Residents at the informal refugee camps at Calais say they will peacefully resist attempts to bulldoze parts of their makeshift settlement, after French police gave about a third of them until Thursday to leave.

Police have announced that they will destroy the homes of an estimated 1,600 people at the Calais camp, known as the “Jungle”, which is used by up to 5,000 asylum seekers as a base from which they attempt to enter Britain via the Channel tunnel.

The French government wants the evictees to move into a purpose-built facility nearby, where they say residents can live in warmer and sturdier containers. But according to aid workers at Calais, the affected asylum seekers are frightened by the new site, which they say resembles a prison and contains no communal areas – in contrast to the informal settlement, which has makeshift churches, mosques and kitchens.



Despite claims to the contrary by the French government, potential evictees are also worried that once inside the new facility, they will be forced to apply for asylum in France and prevented from making future attempts to reach Britain.

After a meeting on Monday night, leaders of the different ethnic groups at the Jungle released the following statement: “We, the united people of the Jungle, Calais, respectfully decline the demands of the French government with regards to reducing the size of the Jungle. We have decided to remain where we are and will peacefully resist the government’s plans to destroy our homes.”

Nico Stevens, a coordinator for Help Refugees, an aid group in the camp, said the new site “looks like a detention centre, it has very tall fences, and people don’t want to move from their homes. They’re so displaced already and it’s very important psychologically to have their own space. So to move into a container that houses 12 to 14 people is very unsettling.”

Stevens added: “The French government is saying they don’t need to claim asylum – but the government always changes their minds, so people don’t trust them.”

In a separate development, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is building a new refugee shelter at Dunkirk, a town 30 miles to the east in which 2,500 asylum seekers have also set up camp – and where conditions are even worse.

Vicky Hawkins, the director of MSF UK, said: “We’ll bring it up to an acceptable humanitarian standard – which Dunkirk is very far from. Since the rain has started it’s become completely waterlogged – it’s a mudbath with very unpleasant living conditions. People are exposed to elements, camped in the mud, and the sanitation is inadequate.

“The whole thing is way below what you’d expect for 2016 for 2,500 people. People are living in completely unacceptable circumstances, and there is a real risk people will go to sleep and not wake up because it’s so cold.”

The residents of the camps at Calais and Dunkirk constitute less than 1% of the more than 1 million asylum seekers who arrived in Europe by sea last year.