Plight of the asylum seekers marooned in France
originally published: 28th March 2009
Nick Mohammed scrambles through a thicket of razor sharp thorn bushes and goes around a growing mound of human waste to reach his home, a cramped, squalid hut cobbled together from wooden crates, plastic tarpaulin and waterlogged, rotting duvets.
Under a steady drizzle of icy rain he pauses, breathes air into his hands in a futile attempt to feel warm, before breaking into an enormous and friendly smile. “Welcome to my home,” he laughs. “I admit it’s not a palace. Ten of us live in this tent. We only have a few blankets each so we have to make sure there are many of us to keep warm.”
Mr Mohammed and his friends are among the thousands of Afghan asylum-seekers who leave their war-torn homeland every year seeking a better life in the West.
The 23-year-old’s current residence is not some Third World refugee camp in Pakistan, but a sprawling and fetid tent city, spread across a field of thorny scrubland on the outskirts of the French port of Calais.
Known to locals and its inhabitants as “The Jungle”, it is a place of poverty and grinding desperation. It is also a damning indictment of France’s treatment of its clandestins, the illegal immigrants who are forced to sleep rough.
