Aid groups have protested over “inhuman” conditions for migrants and refugees sleeping rough in Calais after a 25-year-old Nigerian man died from smoke inhalation in his tent. He had tried to light a fire in a tin to keep warm and prepare food.
Police officials in Pas-de-Calais confirmed that a man had died from intoxication from smoke fumes at the end of last week and said an autopsy would take place. The man was the third migrant or refugee to die in Calais this year.
Aid groups reacted angrily to the death and joined leftwing opposition parties in protesting against a recent decree by the rightwing mayor of Calais aimed at stopping migrants from gathering in the town centre during cultural festivities planned for this month.
Charities said the decree had limited their ability to distribute food to migrants and refugees sleeping rough.
“This death is really symbolic at a time where the local authorities have sought to remove migrants as well as the volunteers who help them from the town centre for supposed reasons of public order,” said François Guennoc, of the aid group l’Auberge des Migrants.
The decree was signed in part to coincide with a Calais street festival this weekend. Several political parties including the Greens, the Socialist party and France Unbowed said it denied migrants “their humanity and labels them as parasites that have to be hidden or walled in”.
Since the closure of a makeshift migrant camp in Calais in October 2016, hundreds of people have been sleeping rough along the coast in squalid conditions, many without proper access to sanitation. Charities estimate that around 400–500 migrants and refugees are currently in Calais hoping to cross to the UK. The majority are from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran and Iraq.
Antoine Nehr, a coordinator for Utopia 56, which helps migrants and refugees in Calais, said current conditions there were “disgraceful and inhuman”. He said: “People are being kept in such precarious conditions that unfortunately result in too many deaths.”
