The state has mandated an association to distribute meals to migrants from Calais and prohibits all the others from continuing their distributions until the end of September.

A decision motivated by insecurity and the health context but which outraged the associations involved in helping migrants.

A single association will be able to distribute water and food to migrants in Calais.

From Friday until the end of September, only La Vie Active, mandated by the State, will be able to provide this assistance.

It is an instruction from the Minister of the Interior that received yesterday the mayor of the City, Natacha Bouchart.

It is motivated by insecurity and non-compliance with barrier gestures against the coronavirus.

But the other associations are scandalized by this decision and stress the insufficiency of such a device while they carry out informal distributions on a daily basis in the city center and the station district.

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Revolted associations

The ban on this humanitarian aid for migrants revolts Jean-Claude Lenoir, the president of the Salam association: "We could not expect there to be such an inhuman decision. There are women. , there are children, and we could not give them neither water nor bread? I find that unbelievable. We must find solutions and not continue in this awful war against humans. "

For François Guennoc, vice-president of the Auberge des migrants, "if the state wants to crowd people around the hospital," La Vie Active's distribution site, "where there are already 700 people, it takes its responsibilities, but we will end up with a worse situation than previously ”.

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In a joint statement, six NGOs and associations engaged in the defense of exiles, including Amnesty International, Médecins du monde and Médecins sans frontières, called for the State to reverse its decision.

They assure that they will continue to organize meal distributions.

To do this, they will need to find places outside the prohibited perimeter established by the prefecture. 

Distributions causing disturbances to public order

For her part, Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, assumes this decision.

It evokes "degradations, fights, breakage in certain traders".

"Very clearly, it cannot last any longer," plague the aedile.

"These people refuse any state aid and are recruited by smugglers and manipulated by associations. And all this has nothing humanitarian for them."

According to the prefecture and the town hall, these "wild" distributions of meals to migrants had indeed become meeting points for the smugglers who organize the crossings to Great Britain with crowds, sources of public disorder.  

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Insofar as the State has mandated La Vie Active to provide "4 daily distributions of meals", which the State provides to migrants 38 water taps 5 days a week, of which "22 are accessible 7 days a week" , and that water is distributed during meals, the prefecture considers ensuring "sufficient humanitarian services".

The association claims for its part to reach "the majority" of migrants present.