There is no longer anyone in the waiting area of the Giens peninsula, in Hyères (Var). All the migrants who survived the Ocean Viking who had been welcomed there have now left the site, we learned on Thursday from sources close to the file and associative, confirming information from RTL.
“The area will be formally closed in the coming days. The two Bangladeshi nationals are in a waiting area in Marseille awaiting their expulsion,” said a source familiar with the matter.
“The waiting area no longer exists when no one is locked up there,” said Laure Palun, director of the National Association for Border Assistance for Foreigners (Anafé), who worked there for several days.
Much quickly released
The Ocean Viking, a humanitarian ship chartered by SOS Méditerranée, docked in Toulon 13 days ago with 230 migrants on board who were immediately locked up in an international “waiting area” created in a holiday center in the peninsula of Giens.
A large number of them had been quickly released, either by court order, or because they were unaccompanied minors, or because they had been admitted to the territory for asylum after interviews with the Office French Protection for Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra).
Controversy and turn of the screw
The management of migrants from the Ocean Viking has been the subject of a controversy fueled by right-wing and far-right opposition groups who have accused the government of a “fiasco”. The government has said it wants to draw the “conclusions” from this episode by a new legislative turn of the screw with the next immigration law.
The law “is not necessarily adapted to this situation”, declared Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin during the session of questions to the government at the National Assembly on Tuesday. “We must change the law and that is precisely what we are going to do in the immigration law” proposed by the government, which is carrying out all-out consultations on this draft text which must be the subject of a parliamentary debate on the 6 and December 13 before an official presentation in early January 2023.