Jude Law appeared in an unlikely performance at the “Jungle” camp in Calais on Sunday alongside migrants facing imminent eviction, including a 15-year-old Sudanese boy who fled the conflict in Darfur, reports The Telegraph.
The star of The Talented Mr Ripley and the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard were among a group of British performers who read out literary and historical letters. Migrants living in the camp, part of which is to be bulldozed on Wednesday, performed songs and read out texts they have written.
Celebrities led by Law have written an open letter to David Cameron urging the prime minister to allow children in the camp who have relatives in Britain to be reunited with them while their asylum cases are heard.
The letter, signed by more than 100,000 people including actors Benedict Cumberbatch, Gillian Anderson, Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter and Idris Elba, also calls for the demolition to be postponed until children in the camp are granted protection by the French authorities or allowed into the UK.
Law said: “It’s our responsibility as humans to look after our children. The children at the camp in Calais need us. It isn’t a big ask. It is simply the right thing to do.”
The performance, organised by a group called Letters Live and the charity Help Refugees, began with a reading of the letter to Mr Cameron.
Then came a text written and read out by camp resident Alsadig Sharif, 15, whose home was destroyed in the conflict between Sudanese government forces and rebels in Darfur.
He urged the audience to “be the best version of yourself”.
The stars read letters by Mahatma Gandhi, Iggy Pop, Albert Camus and Maya Angelou, with translations in Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and Kurdish.
The performance also included a message from a German Jew who fled the Nazis to the family that took over his home, and a letter from the African-American writer W.E.B. Du Bois to his daughter at school in England, entitled “Brown is as pretty as white”.
The three-hour production was staged at the Good Chance theatre, a huge white canvas dome built by British volunteers amid the sprawl of ramshackle huts on the toxic mud of the camp.
The makeshift theatre is in the southern section of the camp, where migrants have been given until Tuesday night to leave.
Up to 6,000 migrants live in squalor in the “Jungle” while they try to smuggle themselves into Britain in lorries, ferries or through the Eurotunnel. Most are from the Middle East and Africa.
NGOs have started legal action in an attempt to force the French authorities to postpone the clearance of the area and a court ruling is expected on Tuesday, hours before the deadline for the migrants to leave.
The French authorities say the eviction order applies to about 1,000 migrants but Help Refugees has counted 3,455 people in the area affected, including 445 children. About three-quarters of them are alone, without their parents.