Dutch Lorry Firm Stops UK Deliveries Due to Calais Migrant Violence

A Dutch logistics firm has said they will stop making deliveries to the UK because of the risk of attack by migrants and asylum seekers as trucks pass through Calais.

Reining Transport, which has around 500 drivers and annual revenues of €55 million, has stopped trips via Calais to the UK from September due to the violent attacks.

“It’s no longer possible,” said Gerrit Hes, the firms managing director, in an interview with Dutch daily the Telegraaf.

He continued: “Our drivers were threatened with sticks, stones flew through the front and side windows, and the drivers really had to put in everything in order not to be robbed.”

“The migrants have nothing to lose, and take serious risks,” he added, explaining how his lorries had had their roofs, bumpers, and windshields damaged.

Last month, union representatives of British lorry drivers called for the army to be sent to Calais to protect vehicles as migrants began to return to the town and attempted clandestine crossings into the UK increased.

On  June 18th, a Polish van driver was killed after his vehicle smashed into lorries that had been forced to stop on a busy motorway between Dunkirk and Calais due to a roadblock of tree trunks erected by migrants.

The driver died as his van burst into flames, and nine Eritrean migrants, reportedly trying to break into Britain, were suspected of the crime.

Less than two weeks later, at the beginning of July, authorities warned of “escalating violence” in the town following two days of fighting. More than 100 Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants fought pitch battles, attacking one another with stones and sticks leaving over a dozen hospitalised.

The warning was not heeded, and less than six weeks after the first driver death at Calais caused by migrants, a trucker was struck on the head with a brick by migrants who then stole his vehicle.

Migrants have been returning to Calais in increasingly large numbers after the clearance of the infamous Jungle camp nearly one year ago in October 2016.

Some fear a full-scale return to widespread chaos in the town seen last year when 10,000 migrants lived in the camp, and roadblocks, migrant riots, and attacks on lorries were commonplace.