MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Human rights groups and government officials in France and abroad have expressed concern over the French government's plan to shut down the Calais camp before the end of October. The camp hosts as many as 9,000 people.
The Council of Europe said on Friday that the French authorities have not yet presented detailed accommodation plans for thousands of migrants living at the Calais refugee camp.
"Police are taking decent footwear from refugees. It’s happening a couple of times a week, for sure. It’s another part of a continuing trend of harassment in different ways by the police," Rowan Farrell, who runs charity Refugee Info Bus, told The Independent in an interview published on Saturday.
Another charity leader, Clare Mosely, told the newspaper that police also destroy the refugees’ phones.
"The shortage of shoes is my biggest concern right now. We are very worried about that for the winter. Sometimes the police smash phones as well. It’s a form of bullying," Mosely, founder of Care4Calais, said.
Grainne Mellon, co-author of the July report on police violence in the camp published by the Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC), confirmed to The Independent that police were taking the refugees’ shoes and phones.
"We found evidence of what appeared to be fairly routine acts of violence in the camp, including shoes being removed and phones being confiscated, corroborated by a number of different sources," Mellon said.
