On the northern coast of France, between Calais and Grande-Synthe, the winter cold is biting at this Christmas time. Hundreds of people in exile are surviving in inhumane conditions as they wait to cross the English Channel to the UK. Many associations such as Secours Catholique, the Red Cross, come to their aid to enable them to remain worthy. The Salam association provides them with hot meals at the Loon-Plage camp, where the makeshift camps are regularly dismantled by the police.
There is no running water, toilets or showers here. A dehumanizing context denounced by Secours Catholique. “Anyway, they will pass, what is the point of treating them like this?” protests a Salam volunteer. “With these dehumanized camps, we push them into the sea, it’s shameful.”
Jesuit priest Philippe Demeestère, who went on a three-week hunger strike last year to protest the repeated dismantling, got involved body and soul: “it is bodily that we are involved, it is about our own identity”. It was he who invited, last year (2021) the Bishop of Arras Mgr Olivier Leborgne installed in October 2020, to come and meet the migrants in Calais. He celebrated a Christmas mass in 2021 in a parking lot with Eritreans on their way to exile. From these meetings, the Bishop of Arras published a book, “Prière pour les tempspresents” (Editions du Seuil) in which he rebels against human indignity.
Report in Calais at the Secours Catholique day center, with Juliette Delaplace – project manager at Secours Catholique for people in exile on the northern coast.
Report in Grande-Synthe and on the Loon-Plage camp with exiles, with Claire Millot, vice-president of the Salam association and the team of volunteers.
Interviews with :
– Mgr Olivier Leborgne, bishop of Arras, author of “Prayer for the present times” (Editions du Seuil)
– Philippe Demeestère, Jesuit priest very committed to the poorest including migrants in Calais.
Useful links :
SCCF Volunteer Journal Facebook
Read also :
Migrants: Paris, London and Dunkirk pay tribute to the 27 drowned a year ago.
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