Less than 48 hours after it was painted on the side of the French embassy in London, a mural by Banksy criticising the use of teargas in the Calais refugee camp known as the “Jungle” has been boarded up. The work depicts a girl from the musical Les Misérables with streaming eyes from the cloud of CS gas engulfing her. French police have denied using tear gas where families live in the Jungle, but a QR code on Banksy’s mural links to a YouTube video of overnight police raids on the camp on 5 and 6 January. The footage, produced by Calais Migrant Solidarity, shows teargas, rubber bullets and water cannons being used by the French authorities inside the camp. Other politically-motivated works by Banksy have appeared in Calais in recent weeks, including one of the Apple founder Steve Jobs, who was the son of Syrian migrants, and a reproduction of Théodore Géricault's 19th-century painting, The Raft of the Medusa. Reports suggest Banksy’s latest piece in London has been boarded up to protect it after a gang of people tried to pry it from the wall. The question now is: what will the French embassy do with the mural? We are certain Banksy would approve of selling it in aid of refugees in Calais.
