British volunteers travelling to Calais with donations for migrants have been turned back at the border, over concerns that they may be whipping up civil unrest in the region.
Teacher Holly Kal-Weiss was en-route to Calais with a car full of clothes and food for the migrants on Friday when she was denied access to the Eurotunnel train at the English terminal in Folkestone, Kent. She told the Guardian she was handed a French document, with a box ticked indicating that she was “thought to represent a danger to public order or internal security”.
Kal-Weiss then tried driving to nearby Dover to make the trip via Ferry instead, only to be turned back at that port too. She then returned to London with the goods still in her car.
“I am the least threatening person in the world,” she claimed. “The car was full of tins of food, milk, sugar, coffee, tea, sleeping bags and tents, nothing very scary looking.”
She says she has made twelve similar trips within the last year, and that this was the first time she has been stopped from entering France.
Similarly, school administrator Anissa, who is from France but lives in the UK, was making the trip with a number of other volunteers who were planning to teach at a school for migrant children in Calais.
When they arrived at the border in Folkestone they were stopped by French border officials, who told them “Your trip is ending here.”
A spokesman for the Calais prefecture said: “Because of the ban on demonstrations in Calais today some British demonstrators who wanted to join the demonstration were informed that the event was prohibited and were therefore denied access.”
“I made it very plain that I was delivering food. They didn’t ask me if I was going to a demonstration,” Kal-Weiss said.
For over a year Police have suspected that left wing ‘volunteers’ have been behind some of the most violent actions by migrants in Calais, such as the storming of the Eurotunnel by 2,000 migrants in a night of chaos last year, which left one migrant dead.
In January of this year leftist campaigners were brought into Calais by the coachload from all across Europe to join migrants in marching and rioting through the centre of town. One group clashed with locals, who reacted by brandishing and air rifle. Another breakaway group of about 50 people broke through port security to board a ferry bound for England, but were escorted off before it departed.