African Migrants Desperate to Escape Calais as Neo-Nazis Rally in Town

African migrants waiting at Calais have resorted to desperate tactics in order to cross into Britain, as a 300-strong far right rally descended on the French port town yesterday protesting for the expulsion of the migrants from town.

According to the Associated Press, migrants have been reported jumping on holidaymakers’ cars and ambushing trucks in their attempts to reach Britain.

Meanwhile a far right coalition called Sauvons Calais (Save Calais) marched across the port city with the Telegraph reporting chants of “Heil Hitler” being heard.

“White nationalist flags were flown and security was provided by skinheads wearing insignia linked to Blood and Honour (a neo-Nazi network) and other groups,” Daniel Trilling, who recently reported on the situation in Calais for Newsweek, says.

Authorities assembled an iron fence by the rally and riot police were deployed to prevent violent clashes.

Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart has already threatened to close the city’s port unless British Prime Minister David Cameron visits the town and warns the migrants the UK is “no El Dorado”.

“The situation has become unmanageable,” Bouchart told media today. “I often regret the UK border is at Calais.”

A woman from Kent recently found a man who had stowed away in the back of her car upon arriving home after taking it on the Eurotunnel train.

According to city officials there are currently 1,300 migrants in Calais and local government fears the number could rise to 5,000 by the end of the year.

Calais’s problem with illegal migrants has long caused tension in the port city and have led to backlash from French locals.

Trilling spoke to one asylum seeker this summer who complained of being received with hostility in France, before being beaten and mocked by police.

“I was bleeding and they were laughing at me,” said the man. “Even in Eritrea it’s forbidden – if a person is bleeding they stop and take him to hospital.”

While the number of migrants in the port city begins to drop near the end of the summer each year, Trilling says that the last few months have seen a peak influx of asylum seekers passing through Calais as an increase in violent conflicts across the world has led more to seek asylum.

“The war in Syria, instability in other Middle Eastern countries and repressive governments in East Africa have forced thousands of refugees to leave their homes and cross the Mediterranean by boat,” Trilling says.

“Most land in Italy and Greece, but these countries do not have functioning asylum systems, so many of the refugees travel on to north-west Europe, where they hope to find protection and the chance to work.”