Last month the French authorities announced a 50 percent increase in the number of illegal immigrants in Calais in the past year
By Katie Nguyen
LONDON, Oct 29 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Migrants in and around the French port of Calais live in appalling conditions, some sheltering in sodden ditches, muddy fields, makeshift tents and an abandoned sports hall, a medical charity said on Wednesday.
Leigh Daynes, head of Doctors of the World UK, said the situation for the roughly 2,000 migrants there - many from countries torn apart by war and political instability - was a "humanitarian catastrophe" which would not be tolerated elsewhere.
Visiting Calais, Dunkirk and Saint-Omer last week, Daynes met Syrians, Afghans, Sudanese and Eritreans, including young men and boys from Syria who were living in a ditch.
"One told me he was 10 years old. He was absolutely riddled with scabies. I asked him to show me where he slept, so we clambered down into this rain-sodden ditch, underneath bits of tarpaulin and into these little wooden makeshift shacks," Daynes told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.
"They were just wearing summer clothes and flip flops, sliding around in the mud. It was deeply shocking and it's going to get much, much worse for those boys when winter sets in."
More and more migrants have been making their way to Calais. Last month the French authorities announced a 50 percent increase in the number of illegal immigrants in Calais in the past year, fuelled by conflict in the Middle East and north Africa.
Last week riot police in Calais used teargas to keep back hundreds of migrants trying to jump on trucks bound for Britain, where fears about large-scale immigration threaten Prime Minister David Cameron's prospects of re-election next year.
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Daynes said the Calais crisis was too often perceived as an economic and security issue, and not understood to be a humanitarian emergency. "There's very little humanity in that debate and actually, the truth of the stories of each of those individuals is lost and not heard," he added.
One Syrian family Daynes met in France was squatting in a former recycling plant. Hundreds of migrants were living in an abandoned sports hall close to a chemical factory.
All lacked essentials such as food, drinking water, proper shelter and sanitation, Daynes said.
Doctors of the World is treating some of them for health problems including scabies, diarrhoea, chest complaints and respiratory ailments, and local charities are providing clothing and food, Daynes said.
"There's a lack of basic services which, in any other humanitarian context, the international community would not accept," he said.
One Afghan man he met showed Daynes his bandaged arm, saying he had been stabbed by an Albanian smuggler who threw him off the back of a lorry.
"They're destitute, highly vulnerable, and at great risk of violence and brutality, particularly from people smugglers," Daynes said.
"Many said their journey was long and arduous. Some lost friends who died on the way. Others were unable to speak of the journey because of the fear and control exerted over them by people smugglers."
Not only have some migrants suffered violence from smugglers, they have also been subjected to rough treatment at the hands of the French police.
"The very few possessions people have are confiscated from them by the police, damaged, destroyed. The flimsy tents that they live in are trashed and people are injured," Daynes said.
(Reporting by Katie Nguyen, editing by Tim Pearce)
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