PARIS: France’s highest administrative court on Monday rejected the government’s appeal against an order to provide water and sanitation facilities for hundreds of migrants sleeping rough in the northern port of Calais.
In a written decision seen by AFP, the Council of State said the state’s failure to provide for the migrants’ basic needs “exposed them to inhuman and degrading treatment, dealing a serious and clearly illegal blow to a basic right.”
The council noted that migrants, “who find themselves in a state of destitution and exhaustion, have no access to running water, showers or toilets and cannot therefore wash themselves or their clothes.”
The situation had caused some to develop skin diseases such as scabies and impetigo or infected wounds, “as well as serious psychological troubles,” the council found.
The court upheld a June 26 order by a court in the northern city of Lille for the state to supply the migrants with running water, toilets and showers.
The Lille court also demanded that those migrants who decide to seek asylum in France be offered a place in a reception center wherever there was space available.
Several hundred migrants are camped out in and around Calais — the main launchpad for attempts to smuggle across the Channel to Britain by truck.
The Interior Ministry and the city of Calais had appealed against the Lille court’s ruling in June, saying the provision of services would lead to the proliferation of new “Jungles,” as the sprawling makeshift camp demolished last year in Calais was known.
The case was taken by a group of migrants and NGOs, who complained that the state was violating the migrants’ basic rights.
France’s new centrist government has taken a tough line on Calais, with Interior Minister Gerard Collomb saying he does not want the city to become an “abscess.”
Last week, President Emmanuel Macron softened his tone somewhat, saying he aimed to find shelter for all those living on the street by the end of the year.
French govt ordered to supply sanitation for Calais migrants
French govt ordered to supply sanitation for Calais migrants
Costa Rica says plot to assassinate president uncovered
- Security services unveiled that a hitman had been paid to assassinate president Rodrigo Chaves
SAN JOSE: Costa Rica’s government on Tuesday said it had uncovered a plot to assassinate President Rodrigo Chaves on the eve of national elections, in which his right-wing party is tipped for victory.
Jorge Torres, head of the Central American nation’s Directorate of Intelligence and National Security, cited a “confidential source” as informing the agency that a hitman had been paid to attack Chaves.
The purported plot comes two weeks before the country holds presidential and parliamentary elections.
Chaves, who is barred by the constitution from seeking a second consecutive term, has backed one of his former ministers, Laura Fernandez, to succeed him.
Opposition groups have warned against what they see as possible interference in the election from the iron-fisted president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.
Chaves has invited Bukele to Costa Rica on Wednesday to lay the founding stone of a new mega-prison modelled on El Salvador’s brutal Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
Thousands of young men are being held without charge in CECOT, as part of Bukele’s war on gang violence.
