The Guardian
On overcast Wednesday morning in Calais volunteers from Care4Calais were out in force as usual distributing food and other necessities to refugees hoping to cross the Channel to seek sanctuary in the UK.
But the mood was much more sombre than usual as the news spread about the death of a young refugee. Volunteers held a short silence to reflect on the bravery and dignity of the young person from Sudan who had lost his life trying to reach safety.
Clare Moseley, of Care4Calais, condemned the failure of the government to provide safe and legal routes for refugees to reach the UK from northern France.
“Things need to change. We need a way for people’s asylum claims to be fairly heard without them having to risk their lives,” she said.
Simon Jones, of Maria Skobtsova House, a place of shelter for refugee families in Calais, said in the past five years he and others had supported families in France to collect the bodies of asylum seekers who had died trying to reach the UK, often losing their lives crushed under the wheels of trains or hit by lorries.
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