In Saint-Herblain, on the outskirts of the western French city of Nantes, an abandoned sports hall has become a squat for hundreds of migrants. The living conditions in the squat are dire, and the occupants say they have been left to fend for themselves. “Where’s the government?,” a 27-year-old Guinean wonders.
On Tuesday French security forces dismantled the largest informal migrant camp in Calais in northern France. The destruction of the Verrotiéres camp had been announced and planned several days ahead of time. It had been constructed on private land and a fence has now been erected to prevent migrants from returning.
Migrants seeking asylum in Paris will be able to receive free legal aid from students at the prestigious Professional Bar School through a program set to begin next week. The students will help with tasks such as writing up statements, and preparing for interviews with the refugee office or for court hearings. The initiative is aimed as much at providing vulnerable migrants with essential legal help, as it is at sensitizing the country’s future lawyers to the situation of asylum seekers.
Just this weekend, a migrant in a detention center (CRA) in the Paris region attempted to take his own life. Another attempted to set a cell on fire. One non-governmental organization working with refugees and migrants, La Cimade, has sounded the alarm yet again over the deplorable living conditions in the CRAs.
Around 40 people in a holding center in Vincennes and 70 people in a center in Mesnil-Amelot, both in the Paris region, are on hunger strike. They allege police violence and a lack of access to adequate medical care; they say that their goal is to highlight the conditions in which they are being held.
More than 2000 migrants are sleeping on pavements and in illegal camps in the French capital, Paris, according to the organization France Terre d’asile (FTA -France, land of asylum). And the numbers are increasing, warns the organization.
France has introduced a new law that allows gendarme, police and customs officers to carry out random identity checks at, and near, the country’s border port facilities. Depending on the legal status of the migrants intercepted, they are then transferred to regional reception centres.
With the crossing from Italy to France at low altitude becoming more difficult, migrants have been trying to cross the border on foot via the high alpine passes between the two countries -- at great personal risk. This week, emergency services were called to help more than 14 people lost in cold conditions in the Alps.
Seventeen of the 58 migrants who were picked up at sea by the rescue ship Aquarius at the end of September have now arrived in France. They have been taken in by four departments in the country’s east.
Since the far right came to power in Italy, the southern European nation’s migrant policies have hardened considerably. Yet in the 20th century, many Italians emigrated themselves in the search for a better life, fleeing economic hardship and Mussolini’s authoritarian regime.
The French government has introduced new measures that make asylum laws stricter in the country. Fact Check host Sertan Sanderson takes a look at a few of them.
Several hundred migrants remain in the Calais area in the north of France, risking daily police violence as they try to reach the UK. A report sheds light on the squalid living conditions in makeshift shelters there.