Migrants storm French port of Calais and board British ferry

France has outlined its commitment to maintaining law and order after refugees stormed a UK-bound ferry in another bout of chaos in Calais.

Security forces were drafted in on Saturday after 350 migrants and refugees blocked Calais port and some boarded P&O’s Spirit Of Britain passenger ship.

Pictures posted on social media showed hundreds of people running towards the port and water cannon reportedly being fired to get migrants to disembark.

Bernard Cazeneuve, the French Interior Minister, said 35 people, including 26 migrants and nine activists, were arrested. Fifteen were taken into custody, he added.

Trouble flared after hundreds of people marched towards the Port of Calais from the Jungle site where some 4,000 migrants and refugees are camped.

Amid fresh calls for the French military to be deployed in the port city, Mr Cazeneuve said the country’s government had a total determination to maintain law and order.

In a statement, he said mobile forces, including CRS and squadrons of gendarmes, supported by territorial units and border police, had been mobilised for several months.

He said significant work had been done around the Channel Tunnel and Calais port with the help of the British authorities to prevent disorder.

Humanitarian solutions had also been implemented, including accelerated asylum procedures, which had helped reduce migrant numbers at Calais to 4,000 from 6,000 in recent months, Mr Cazeneuve went on.

The trouble broke out on the same day Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn visited the Jungle and the Grande-Synthe migrant and refugee camp near Dunkirk.

In ankle-deep mud, he toured Grande-Synthe, where around 2,500 mainly Kurds are sleeping rough in the cold in flimsy tents, and said the conditions were a “disgrace”.

The Road Haulage Association’s (RHA) chief executive Richard Burnett said the problems facing British truckers in Calais were routine as he called for urgent action.

He said: “This shocking breach of security clearly shows that the migrant mayhem in and around Calais is not being tackled.

“This latest episode has made the headlines, but the many incidents of attacks and intimidation faced by our British drivers on a daily basis are going unreported as, depressingly, they are now being regarded as routine.

A statement from the Port of Dover said the Port of Calais reopened more than two hours after experiencing “migrant activity” which disrupted cross-Channel services.

Desperate measures

Meanwhile, a Sudanese man who walked through the Channel Tunnel from France in an extreme example of the desperate measures refugees are prepared to take to reach Britain will face trial for obstructing a railway, a court was told last week.

Abdul Haroun, who is from the war-ravaged region of Darfur, walked for close to 12 hours in near total darkness last August, dodging high-speed trains and evading security cameras, before he was arrested by British police close to the English end of the tunnel at Folkestone.

He was charged and sent to prison, where he remained until he was given bail on January 4th.

In December he was granted asylum by British authorities - a decision his supporters hoped would lead to the charge being dropped - but which tunnel operator Eurotunnel and some lawmakers criticised as encouraging other migrants to risk the walk.

Mr Haroun was the first person known to have made it through the 50km tunnel on foot. Since then, two Iranian men have also walked through the tunnel. They too were arrested and charged with the same offence and are due to stand trial in April.

Framing the debate

The Calais and Dunkirk camps are among many flashpoints in a continent-wide crisis that saw over 1 million refugees and migrants enter Europe last year, most to escape war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. Almost 3,700 died or went missing in the attempt.

In Britain, Mr Haroun’s case has framed a heated political debate over whether refugees should be welcomed or stopped from coming.

The issue will feature heavily in campaigning for a referendum on whether Britain should stay in the European Union, expected to take place later this year.

Reuters