Sangatte Camp Finale and the Prospects for Asylum in Calais

Farshad Hosseini

25 November 2002

After three years of debates and clashes between British and French officials, the Sangatte refugee camp has finally been closed to new entrants. Currently, 1,100 asylum seekers are still at this camp and are to be interviewed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) by next April. If they are accepted by the UNHCR, half of them will be sent to Britain and the other half will most likely stay in France. As of April 2003, this camp will be closed down for good.

Sangatte, which was opened by the French Red Cross three years ago to temporarily house asylum seekers in Calais, has been the most disputed asylum camp in Europe. Sangatte is important because of its geopolitical location which is at the main entrance route to Britain. Each month, hundreds of asylum seekers from Iraqi Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Iran and other countries enter Britain via this route to apply for asylum. In fact, the British government’s campaign against this camp and their efforts to close it down began ever since the camp was established. Political and legal challenges between the British and French governments turned into a serious dispute. During the three years of the camp's existence, the British and French media tried hard to depict a grotesque image of the camp and the asylum seekers in it. They portrayed the camp as the source of all asylum seekers to Britain and argued that there would be a continuous influx of asylum seekers into Britain until this camp was shut down.

The clashes among France and Britain on the issue of Sangatte raises the question of why two governments that are so close in their anti-asylum laws were caught up in a political battle over Sangatte. Clearly, Sangatte has not become a point of contention because of it being a transit point for asylum seekers entering the UK or for it being the source of the asylum flow into Britain. In fact, it has become a point of contention because it was the meeting point in the policy of the two governments' lack of responsibility towards the rights and needs of asylum seekers. Neither government was or is willing to take responsibility for safeguarding and guaranteeing a safe life with basic social rights for asylum seekers. The French government excluded refugee recognition from its policy towards these asylum seekers once the camp was opened. The British government (which has a role in producing refugees by creating or supporting inhuman and repressive regimes in the world) also refused to secure a decent standard of living for those fleeing persecution. This is the crux of the policy of these two countries. Their refusal to ensure the human rights of the asylum seekers is the key to Sangatte. The other key is in the hands of the media, which created beasts of the asylum seekers. The French and British media worked hard to make people think that these are not legitimate refugees but 'illegal' immigrants making their way to Britain to earn money, without mentioning the reasons or factors for their flight. The media’s efforts are to conceal the root cause of the refugee flow not only to France and Britain, but also to Europe as a whole. This is an effort to degrade refugees, their dignity and their human rights. This is the hidden secret of Sangatte.

Sangatte has been shut down. The two sides have kissed and made up and apparently everything seems to have ended well. Could this be called the end of the fate of Sangatte though? Will bringing down the shutters of Sangatte put at ease public opinion from an issue that has been the media's fodder for three years? So can they tell people everything has finished? What happens to the asylum seeker - the asylum seeker who reached and reaches Sangatte with a thousand difficulties and calamities? Will s/he turn around and go back home upon seeing Sangatte's shutters down? Can they now tell people to remain under threat of terror, death and misery because Sangatte has been shut down? Obviously not. Camps don't create refugees; repressive governments with long records of human rights violations do. Until they exist, so will asylum seekers. The only thing that will change is the miserable lives of these victims in Calais. From now on, people will see asylum seekers sleeping in the streets and in boxes. They will see women and children curled up in the cold. The images we will see on TV will be of the youth, women and children who have died of hunger and the cold near the former Sangatte camp.

Yet the asylum seeker who has fled death and rightlessness will not succumb to death so easily either. Such inhuman policies will actually encourage resistance and strengthen the struggle of asylum seekers. Only one day after Sangatte refused access to new entrants, we witnessed nearly a hundred asylum seekers who occupied the church of Calais and held a sit-in protest. Although, this protest was crushed by the police a few days later, more serious images of the lives and struggles of refugees were demonstrated. What's important is that we mustn't allow the first scenario to be repeated in Calais. We must support the struggle of asylum seekers to protect their rights and not allow them to die on the streets of Calais.