Migrants around Calais

Since 1999, thousands of migrants and refugees (mostly from Africa and Asia) have gathered around the French port city of Calais, seeking to enter the United Kingdom by crossing the Channel Tunnel or by boarding lorries heading for ferries that cross the English Channel. This issue has affected the British and French governments, the Eurotunnel and P&O Ferries companies, and lorry drivers heading for the UK and their companies.

In the late 1990s growing numbers of migrants/refugees, including women and children, were found sleeping out in the streets of Calais and surrounding towns, who presumably were hoping to get themselves into Britain, either through the Channel Tunnel under or by P&O Ferries over the English Channel. In 1999, at the request of the French government, the French Red Cross opened a refugee camp in Sangatte in a giant warehouse about 800 m (half a mile) from the entrance to the Channel Tunnel. Sangatte was planned to house 600 people, but by 2002 it was crammed with 2,000 people living in squalid conditions.

Tensions between ethnic groups in Sangatte grew for the best places in the camp from which to board trains at the Fréthun Eurotunnel rail freight terminal, 5 km (3.1 mi) from Calais.

Eurotunnel said in 2001 that each night they stopped 200 refugees, mostly from Sangatte, who aimed to smuggle themselves into Britain, and called on France to shut the camp. On Christmas Day 2001, a mass of people broke through all security barriers and 500 of them stormed the Channel Tunnel.

The Eurotunnel company had by 2002 spent £6 million (€8 million) on security measures around the 650-hectare (1,600-acre) terminal site, such as fences, razor wire, cameras and 360 security guards patrolling daily.

In May 2002, a football match between Kurds and Afghans at the Sangatte centre ended in a fight or a riot, leaving one person dead and several injured.

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Wikipedia