Forced Removals

On Thursday 15th, we continued clearing land so that the refugees in the affected areas of the camp would have somewhere to move to.

On Friday the 16th we hired a flatbed truck so that we could help them move their shelters to new spaces in the safe zone. This was a sensitive process for many reasons. For example, many of the refugees had cleared or saved themselves and their friends spaces and we had to make absolutely certain that we were moving people's houses onto the right spaces to avoid causing disputes. And on land that had been cleared by aid agencies, the main issue to be aware of was community cohesion as well-established communities were being destroyed and new ones re-established whihc could have led to inter-group tensions. It was a sensitive time and process and on the whole we managed it without too much upset amongst the refugees.

Over Friday and Saturday we made brilliant progress, alonside the other agencies and many individuals that came to help, and had moved the vast majority of shelters. Although this was satisfying because we had helped the refugees to avoid having their homes bulldozed with no warning, it was also quite a sad process as land that had previously been home to settled communities became a barren wasteland simultaneously, and conflictually, representing safety and oppression. Unfortunately, oppression may dominate as this is being widely perceived as the beginning of the end of the Jungle because the French have stated that they intend to get rid of the camp completely by March 1st.

Every evening during the removals, the refugees made fires out of the discarded tents and general debris under the bridge ontp which they threw aerosols which exploded with small bangs. I took this to be an act of defiance but that was just my interpretation and I wouldn't like to impose that onto the actions of the refugees to state categorically that this is what the fires represented.

On Saturday night, I went to camp with some colleagues to discover on arrival 3 van loads of CRS riot police gathered under the bridge with shields up and helmets down apparently ready for action. We drove into the camp and tried to u-turn out but were blocked by the CRS who banged aggressively on the bonnet of the car then reached in and switched off the engine. Given no choice, we got out of the car in order to witness what was about to happen. I got my camera out to photograph the CRS who promptly shone a torch at me to blind the camera.

I managed to get a photo of them just as my battery died.

After 10 minutes of intimidation they packed up and went home.