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Migrants live a tough life at Calais: PHOTO: Mailonline
Nigerians are among a loose crowd of 300 migrants currently stranded on the French port city of Calais as they hurry to file for asylum in the United Kingdom to beat Brexit deadline.
The migrants swore to keep trying to make the perilous sea crossing to Britain, saying they are fearful of religious persecution in their home countries of Iran, Sudan, Nigeria and a few other African nations. They are worried that claiming asylum in the UK will become harder after Brexit, reports MailOnline of UK.
One young Iranian who said he was on a boat stopped in the water over Christmas insisted he would try ‘200 times’ to reach the UK despite having been terrified of drowning during the journey. Another said he would ‘keep trying to get to England’ despite having been in France since 2017.
One Iranian said the Afghan people-smuggling gangs who control access to the coast are becoming bolder, coming into the camp armed with with ‘guns and swords’.
Around 200 Iranian men, along with half that number of Africans mainly from Sudan and Nigeria, are currently living in a makeshift camp on a patch of unused industrial scrubland less than a mile from the Calais docks. Yesterday morning when MailOnline visited the camp – one of several close to the French shoreline – the men huddled around small fires for warmth.
A young man who gave his name as Mehdi said he made the crossing to England ‘two or three days ago’.
He said: ‘The boat got very close to England. We called 999 but the French police came. We were only two hundred metres from Dover.
‘I will try again. I will try 200 times. Because England people is not so much racist. People in England is very good, here is not good.’
He said he had made the trip to Calais from the Tehran suburb of Mina a month ago because: ‘People want to kill me. I converted from Islam to Christianity.’
He said traffickers had come into the camp last week and asked which men wanted to make the crossing. He volunteered, paying E4000 to the traffickers for his seat in the dinghy – money he said had been sent to him from family in Iran.
He and ten others were taken down to the shoreline at around 9pm one night, avoiding police checkpoints.
