French police blasted for ‘routinely’ using pepper spray on migrants
A rights group has accused French police of using pepper spray on migrants in Calais on a regular basis but authorities deny the claims.
Photo: AFP
In a report entitled “Like living in hell” the use of pepper spray against migrants massed in the northern coastal city is described as “routine”.
“Police use of pepper spray in Calais is so common that many asylum seekers and migrants had difficulty recalling precisely how many times they had been sprayed,” the report said.
Of 61 migrants questioned by the prominent international human rights group between the end of June and the beginning of July, 55 said they had been sprayed during the two weeks before the interview, and some said they had been sprayed every day, the author of the report, Michael Garcia Bochenek, told AFP.
READ ALSO:
- France’s anti-terror measures are curbing human rights, blasts Amnesty International
- Too many foreigners in France and Islam not compatible, majority of French say
Photo: AFP
“The 55 were sprayed while they slept,” he said, adding that he had talked to groups of varying nationalities in different locations, but the similarity of their stories “shows there is a serious problem”.
“These are practices that have become routine, without there being any consequences, and that is when they become serious abuses,” HRW France Director Benedicte Jeannerod told AFP.
For more than a decade France’s northern coast has been a magnet for refugees and migrants trying to reach Britain.
In October last year Calais’ notorious makeshift camp, nicknamed “the Jungle”, where thousands lived in the hope of climbing aboard trucks or trains to get across the Channel, was dismantled.
But HRW said hundreds of asylum seekers and migrants, mostly Eritreans, Ethiopians and Afghans, are still living on the streets and in wooded areas in