On 30 July 2020, the Pas de Calais prefecture carried out another eviction in the Dunes industrial zone.

In Calais, since the visit of Gérald Darmanin, forced, brutal and unnecessary evictions of camps are multiplying to the detriment of the fundamental rights of displaced people.

Once again, on the morning of 30 July 2020, at 6.42am, a large-scale eviction was scheduled. Eleven CRS vans, reinforced by several mobile gendarmerie vans, intervened to evict the people who had chosen Dubrule Wood, a modest plot of land wedged between several fenced off areas of the Dunes industrial zone, as their place of survival. Nearly 800 people had settled there since the series of dismantling operations that began on 10 July. Among the residents, some forty women, some of whom were pregnant, and a dozen young children, were indiscriminately affected by this forced eviction and its inevitable consequences.

On their arrival, the several dozen agents mobilised found only a deserted wood. The reason for this is that the people, scarred by the violence of the 10 July eviction, chose to move in advance (auto-eviction) in order to protect their personal belongings, their blankets and their tents, to avoid violence and also to avoid being forced to move to centres that will not provide a lasting solution to their situation. Disorientated and resigned to the increasing precariousness of their living conditions, settled on the sides of the roads on pieces of pavement, people expressed their distress to the associations: where to go? Where will the police let us live?

The acceleration of the policies of forced evictions and harassment since 10 July in anticipation of the visit of the Minister of the Interior on 12 July are concomitant with the iniquitous, inhumane and dangerous restriction of vital services such as access to water, food, hygiene and care. Yet this policy is as inhumane as it is unnecessary. Since 10 July, the number of people in exile in Calais has continued to rise. Despite the relentless evictions and dispersals, people are coming back and will come back. In the absence of permanent solutions, Calais will remain an unavoidable point of transit towards Great Britain, the only hope for the future for many, abandoned by the public authorities.

Signatory Organisations

L’Auberge Des Migrants
La Cabane Juridique
Collective Aid
Human Rights Observers
Refugee Rights Europe
Refugee Youth Service
Secours Catholique du Pas-de-Calais
Salam Nord/Pas-de-Calais
Utopia56