French riot police evacuate Calais immigrant camps
Source: Reuters
(Reuters) - French riot police started evacuating three campsites housing hundreds of immigrants in the northern port town of Calais on Wednesday, days after the anti-immigrant National Front party hammered the ruling Socialists in a European election.
The evictions, denounced by local rights organisations, had been announced by a local government prefect a week earlier - before Sunday's election drubbing - on the grounds that the makeshift camps posed problems for public health and safety.
Calais has for years attracted floods of immigrants who flee poverty or conflict in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, many of them hoping to cross the narrow sea channel to Britain by ferry or the sub-sea train tunnel.
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Pas-de-Calais lies in north-west France where the FN won 34 percent of the vote in Sunday's election, one of its best tallies and a tripling of its score from the 2009 EU election.
The FN has long campaigned for a dramatic reduction in immigration and opposes the "Schengen" borderless zone at the heart of the 28-member European Union.
Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/28/uk-france-immigrants-idUKKBN0E80L620140528
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That will really work well to quell the support that UKIP et al are building up at the moment ...
