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Church migrants threaten suicide
CALAIS, France -- Migrants occupying a church in Calais -- the last hurdle for many on a stowaway route to Britain -- have threatened to kill themselves if police storm the building. "If policemen come inside ... we will kill self and fight self," Karwan Ahmad, a Kurdish occupant of the church, told Reuters in broken English from inside a ring of about a dozen riot police officers who have cordoned off the building. About 70 migrants -- mostly Iraqi Kurds and Afghans -- were still holed up in the St. Pierre-St. Paul Church on Wednesday night. A deadline of lunchtime for them to leave passed and as night fell, negotiations with the French authorities were continuing. The drama follows last week's closure of the Sangatte refugee camp to new migrants. The closure of the Red Cross centre, near the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, came a week earlier than the official date given by the French government. In recent months the Sangatte centre had become a base camp from which migrants tried almost nightly to smuggle themselves onto Channel Tunnel freight trains and into Britain. After spending a fourth night inside the church without sanitary facilities, the migrants had risked being forced out on Wednesday. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy decided at crisis talks with Calais Mayor Jacky Henin in Paris on Tuesday morning to give the occupiers of the church 24 hours to leave. "We agreed the occupation of the church could not continue for more than 24 hours for health reasons," Henin said after meeting Sarkozy.
No specific hour was given and the deadline passed with no police action. Reuters reported that police showed little sign of preparing a raid. Henin, a Communist, has accused the centre-right national government of "heresy" for closing the nearby Sangatte camp to new arrivals a week earlier than planned. But he said the church could not be occupied indefinitely. The group at the church, backed by rights activists, are demanding the same treatment as 1,800 people who are sheltered at the Sangatte camp and want passes to remain in the Calais area. The church occupants brandished a banner on Tuesday which read: "We want to go to Sangatte or to die." Just over 30 refugees left the church on Monday, accepting an offer to file asylum requests and take temporary shelter in other parts of northern France. France traditionally does not send migrants back to their home countries if they come from conflict zones such as Iraq, Afghanistan or Kosovo. London took France to task for turning a blind eye to the flood of migrants trying to get into Britain from France and demanded closure of the Sangatte camp. Sarkozy agreed to the closure, in return for adoption of tougher asylum laws in Britain, whose reputation as an easy place to start a new life has lured thousands of refugees in past decades. Eurotunnel, which operates trains through the Channel Tunnel, said it intercepted about 18,500 refugees trying to enter the tunnel in the first half of 2001 alone. Last year, six people died trying to sneak through the tunnel, and more than 100 were injured. Reuters contributed to this report.
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