Migrants moved from Calais Jungle to beautiful Alpine resort in France… but they’re already making new plans to get to the UK
Despite the use of tennis courts and swimming pools, refugees would rather brave the wasteland of notorious French camp than be stranded in Alpine idyll
A GROUP of migrants moved from the Jungle camp to an Alpine holiday resort say they have one aim — to get back to Calais and into the UK.
Afghan refugee Ali Hamazi and his pals were bussed 13 hours to the village of Champtercier on Thursday.
But as they hang around at a bus stop hours after arriving at the former holiday camp, they are already planning the journey to the place they really want to call home — Britain.
Ali, 22, said: “I’d rather be back in the Jungle where there is a chance I can get to the UK, than here.
“This might be a beautiful place for people to come on holiday but there is no work for us to do here.
“I’m getting a bus or a train so I can get back towards the Channel and try my chances again.”
Syrian Mohammed Mazib, 20, is asking locals how to get a bus to one of France’s big cities.
He said: “There’s no work here. Nice or Marseilles are about two hours away so I might go there.
“My dream is still England. It is why I went to the Jungle. Many of us think it will be set up again in eight months. I may wait until then.”
Champtercier lies in the mountains above Digne les Bains in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region.
Its population of 800 was bumped up by 15 per cent at a stroke when, at 4am on Thursday, the refugees and migrants from Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Eritrea and Sudan arrived.
The men’s new home is the temporarily-closed Chandourene holiday village. They will be housed in their own chalets for six months while they apply for asylum.
They have access to the park’s sports facilities, and three meals a day are laid on by volunteers.
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It is a far cry from the chaos of the Jungle, — or the makeshift camps which have sprung up on the banks of the Seine in Paris over the last week as Calais was cleared.
But outside one of the chalets, Afghan Sherif Khan, 32, is unhappy.
He said: “I fled the Taliban and trekked through Turkey, Bulgaria, Italy and Austria to try to get to the UK. I got to Calais and now the French authorities have put me in the middle of nowhere.” In the chalet next door Pakistani Arif Chogmi, 32, is texting a friend who is defiantly staying at the Calais camp.
He said: “I tell him it is too quiet here and that it is going to take days for me to get back to Calais. The UK is where I want to be.”
At Champtercier’s community hall, where 500 villagers heatedly debated the migrants’ arrival last month, security worker Alain Mioche is sweeping the steps on his day off. The dad of two, 57, said: “I’m helping out because this is what we do in this community. But 100 men, strangers, might change that. It has caused arguments.
“These men have nothing to do and could have very different ideas of what is acceptable to us.”
Brit expat Joanna Digneau runs a holiday homes business with her husband Michel and admits she is worried about the migrants’ effect on the village.
Joanna, 49, originally from Amersham, Bucks, said: “We never lock our door here but we might start now. I fear people may be put off staying with us.
“There’s no work for the migrants. It’s a strange place to house them.”
That decision was made by the French Government, but backed by village mayor Régine Ailhaud-Blanc. She said: “There are people who are very scared about theft and break-ins.
“But we will not accept any misbehaviour and at the first misdemeanour they will be driven to the border. Having said that, they are entirely free people. We have to trust them and try to make them welcome.”