despite the multiplication of accidents, “better to try than to cry” assures one of them

TO Calais, de more and more accidents involving migrants are taking place. Five in the last five days, according to the association Utopia. Thursday November 4, a TER Dunkirk-Calais collided with a group of around fifty migrants making a dead and three injured including one serious in the Beau Marais district.

To access the camp, you have to pass the railroad tracks, a few meters from where the accident took place. There are dozens of tents under the trees, tarpaulins that serve as tents. “In each one there are two or three people. It is not very big but it is fine”, entrusts Mamadou, one of the migrants we met.

Here, we do not cross by boat, we try to hang on to the freight trucks that pass right next to it. Mamadou arrived two weeks ago from Mali, he has already tried it but without success each time. “In the parking lot, there is a lot of security (…) VSe are the dogs that we spot“, he explains.

They spend the day playing music or playing football. In Calais, associations estimate that there are around 1,500 migrants. When asked why they take these risks, the answer is always the same: “go to England”. 17,000 have succeeded since the start of the year, according to British authorities. This is already more than for the whole of 2020.

“People have a project, a dream, a goal. We cannot stop them in their tracks. Yet this is what the government, the state is trying to do with police harassment, barbed wire and all the means. of security that go with “, explains Pierre Roques, the coordinator of the Auberge des migrants association. Preally enough to discourage them. As we say Yom, “better to try than to cry”.