UK charity considers cutting off aid for the ‘Jungle’ at Calais after visiting the camp and deciding most migrants had no real reason to leave their home country
Human Relief Foundation has been helping people at the Jungle camp
A delegation from charity found most people there are economic migrants
Discovered unwanted aid being dumped and burnt in chaotic conditions
Now hope to help people in genuine need in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey
By Chris Brooke and Peter Allen for the Daily Mail
Published: 11:34 EST, 6 October 2015 | Updated: 02:41 EST, 7 October 2015
A crisis relief charity chief is set to pull the plug on aid to the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp after discovering most people there are economic migrants ‘without any reason’ to leave their home country.
The Bradford-based Human Relief Foundation has been running a project to help the ‘refugees’ at the makeshift camp and previously claimed they were all ‘fleeing war and significant atrocities.’
The organisation had been running a project to help the ‘refugees’ at the makeshift camp and previously claimed they were all ‘fleeing war and significant atrocities
Instead of vulnerable families fighting for survival he found the camp – dubbed the Jungle – was ’95 to 97 per cent’ adult men.
The discovery has prompted the charity – which sends relief aid to people in desperate need around the world – to change its aid policy in respect of the Calais camp where around 4,000 people are living.
They found chaotic conditions with no organisation where aid was being distributed randomly and unwanted items later discarded in piles on the ground.
Interviewed by ITV’s Calendar News, Mr Tokan admitted he was surprised by what he found. Asked if his charity would withdraw support for the camp’s inhabitants, he said: ‘Most likely, yes.’
He said it would be better to help people in genuine need in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey rather than ‘healthy people here.’
The charity’s own ‘Path of Mercy’ project stated on its website that ‘most of the refugees in the camp are highly vulnerable people’ fleeing war. Adding: ‘Due to the conflict, many people have faced and continue to face injury, disability, torture, starvation, neglect and poor mental health.’
Mr Tokan, who heads the international charity’s global orphan and family programmes, said many migrants in Calais had no ‘valid’ reason for going to the UK and should have stayed at home.
He said: ‘They have enough food, they have enough clothes and we have seen clothes everywhere thrown. I think we need to find other places. These people come from certain countries which are safe, everything is there, they can work, but I don’t know why they came here.
‘Some people they haven’t any valid reason. They want to leave their country without any reason. They want to go (to the UK) to get money, a better economic situation.’
Huge amounts of donated clothes, intended for women and children, have been dumped because there are few families there and unwanted food has also been left to rot.
An HRF spokesman said yesterday its presence at the camp would be maintained, but with an emphasis on ‘building communal kitchens and portable shower units for camp residents’ rather than continuing to provide food and clothing.
Politicians and other commentators on both sides of the Channel have long argued that the illegal Calais camps are mainly populated by economic migrants.
France’s former employment minister Xavier Bertrand is one of many who said Britain’s ‘black jobs market’ was the goal of the mostly young men with mobile phones, rather than desperate families fleeing war and persecution.
Read the latest news and updates on Europe's migrant crisis and the Calais 'jungle' camp
The charity found many migrants in Calais had no ‘valid’ reason for going to the UK and should have stayed at home. Pictured: Migrants trying to board lorries in
A volunteer aid worker attached to one of the major charities working in Calais told the Mail yesterday that the migrants were primarily interested in getting hold of ‘phones, cash and any practical equipment which will make their journeys to Britain easier’.
She added: ‘The tiny number of women with babies are well looked after in centres nearby. The men in the camps don’t need children’s clothes and the like. Those kind of donations are got rid of straight away.’
TWO IRANIANS WALK THROUGH TUNNEL
Two more illegal immigrants have walked through the Channel Tunnel to reach Britain.
The Iranian men risked the perilous 31-mile journey, dodging high-speed trains and potentially lethal electric currents – after a mob of up to 200 migrants stormed the entrance to the tunnel at Calais on Saturday.
French police caught most of migrants, dozens of whom had made it almost ten miles into the tunnel, but the two men – Payam Moradi Mirahessari, 25, and 20-year-old Farein Vahdani – reached Folkestone, Kent, more than 12 hours later, where they were arrested. A Sudanese migrant was the first to complete the journey through the tunnel in August. He was also arrested on arrival in the UK. The two Iranians appeared before magistrates in Medway, Kent, on Monday and were remanded in custody.
Meanwhile, in a sign of the increasing desperation of the thousands of migrants at Calais, seven Syrians were pulled alive from the sea early yesterday after apparently trying to swim to a UK-bound ferry. Another three climbed aboard a departing DFDS Seaways ferry but were found and handed to UK police in Dover.
UKIP MP Douglas Carswell said: ‘How difficult can it be to secure the only link between our country and continental Europe? Cameron and co are talking tough in Manchester but this reflects the sheer incompetence of the British state.’
Calais Migrant Solidarity was among the groups attacked earlier in the summer for posting an appeal for ‘bikes, bike trailers and bike repair stuff’ which were ‘always needed and really useful for people to stay mobile and get around.’
Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, was campaigning for elections in Calais last week, and pointed to the gangs of men everywhere.
Ms Le Pen said: ‘Me, I saw the images of the illegal migrants who come from Germany and Hungary etc.
‘Yes, in these pictures they are 99 per cent men. For me I think that men who leave their families in their countries are not fleeing persecution. It’s clear that they’re leaving for economic reasons.’
The Human Relief Foundations has offices in eight locations around the world. It is a member of the Muslim Charities Forum and has an annual income of around £3m a year.
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