The mayor of Calais opposes the creation of an airlock to accommodate 300 migrants – The HuffPost

Pascal Rossignol / Reuters

MIGRANTS – An end of inadmissibility. While she had not yet expressed herself since the start of the hunger strike of a priest and two associations, nor after the arrival of the mediator Sent by the government to his city, the mayor of Calais Natacha Bouchart (LR) is categorical this Wednesday, November 3, as reported our colleagues from France 3.

Didier Leschi, sent to Hauts-de-France to try to find a suitable solution in the eyes of the various parties, had notably proposed the establishment of a temporary “airlock”. The principle was simple: offer accommodation for one night in Calais to a maximum of 300 migrants before leading them the next day to a lasting solution outside the city.

“It is out of the question”, simply replied the councilor The Republicans this Wednesday on the local antenna of France 3, advancing the argument of the absence of a structure adapted to these emergency accommodation, which is not yet supposed to be used – the mediator clarified – only after mass expulsions. “There will be no sheltering directly in Calais and not 300 places mobilized for these shelters,” said Natacha Bouchart.

Natacha Bouchart criticizes the action of the hunger strikers

According to her, this solution would risk causing the appearance and formation of a new “jungle”, which she categorically refuses. “If we recreate a place (of this kind), we renew the call for air. And we have been sufficiently tested, the Calaisians and the migrants themselves, through these forms of devices ”.

And the mayor of Calais does not stop there, ensuring that she has had no contact with Didier Leschi, whose work she judges fairly small. Also with France 3, she declares that the mediators who come to her city “do not know the root of the problem and the methodology which unfortunately is behind all these humanitarian difficulties”.

Difficulties about which the elected representative sends an ambivalent message, mainly when discussing the fate of Father Philippe Demeestère and the two activists Anaïs Vogel and Ludovic Holbein, who are on their 24th day of hunger strike . Natacha Bouchart thus denounces an action which according to her only serves to create “a media buzz”, which is why she decided not to visit them.

And to add that the three strikers are in any case surrounded by “young and radicalized” activists who are not necessarily there to go towards appeasement. “I advise hunger strikers to be surrounded by benevolent people and not by people who come to strengthen them in their convictions”, she concludes, shirking all responsibility in this crisis by explaining that it does not fall to the municipal power. Atmosphere.

See also on the HuffPost: At 24, she helps migrants in the Mediterranean and denounces those who “don’t care”