Abandoned in Calais

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/opinion/migrants-calais-britain.html

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At least France recognizes that it has a problem. After Human Rights Watch charged in July that the police had used brutal tactics against immigrants in a camp near Calais, the government conducted an investigation and admitted this week that the abuses were “plausible.” The police were accused of spraying sleeping migrants, including children, with tear gas, using excessive force and confiscating blankets and sleeping bags from people forced to sleep in the open.

But police brutality is only part of the problem. The sprawling camp known as the Jungle — whose population at one point swelled to more than 7,000 and which had become a symbol of Europe’s failure on migrants — was razed a year ago. The local authorities and President Emmanuel Macron’s government are determined that a new Jungle not spring up. To ensure this, they are making life as miserable as possible for migrants lured to this city near the Eurotunnel and passage to Britain, where many believe a better life awaits and some have family.

The result is inhumane conditions for the some 700 migrants, who have trickled back to Calais. The French government and the city of Calais provided them with toilets and drinking water, but only after France’s highest court, citing “inhuman or degrading treatment,” upheld in July a lower court’s order to do so. The situation remains so bad, it attracted condemnation from the United Nations last week. Meanwhile, charitable groups, denied a fixed place to help the migrants, have been bringing in meals and administering minimal medical care on the fly.

It is to the government’s credit that it has conducted an investigation. The report makes useful recommendations to remedy the situation, including ensuring that the police are aware of the proper use of aerosol sprays and that they wear visible identification. The French government also made laudable efforts to find housing for migrants evacuated from the Jungle last year and took more than 1,600 unaccompanied minors to juvenile centers.

But magical thinking that migrants bent on reaching Britain will give up their dream if their lives are made miserable enough has cruelly left 700 people in Calais out in the cold. The French authorities need to provide them with proper shelter now, along with better sanitation, food and medical care.

Britain can also help. Britain has resettled less than half of the 480 unaccompanied child migrants it promised to take in from Europe under the Dubs amendment, a measure named after a peer who was himself a child refugee. As Rabbi Janet Darley exhorted her fellow Britons recently: “At the very least, the government should keep its promise to fill these places before winter.”