Tuesday, December 13, 2016

New "Apartheid Wall" in Calais, France?

Next time some Israel-hater kvetches about the "apartheid wall," direct his/her attention to this:
A wall funded by Britain to try and stop migrants from the former Calais "jungle" camp reaching its shores has been completed -- seven weeks after the site was cleared, a French official said.  
The four-metre-high (13-foot) wall runs along a kilometre-long stretch of the main road leading to Calais port, next to the area that used to house the sprawling camp.
   
The concrete barrier -- estimated to cost €2.7 million ($3 million) -- aims to prevent new arrivals stowing away on trucks bound for Britain.
   
Work on the wall, which is covered with plants on the traffic side, began in September. The squalid camp was razed after thousands of migrants were taken to shelters around France in October.
   
The structure is complete, a spokesman for the local prefecture told AFP late Monday.
   
The wall was built to boost a network of wire fences that had failed to prevent near nightly attempts by migrants to waylay trucks en route to Europe's second-busiest port.
   
This year alone, several migrants died after falling off trucks or being run over.
   
Calais has for years been a staging post for attempts by migrants to sneak into Britain by stowing away on trucks or trains crossing the Channel.
If that's not "apartheid"--and, clearly, it is not--then neither is that security system in Israel.

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