On November 24, the sinking of a boat of migrants trying to cross the Channel to England left 27 people dead and created a shock wave in the humanitarian and political world.

This Wednesday, 26 associations and NGOs, including Amnesty International, Oxfam France, the Abbé-Pierre Foundation and a group of associations from Calais, Grande-Synthe and Dunkirk, published a column on the France Info website calling on the public authorities to stop the “policy of mistreatment” against migrants.

"This tragedy was feared" by the associations, which regularly alert governments to "the risks taken" by migrants, "for lack of legal and secure channels" or access to an asylum application procedure.

They also recall that more than 400 people have died since 1999 while trying to cross from France to Great Britain, like Yasser, a young Sudanese run over by a truck in Calais.

A "small step forward" after the hunger strike

This previous drama had led to a hunger strike by a priest and two activists, Anaïs Vogel and Ludovic Holbein, from October 11. They had put an end to their action, asking "for an end to the policy of mistreatment against exiled persons", barely a few days ago when the boat capsized. The signatory associations are not satisfied with the announcements made by the mediator Didier Leschi in Calais, citing "minimal progress". Despite the notice given before the expulsions and the "45-minute summons before the intervention of the police" for the exiles to take their belongings, a controversy has also recently erupted over the lacerations of tents.

The 300-place hangar opened in Calais after the mediation, "presented as a concession", was closed "by decision of the prefecture and the Ministry of the Interior" according to the signatories, while the evacuations resumed with more vigor and that a decree comes “to further restrict the places where food is distributed.

The associations thus evoke a "double feeling": on the one hand "hope by noting a real awareness in public opinion", on the other anger by noting that the hunger strike has not changed the “dehumanizing practices of public authorities”.

"Draw conclusions from the drama"

The signatories therefore call on France to "draw the conclusions of the tragedy" and "to apprehend differently the presence of people in exile on the coast and to consider them for what they are: human beings in search of a better life". They demand an end to "acts of mistreatment" and propose to set up "shelter systems all along the coast", to authorize asylum requests in France but also to negotiate "legal channels. and safe passage ”to Great Britain.

Criticizing "the culpable blindness of the authorities" who accuse the smugglers, the associations propose to offer exiled people "the possibility of building a future for themselves, and knowing peace", rather than "spending additional millions in the surveillance of the frontier ".

And to conclude that "there is urgency".

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