Al-Ahram Weekly | International | Readdressing refugees

		21 - 27 November 2002 Issue No. 613 International	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Readdressing refugees
French police have ended the occupation of a Calais church by asylum-seekers, drawing attention to the reasons why increasing numbers of refugees want to claim asylum in Britain. David Tresilian reports from Paris

French riot police, acting on the instructions of the local mayor and armed with a court order entered the Catholic church of Saint-Peter-and-Saint-Paul in the port city of Calais, last Thursday. At dawn, they expelled a group of 99 asylum-seekers, mainly Iraqi Kurds and Afghans, who had been occupying the church for the previous four days.
The police action followed days of intense negotiations between French authorities and the refugees, who insisted that they be allowed to cross the Channel and claim refugee status in England, repeatedly turning down similar offers in France. Negotiations had stalled over the asylum-seekers' refusal to negotiate amid threats of suicide if French police entered the church. The decision to end the stand-off came following consultations with religious authorities and concerns over sanitary conditions within the church.
Earlier, a spokesman for the asylum-seekers, identified only as Karwan, had announced that members of the group did not want to leave the church since, "they do not want asylum in France, and they do not think they will get a positive response to any such request. They want to go to England, where many of them have family."
Following the expulsion, the French authorities announced that 69 of the 99 expelled, mostly Iraqi Kurds, had agreed to apply for asylum in France, with the remaining 20 agreeing to emergency accommodation in the area while their demands were considered.
The dramatic stand-off between the French authorities and the refugees in Calais again drew attention to the condition of asylum-seekers there, many of whom have only one hope: to be allowed to move to England.
Over recent months, the Eurostar train service from Paris to London, which passes through Calais, has been targeted by asylum-seekers desperate to reach England, who either try to enter the tunnel or smuggle themselves onto the trains.
In many cases, asylum-seekers, mostly men in their 20s and 30s, have paid smugglers thousands of dollars to enter Europe. Their end destination is usually England, where they believe conditions for asylum-seekers are significantly better than they are in France.
Furthermore, any renewed conflict in the Middle East, is expected to increase the flow of refugees into Europe, notably of Iraqi Kurds.
In July this year, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy met his British counterpart David Blunkett for consultations on the refugee issue and the increasing disruption asylum-seekers were causing to Paris-London train traffic. Later, Sarkozy visited Calais and the Sangatte detention centre, announcing that the French government would close the centre and re-house the refugees in early 2003, as the British government had requested.
Meanwhile, the British parliament has passed a new asylum, immigration and nationality law, which is intended to make Britain less attractive to those claiming refugee status. Over the first six months of 2002, 51,500 asylum-seekers reached British shores, attracted, according to the French press, by a number of factors: the absence of identity cards in Britain; many of them speak English or have family in England; and many asylum-seekers consider they have better employment prospects in England than in France, where unemployment among those of immigrant origin is high.
The new British law will create special centres for asylum-seekers. In addition, asylum-seekers entering Britain will have to carry identity papers and will be subject to stricter checks and controls.
French immigration law is already notoriously harsh, with local préfectures, or regional authorities, often blocking applications for asylum for years. More generally, immigration was a theme of this year's French presidential and parliamentary elections, which for the first time in decades gave right-wingers control of both the presidency and the parliament.
Those refused asylum in France, together with illegal immigrants and those not possessing the correct papers, are subject to expulsion from the country should they be discovered during police checks, which are routinely carried out in French cities.
Since the French right's victory at the presidential and parliamentary elections, public discourse on asylum-seekers, immigration and law-and-order issues has significantly hardened. The French government has been critical over the cross-Channel flow of asylum-seekers, claiming Britain is a "soft option" for refugees and out of line with European norms.
The new British law is designed to meet these objections and is part of a more general effort, announced by British Home Secretary David Blunkett to crack down on illegal immigration and on "economic migrants" coming to Britain under the guise of refugees. Under the terms of the new law, citizens of the ten countries hoping to join the European Union will automatically be refused asylum in Britain, as will citizens of countries considered to be democratic.
Under the terms of the 1951 Geneva Convention that governs international law on refugees, a refugee is a person who, having a, "well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion", is outside the country of his or her residence and is, owing to such a fear, unwilling to return to it.
States party to the Convention, including Britain and France, may not impose penalties for illegal entry on those who apply for asylum and may not send refugees back to any territory in which their lives or freedom would be threatened, even if they are not obliged under the Convention to themselves give asylum to refugees.
For the leader-writer of the French newspaper Le Monde, the decisions by the French government to close the Sangatte centre, and the British, to toughen legislation on refugees, are both welcome, "probably causing many to give up the long journey to the north of France", on the way to the British "promised land".
However, it is also time, the newspaper continued, that the European Union adopt a common policy on immigration and right of asylum.
"Efforts made in this direction have made little progress. And the absence of harmonisation on subjects as essential as frontier controls, the conditions of asylum-seekers, or recourse to immigrant labour, renders the situation uncontrollable," the newspaper said.

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