Some one hundred activists including the anti-globalization militant Jose Bove demonstrated in the French Channel port of Calais on Tuesday over police treatment of asylum seekers. The protesters said they were angry at the way asylum seekers trying to gain passage to England have been treated by the French authorities since a controversial centre for them was closed last December.
| Then again, they're usually angry about something, aren't they? |
Since the closure, which was requested by the British government, between 100 and 250 asylum-seekers, many of them Iraqi Kurds and Afghans, have been wandering around Calais, most of them without shelter or means of subsistence.
Not an ideal situation, to be sure.
Police have on several occasions detained them, and on April 23 a well-known local activist who had given refuge to many of the refugees was charged with seeking to help smugglers take them across the Channel. Tuesday's protesters visited a food distribution centre for the immigrants in Calais, where they were joined by Danielle Mitterrand, a human rights activist who is the widow of French president Francois Mitterrand. Mitterrand said she had a "feeling of dishonour" at the way the asylum-seekers were being treated.
| How many's she got living in her basement? |
"They should have a place in which to wash and sleep," she said, while stopping short of calling for the opening of a new shelter like the Red Cross facility shut down at Sangatte, near Calais, late last year.
Hopefully they're not planning to open a UN-style "refugee" camp. |