Asylum seekers help Dutch filmmakers fend off robbers in Calais

Dutch documentary filmmaker Maaike Engels and war photographer Teun Voeten were attacked by three asylum seekers in Calais on Friday while finishing off a documentary they've been working on since September. Their attackers were chased off by two other asylum seekers throwing stones at them. Engels managed to film the incident and posted it on YouTube, RTL Nieuws reports. On Friday morning the two Dutch and a French journalist were walking through the asylum camp, when three armed men suddenly stormed them. "We were in a section that was to be evacuated when I heard Teun calling for help behind me.", Engels said to the broadcaster. "It's not pleasant when someone with a big knife walks up to you. But I gave him a kick and that helped." Two African boys started throwing stones at the attackers and managed to scare them off, without them stealing anything. Engels describes the attack as rather awkward. "When I watched the footage, it seemed like a bad election commercial for Rita Verdonk or something." she said to RTL. "These are bad apples that ruin it for the others", Engels said. "Such a camp is a breeding ground for such types, they can do nothing else. I also met a lot of unwisely sweet people, educated people who are there in the dirt, among the rabble and shit. Everybody has scabies or TB. There is total anarchy. It is an absurd situation there, so terribly foul. Really the third world, but in Europe." The documentary Calais: Welcome to the Jungle will likely premiere in New York, because when they tried to sell it in the Netherlands they found no support for it. It was just after a photo of a young asylum seeker washed up on a beach went viral on the internet. "Everyone wanted to hear the story of the pitiful asylum seeker, not a multidimensional report on such a camp. After 'Paris' and 'Cologne' public opinion seems to have turned 180 degrees." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ygH1wHNec&feature=youtu.be