This morning at 0730 hrs the police in Calais encircled the illegal camp known as “la jungle” and began the evacuation of what was left of its population. La Jungle consisted of a run down camp built by refugees and sans papiers as a temporary base before attempting to hop off the mainland and into Britain in one way or another. The majority of the Jungle residents were Afghan refugees from the war on terror.
This is not the first major evacuation in the north of France. A few years ago a Red Cross camp had to be evacuated in a similar manner. The same reasons persist today since these camps tend to attract criminals – or rather the conditions within the camps tend to foster criminals – and people living within the region are not too happy about it. La Jungle was France’s major immigrant problem – and Britain’s too because more often than not the residents of La Jungle were only waiting for the right moment to get across the Channel.
Meanwhile six EU states have pledged to resettle refugees currently residing in Malta’s own “Jungle”. The states that are France, Slovenia, Portugal, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Lithuania. Reporting the talks among EU interior ministers about the immigrant problem, Deutsche Welle highlighted the obstacle of the current recession as a major problem in the talks:
Recession worries outweigh problems of refugees
Countries which are further away from the immigration front line are more concerned with getting out of the economic crisis than taking in refugees – even though the commission has proposed a 4,000-euro ($5,900) aid package to help countries offset the costs for accepting each migrant. While the EU’s traditional power-brokers, Britain, Germany and France argued that solidarity is important, they also insisted that they are already doing their part. Germany’s Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble pointed out that his country has already taken in more refugees than any other nation in the EU.
Even Luxembourg, the EU’s richest state in per-capita terms, has “limited resources” to take in refugees, “because of the size of our country,” Interior Minister Nicolas Schmit said. Czech deputy interior minister Lenka Ptackova Melicharova stressed, as she debated the proposals with her counterparts, that “there should be no limit to (national capitals’) ability to choose” when, how and if they take in refugees.
During the talks, UNHCR Commissioner Guterres, who attended the meetings spoke out against Italy’s new policy of intercepting and returning refugees to Libya. According to Guterres, the Libyan Jamahiriya is not safe for the returned immigrants.
