It’s the first time in the tunnel’s 22 year history that it has been extended. The new development will mean the tunnel will stretch all the way into the Eurotunnel terminal where cars and lorries are loaded onto trains — an area previously sealed off by a fence.
Around 3,000 refugees and asylum seekers living in the so-called 'Jungle Camp' near Calais face being evicted from their make shift tents to make way for bulldozers to clear a 100 meter security zone around the camp’s perimeter.
Temporary churches and mosques used by the refugees have already been demolished. Men, women and children – including 500 unaccompanied minors — have been left in no man’s land.
"Storage of Human Beings"
Tony Dyer, Green Party mayoral candidate for Bristol, the city where Banksy grew up, recently visited the refugee camp in Calais, where he discovered a "terrifying" new container camp to house refugees overnight.
"The scene is one of squalor and despair: muddy tracks, flimsy tents and wooden huts housing a mixture of people fleeing wars, genocide, religious extremism, absolute poverty," Dyer says.
In an article published on B24/7, Dyer describes the French police watching over no-man’s land from their vans, “occasionally firing a tear gas round into the camp seemingly out of boredom”.
Shipping containers now used to house the refugees in a new camp surrounded by a wire fence, within the existing camp.
"This is industrialized overnight storage of human beings."
Around 6,500 refugees and migrants are living in two makeshift camps in Calais and Dunkirk in conditions described by human rights groups as "atrocious".
Amnesty International (AI) is calling on the French and British authorities to allow migrants who have families in Britain to be reunited with them in the UK.
Refugees & migrants in #Calais & #Dunkirk with relatives in UK must be reunited in Britain. Take action and retweet: https://t.co/CTbFwnYufO
— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) February 16, 2016
"Effectively abandoned by authorities on both sides of the Channel, they risk their lives trying to cross by jumping in the back of a lorry, walking through the Eurotunnel or even setting off from the coast in small boats," says AI.
Meanwhile Eurotunnel is claiming more than US$32 million in compensation from the French and British governments due to disruption to its services for passengers caused by migrants trying to leave the camp.
The US$6.1 million extension to the tunnel is being spent to calm fears that thousands more refugees will arrive in Calais this summer as the refugee crisis continues in Europe.
