CPOY

CPOY 71 International Picture Story Silver: The Jungle of Europe

The Jungle, refugee camp in France, March 2016. Mud. Everywhere is mud. Tents and shacks shows up all around. Piles of trash pushed up as moraines around a muddy glacier tongue. In this dirty spot on the European map people lives. Nobody knows the exact number, but they are counted in thousands. The Jungle in Calais is a refugee camp made of itself. Hoping to get to England refugees and migrants are driven to this corner of France where ferries cross the Channel. Here they attempt to sneak themselves aboard the many trucks going to England. However, as the fences along the highways are erected and the control checks at the ferries are increased it is becoming harder and harder to get across. Meanwhile, the Jungle grows. Many have entirely given up hope of getting to the promised land. For them the short stop has become the end, and life in the tents has become their everyday. They are stuck here, in the mud of the Jungle.

Caption
Slide 3 of 8
March 4, 2016
In the previous weeks (February 2016) the French authorities started to tear down the Jungle. It is a slow process. Most of the people who lose their tent or shack to the bulldozers take their few belongings and move to the other end of the camp. Only few have moved into the shipping container shelters offered by the authorities. The French authorities want to clear the Jungle for humanitarian reasons. But the vast majority of the residents do not want to move. This has led to several clashes between them and the police, which is massively present in all of Calais.
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