Beyond the jungle

Once you arrive in Calais you’re convinced that you’ve made it. You’re in Europe and a step away from the UK, the goal of a journey that has lasted for months. The port, which is in the far north of France, is at the narrowest point of the Channel, only 33 kilometres from the English coast. The ferries shuttle back and forth and every day transport thousands of cars and lorries in just 90 minutes. Or there is the train, which goes through the tunnel, taking only half an hour. These times and distances are infinitely small for those who have travelled thousands of kilometres across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. Crossing the Channel is really nothing.

This is what the Indian boy must have thought, who was found by officers in the trailer of a lorry at the Port of Calais before embarking for the UK. They found him suffocated in October 2009. He was with two companions, who were still alive at the time the lorry was checked. Like him, four other migrants died that year, all under 30 years old. The police continuously carry out inspections on both the French and English sides of the Channel and it is not difficult to flush out anyone inside the trailers. There is a device that detects the carbon dioxide produced by breathing; the boys knew this and put their heads in a plastic bag for each search so as not to be found. Rahmadin hid under the axle of a lorry instead, but fell near the Loon-Plage terminal in April 2010. He was 16 years old and came from Afghanistan. The same thing happened at the Grande-Synthe jetty in May 2011, when a 23-year-old Iranian hit his head after coming off the axle of a trailer. Martha, a 19-year-old Eritrean, escaped, but fractured her leg while trying to get onto a lorry.

The stories are also similar to those from the border with Western Europe. They are stories that have been repeated for years and are happening in the ports of Patras in Greece or the Adriatic in Italy, but rarely end up in the newspapers. It is almost exclusively associations and volunteers helping migrants that document them, showing how serious they are. Médecins du Monde (MdM) is a French medical NGO that has been working in the Pas-de-Calais region since 2005.