Fear and questions hang over doomed French migrant camp

CALAIS, France – Migrants prayed, plotted and played soccer together Sunday, a day before France starts clearing them by the thousands from a makeshift refugee camp that is doomed for destruction.

But the scene that would pass for normal on another day at the slum-like camp in the northern port town of Calais nicknamed the “jungle” was anything but routine.

On Monday, 60 buses are set to transport 3,000 migrants to reception centers scattered around France. By week’s end, the camp is to be emptied and destroyed.

After nightfall, groups of migrants used portable toilets to set huge bonfires on a sandy no man’s land on the camp’s edge, which authorities carved out earlier this year to push camp inhabitants away from a road leading to the port and ferries to England. Scores of riot police were keeping watch, and some occasionally charged the groups igniting the flames.

The evacuation of at least 6,486 migrants – aid groups have estimated 8,300 – has been in the works for two months and is expected to take a week.

The people at the camp, who will be allowed to pick two regions of a country they don’t know as their intended destination, were just learning the details Sunday.

“The objective has been reached. We have more than 7,000 places. We have a place for everyone,” Calais’ Social Cohesion Director Serge Szarzynski said Sunday.

But most migrants encountered were unaware of how the operation was to proceed and unsure where their next landing place would be. Aid groups and official organizations still were putting out word that the camp’s days were numbered. Some people staying at the camp said they fear ending up in unwelcoming villages with few economic opportunities instead of cities, a real possibility.

“And there are rumors here that they are taking them to warehouses,” said Tariq Shinwari, a 26-year-old Afghan who has applied for asylum in France.