A Syrian in France's Largest Refugee Camp Speaks Out

Broadcasting from Paris, France, "Democracy Now!" travels an hour and a half north of the city to Calais, site of the largest refugee camp in the country. Six to seven thousand people are camped out in makeshift tents. Their goal is to reach Britain, and each night members of the camp set out along the highway to the Channel Tunnel, where they attempt to cross into Britain by jumping on top of or inside trucks or lorries. We meet Majd, a 21-year-old Syrian man, one of thousands stranded in the the camp. He describes how a Sudanese man named Joseph was recently killed when he was run over by a car on the highway. On Saturday, camp residents protested that the police hadn’t stopped the driver, and held signs reading "We are Humans, Not Dogs" and "What Do the Survivors of War Have to Do to Live in Peace?" This comes as the world faces the greatest exodus of people since World War II. On Monday, the United Nations appealed for $20 billion in additional aid money, saying that at present funding levels the U.N. is "not able to provide even the very minimum in core protection and lifesaving assistance." U.N. officials cited the wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and South Sudan as one of the major reasons there are nearly 60 million people forcibly displaced worldwide. The largest single displaced community is Syrians, with 4 million refugees forced outside Syria’s borders by the ongoing conflict.