November 15, 2002	Friday	Ramazan 9, 1423

PARIS, Nov 14: More than 17 hours after a final ultimatum had expired, French police quietly evacuated Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church at Calais this morning at 5am, and removed the 100 DPs in the church to a number of secret locations outside the French port city.

A police spokesman said that the raid went off without any incidents, and that most of the DPs who were removed were fast asleep at the time of the evacuation.

The dozen Afghans within the church were told they would be summarily expelled from France, although police sources would neither confirm nor deny the story.

As for the 80 Iraqi Kurds also present in St Peter and Saint Paul Church who cannot be expelled back to their country, they were whisked away to a number of secret locations, homeless shelters located “sufficiently far from Calais,” said a police spokesman, for the large number of international journalists present to “not be able to easily find their trace.”

Although the 100 DPs present in the church were effectively expelled from Calais, an equally large number continued to roam about outside the church, with other homeless foreigners were forced to sleep on benches in Calais City Park.

Said a spokesman for one of the associations which organized the five-day occupation of St Peter and Paul Church, “all that French authorities have accomplished is go back to square one, for we now have just as many DPs sleeping in the city park as three years ago when authorities were forced to open up the Sangatte refugee center in the first place.”

Meanwhile, Belgian authorities said they were reinforcing their own border controls, as many of the DPs who would no longer be able to be sheltered at Calais, have now apparently begun heading for the Belgian frontier with France, and eventually to such Belgian ports as Nieuport, Ostende and Zeebrugge, which also offer relatively easy access to Great Britain.

Which is why Belgian officials say they’re accelerating the application of cooperation accords concluded with Great Britain on October 15 which, like those signed between the British and French, should make it more difficult for DPs to make their way across the Channel from Belgium.

Agencies add: Thwarted in their hopes of making the short trip across the Channel to Britain, 76 of the 99 migrants later agreed to apply for asylum in France, according to the Pas-de-Calais regional prefect, Cyrille Schott.

“We have achieved our objective, which was to carry out the evacuation in the most humane conditions. Most of the migrants have accepted our proposals, which we consider to be generous ones,” he said.

Those who are applying for asylum in France will be taken to reception centres around France. Thirteen others have been given five-day safe-conduct passes and also will be offered accommodation.

Six of the migrants rejected the government proposals and were issued with documents asking them to leave French territory. Two minors were released.

One man was detained for possession of a weapon and an Afghan accepted an offer of financial help to return to his country, the authorities said.

Set up by the Red Cross three years ago 1.5 kilometres outside Calais, the Sangatte centre was closed to new arrivals nine days ago in an effort to stop the clandestine passage of thousands of migrants through the Channel tunnel or as stowaways on ferries to Britain.

But with asylum seekers continuing to arrive at the coast bent on crossing the Channel, the immediate effect was to force them into vagrancy on the streets of Calais.

Schott said the government was committed to providing accommodation for the asylum seekers elsewhere in France, and he was hopeful news of Sangatte’s closure would soon lead to a fall in the numbers of those heading for the northern coast.

Already the numbers being picked up by police every night in Calais had dropped from 300 a week ago to around 100, he said. Thirty were picked up in the streets of Calais on Thursday and taken to nearby police stations.