylum seekers from attempting to board lorries heading to the Calais port.

The structure will stand 4 metres tall and 1km long on both sides of the dual carriageway approaching the port, a few hundred metres from the main refugee camp, where more than 10,000 people live in conditions that charities describe as dangerous and dirty. It will be made of smooth concrete, making it harder to climb, and extends an existing wire fence that flanks the immediate approach to the port.

But charities working with those in the camp have said the project will endanger lives by forcing migrants and refugees to take ever greater risks to reach the UK. Steve Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights programme director, said: “This wall will simply push desperate people further into the hands of smugglers and into taking far greater risks to get to the UK, and more will die in the attempt.”

The immigration minister, Robert Goodwill, announced the plan last week. It will be paid for by the British government as part of a £17m joint Anglo-French package of security measures aimed at preventing people from the “Jungle” refugee camp from stowing away on lorries and other vehicles on the French side of the border.

The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, has said he intends to dismantle the camp entirely by the end of the year.

In 2015-16 more than 84,000 migrants and refugees were caught trying to illegally enter the UK at “juxtaposed ports” such as Calais – where immigration checks are carried out before boarding a train or ferry – according to Home Office figures.

Photos of foundation works on the wall emerged on Tuesday, but a Home Office spokesman said construction started last week.

Charities working with those in the camp say that 13 refugees and migrants, including three children, have died this year attempting to board vehicles approaching the port in a desperate attempt to reach Britain.

Last week, a 14-year-old Afghan boy became the latest fatality, dying in a hit-and-run after he fell off a lorry. The boy, who has not been named, was understood to have a legal right to travel to the UK as he had relatives there, but had become frustrated with delays in processing his case.

“This wall is going to prevent migrants from getting on to the road every night. They put tree trunks, branches, gas cylinders” in the road to stop the trucks, the Calais port chief executive, Jean-Marc Puissesseau, said earlier this month, according to AFP.

“We can no longer continue to put up with these repeated assaults,” he said.

Research by Help Refugees, one of the charities that works in the camp, found that in September the camp’s population rose above 10,000 for the first time, including more than 1,000 unaccompanied children. An official count by the French authorities last month put the number of people in the camp at 6,900.

A spokesman for Help Refugees said: “We are disheartened that once again money and resources are being poured into building walls to keep people out, and not into helping care for the vulnerable, displaced people in the refugee camp in Calais.”

He added: “We would like to see Theresa May prioritise the safety of children over the fear of immigration.”

Leigh Daynes, the executive director of Doctors of the World, said: “The use of British taxpayers’ money on fences in France is ludicrous. Walls are not the answer to the humanitarian catastrophe in Calais.

“They will not deter vulnerable refugees from seeking to have their asylum claim heard here. It is time for the UK to hear and settle those claims in France and end the suffering of ordinary people in search of a better life.”