29 July 2015

Calais migrant crisis


The BBC has an article about the latest migrant crisis:
A man has been killed as at least fifteen hundred migrants tried to enter the Channel Tunnel in Calais recently, French police said.
Eurotunnel, which says incursions are now a nightly occurrence, said migrants had been removed from the site. It advised freight services to consider alternative transport.
It comes as the British government comes under pressure to combat the crisis. Speaking after a meeting of the government's emergency Cobra committee, Home Secretary Theresa May (photo, top) said the UK was pressing for the rapid installation of over a mile of new security fencing, which it has pledged to pay for, at Coquelles, near the tunnel entrance. May added there were some migrants "particularly trying to get into the Eurotunnel and on to the trains before that security fencing is going up". France's interior minister said over a hundred police officers were being sent to Calais to reinforce security at the site.
The man who died is described as Sudanese, aged between twenty and thirty. French police said he was probably crushed by a lorry (photo, bottom) which was exiting one of the shuttles that transport vehicles through the tunnel. He is the ninth person to die trying to access the tunnel since June of 2015.
Eurotunnel says its passenger services are running, with a delay of two hours on the UK side and one hour on the French side. Freight services face a one-hour delay before check-in on the UK side; with an estimated more than six-hour wait to check-in in France. P&O ferries and DFDS Seaways say all their services are operating to schedule between Dover and Calais.
Eurotunnel said some two thousand migrants had tried to get into the terminal on Monday. A spokesman said it was an issue for the government to "sort out", adding. "We need them to stop the migrant flow from Calais, but it appears to be too much for them to handle."
May said some migrants had reached Britain through the Chunnel, but did not say how many had arrived.
Speaking after the Cobra meeting, she said: "Crucially, what we are looking at now is improving security at the railhead at Coquelles, so we can ensure people are not trying to come through the tunnel. That means some urgent work in government, but also with Eurotunnel, and Eurotunnel has a role to play here in the measures they themselves put in place to protect their trains."
Lorry driver Sean Swan took nearly a day to travel from the M20 to Calais on Tuesday, and said he only got through because he was carrying live fish. "I was given a police escort from Junction 8 all the way to Dover, even after making the officer aware that it was now illegal for me to drive. We bypassed thousands of stranded lorries. At one stage I felt drunk with tiredness at the wheel of a forty-ton machine." He said that, in the past month, migrants had managed to board the train on every journey he made from France to Britain.
Drivers found with migrants hiding on their vehicles can be fined but many are afraid to challenge them. "They are jemmying the padlocks off, with hammers, crowbars, and Stanley knives. On one side you risk your life, and on the other you risk your livelihood."
Rico says he would suggest solutions to the French, but they might be considered inhumane and deadly, so he won't...

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