In recent weeks the UK Borders Agency have been carrying out a series of arrests of Iraqi Kurds. All have been put in detention centres and notified by the Home Office that they could be removed within the next 72 days, but no earlier than 15 days. It is believed that the Home Office in fact plan another mass deportation this week. [see 17 March post]
In Brook House IRC, for example, Mohammed and Serkar Khadir Rao are currently on hunger strike in protest against their deportation and those of another sixty people back to Iraqi Kurdistan. Najih Ahmed Mohammed also has not eaten food since being detained. A resident of Plymouth, he says: "I have a three year old daughter and a partner here in the UK. I came because my life was threatened by an Al Qaeda-linked group. I’ve been on hunger strike for 11 days – it’s the only thing I can do as I can’t face leaving. I’m doing this for my life and my children’s life."
Maher Salah Mohammed, who has lived in Birmingham for nearly a decade and has a wife and three year old son says: "I’ve been living here for nine years. Two weeks ago immigration officials arrested me roughly in front of my wife and son. We were all so upset. Without them I am broken. My son is asking me every day why I am not at home with him. If they deport me tomorrow I never will be again."
If, as seems likely, these detainees are deported they will be handcuffed between 2 UKBA officers or 2 hired lackeys from one of the private companies like GSL that profit from the refugees' misery and forcibly removed to their deportation flight. They have not and will not be told the date of the flight until the last minute. They will be taken with little or no warning and they will have no chance to say a final farewell to their friends and loved ones.
All have heard of the fate of previous detainees who have been returned to Iraq and wait in fear of their fate. Many of those that have not been 'disappeared' or have not been openly killed by the various armed political factions upon return, live in destitution and in constant fear of their lives. Many of them return to find that their families have fled the area and cannot be found. Others return but deliberately do not contact their families as they do not want to place them in further danger. Some of the returnees who have survived have now joined together, under the banner of the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, to campaign against further forced mass deportations to Iraq and call on the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government to renege on it's agreement with the UK Government to accept deportation flights.
But it is not just the deportees that are calling for an end to these flights. In April 2009 Amnesty International released a report highlighting the corruption and dangerous, unpredictable situation in Kurdistan and states “that no one should be forcibly deported to this region”. Yet the UK government continues to ignore this, EU human rights legislation that prohibits mass deportations and all the UN recommendations against forced returns to the region.
An Amnesty International report released in April 2009 has highlighted the corruption and dangerous, unpredictable situation in Kurdistan and states “that no one should be forcibly deported to this region”. Yet the UK government continues to ignore this, EU human rights legislation that prohibits mass deportations and all the UN recommendations against forced returns to the region.
Interestingly, this new deportation flight also comes against the renewed efforts by the UK government to persuade the French to operate joint flights to Iraq, to spread the costs and the opprobrium that such flights generate.
UPDATE:
This morning anti-deportation activists blockaded Colnbrook IRC near Heathrow, where 40-45 of the Iraqi Kurds are being held, when it was learnt that the deportation flight was due to take place today. At 10am there were 15 people blockading the road outside the detention centre.
Indymedia reports: 1, 2
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Joint Afghan Deportation Flights Back On The Radar?
In an article in Sunday's Nord Littoral Phil Boyle, British Consul General in Lille, seems to have let the cat out of the bag about secret negotiations between the UK and French governments about resurrecting the idea of joint deportation flights to Afghanistan.
Last November saw similar attempts to carry out a joint deportation flight founder and nearly end in a major diplomatic rift between the 2 governments, following a legal appeal to the European Court of Human Rights by French Afghan detainees. [see: November posts] The situation has not changed - collective expulsions remain contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights and most of Afghanistan itself is still declared as being "unsafe" by the UN High Commission for Refugees.
Yet this hasn't stopped the UK and French governments from seeking ways of circumventing the legal safeguards via an exchange of 'experts' in such things. And so sure is Phil Boyle that these secret talks will in fact bear fruit, he has gone public, boasting that, "Very soon I think that our governments could jointly set up flights of forced returns." Clearly his Foreign and Commonwealth Service security training has let him down!
Last November saw similar attempts to carry out a joint deportation flight founder and nearly end in a major diplomatic rift between the 2 governments, following a legal appeal to the European Court of Human Rights by French Afghan detainees. [see: November posts] The situation has not changed - collective expulsions remain contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights and most of Afghanistan itself is still declared as being "unsafe" by the UN High Commission for Refugees.
Yet this hasn't stopped the UK and French governments from seeking ways of circumventing the legal safeguards via an exchange of 'experts' in such things. And so sure is Phil Boyle that these secret talks will in fact bear fruit, he has gone public, boasting that, "Very soon I think that our governments could jointly set up flights of forced returns." Clearly his Foreign and Commonwealth Service security training has let him down!
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
No Borders Newsletter #6
The latest UK No Borders Network newsletter is now available for download (click on the image).
Friday, 24 April 2009
Drowning Not Waiving?
Yesterday saw the latest visit to Calais by French Immigration Minister Eric Besson in his on-going campaign to turn the Calais region in to a 'migrant-free zone'. Besson, a former economic adviser to the previous French Socialist President Ségolène Royal who gained his job after campaigning for the Presidency of right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy, was in Calais ostensibly to deliver a speech to the the Calais business community, also broadcast on French radio, about his latest plan to rid Calais of the 'Jungles'.
This visit had been preceded by mass arrests on Wednesday* and yesterday again saw the CRS seal of the main 'Jungle' in the scrub area near the industrial zone bordering the port. This time, rather than sending in 300 CRS, riots vans and bulldozers, they could only muster 14 cars and their attendant police officers. Others were of course busy being part of Besson's security detail, but another group were involved in the totally pointless exercise of sealing off one the areas where humanitarian groups regularly provide much needed food to the migrants, sites whose use under a long-standing agreement with the local authorities. In response, the residents of the 'Jungles' held a spontaneous demonstration demanding an end to the constant and ever-increasing levels of police harassment.
Strangely, for someone who claims he wishes to rid Northern France of the migrant 'problem', in his speech Besson outlined his desire to 'replace' the 'Jungles' by a series of 'mini' welcome centres set up along the French coast, offering food, showers, and information about how to claim asylum. At the same time, he said the French army would be sent in to permanetly raise the 'Jungles' to the ground.
This however would not 'solve' the 'problem'; all it would achieve would be to make the migrants less visible, dispersing them into smaller pockets spread around the Calais area. And needless to say, the level of police repression required to keep the migrants out of Calais and away from the port area would be much greater than they suffer at present.
On top of this Besson, just like the Calais mayor Natacha Bouchard, continues to claim that Britain is a 'soft touch' for migrants, that it should "tighten its controls, and pay a bigger share of the financial burden" whilst at the same time urging Britain to remove passport controls with France (i.e. join Schengen) so the migrants do not congregate in Calais bottleneck are allowed to cross to the UK so that the UK can deal with 'problem' instead of the French.
Clearly here is a politician thrashing around in deep and politically murky waters that threaten to overwhelm him. He is stuck in the middle of the English Channel/la Manche not knowing which way to swim; wanting to appease his political masters and play-up to the French public on one hand by appearing to 'stick it to' les Rost Bifs, whilst desperately trying not to alienate Phil Woolas, his mealy-mouthed political doppelgänger on this side of the Channel, and risk losing the chance of co-opting the British into any solution to his 'problem' that he can manage to cobble together before his political capital runs out.
Maybe he even hopes to pull of the sort of coup that Sarkozy himself pulled off in 2002, when he managed to engineer the closure of the Red Cross centre at Sangatte in return for the UK not only accepting 3/4's of the migrants housed there at the time but also footing most of the £4.9M bill for SNCF to complete the double perimeter fence around the Channel Tunnel entrance? Perhaps Besson also sees it as a route to the French Presidency too? Either way he merely resembles someone who is clearly out of his depth.
*Of the 200 or so people arrested in the mass raid on the main 'Jungle' 2 days ago, most had been released later the same day, but the 9 people known to have been held overnight have also been released. No traffickers were found during the raids, as we fully expected, and it appears that only a handful of vulnerable Afghan juveniles were successfully intimidated into signing up for return to Afghanistan.
This visit had been preceded by mass arrests on Wednesday* and yesterday again saw the CRS seal of the main 'Jungle' in the scrub area near the industrial zone bordering the port. This time, rather than sending in 300 CRS, riots vans and bulldozers, they could only muster 14 cars and their attendant police officers. Others were of course busy being part of Besson's security detail, but another group were involved in the totally pointless exercise of sealing off one the areas where humanitarian groups regularly provide much needed food to the migrants, sites whose use under a long-standing agreement with the local authorities. In response, the residents of the 'Jungles' held a spontaneous demonstration demanding an end to the constant and ever-increasing levels of police harassment.
Strangely, for someone who claims he wishes to rid Northern France of the migrant 'problem', in his speech Besson outlined his desire to 'replace' the 'Jungles' by a series of 'mini' welcome centres set up along the French coast, offering food, showers, and information about how to claim asylum. At the same time, he said the French army would be sent in to permanetly raise the 'Jungles' to the ground.
This however would not 'solve' the 'problem'; all it would achieve would be to make the migrants less visible, dispersing them into smaller pockets spread around the Calais area. And needless to say, the level of police repression required to keep the migrants out of Calais and away from the port area would be much greater than they suffer at present.
On top of this Besson, just like the Calais mayor Natacha Bouchard, continues to claim that Britain is a 'soft touch' for migrants, that it should "tighten its controls, and pay a bigger share of the financial burden" whilst at the same time urging Britain to remove passport controls with France (i.e. join Schengen) so the migrants do not congregate in Calais bottleneck are allowed to cross to the UK so that the UK can deal with 'problem' instead of the French.
Clearly here is a politician thrashing around in deep and politically murky waters that threaten to overwhelm him. He is stuck in the middle of the English Channel/la Manche not knowing which way to swim; wanting to appease his political masters and play-up to the French public on one hand by appearing to 'stick it to' les Rost Bifs, whilst desperately trying not to alienate Phil Woolas, his mealy-mouthed political doppelgänger on this side of the Channel, and risk losing the chance of co-opting the British into any solution to his 'problem' that he can manage to cobble together before his political capital runs out.
Maybe he even hopes to pull of the sort of coup that Sarkozy himself pulled off in 2002, when he managed to engineer the closure of the Red Cross centre at Sangatte in return for the UK not only accepting 3/4's of the migrants housed there at the time but also footing most of the £4.9M bill for SNCF to complete the double perimeter fence around the Channel Tunnel entrance? Perhaps Besson also sees it as a route to the French Presidency too? Either way he merely resembles someone who is clearly out of his depth.
*Of the 200 or so people arrested in the mass raid on the main 'Jungle' 2 days ago, most had been released later the same day, but the 9 people known to have been held overnight have also been released. No traffickers were found during the raids, as we fully expected, and it appears that only a handful of vulnerable Afghan juveniles were successfully intimidated into signing up for return to Afghanistan.
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Calais No Border Camp 23-29 June
The Calais No Border camp is a joint venture between French and Belgian activists and migrant support groups and the UK No Borders Network. It aims to highlight the realities of the situation in Calais and Northern France; to build links with the migrant communities; to help build links between migrants support groups; and lastly, but not least, to challenge the authorities on the ground, to protest against increased repression of migrants and local activists alike.This camp calls for the freedom of movement for all, an end to borders and to all migration controls. We call for a radical movement against the systems of control, dividing us into citizens and non-citizens, into the documented and the undocumented.
Why Calais?
We have chosen Calais for two main reasons; it is an important location in the history, development and practice of European migration controls and has long been a major bottleneck for those seeking to get to Britain. But more importantly, it is also a focus of the struggle between those who would see an end to all migration into the EU, and those trying to break down the barriers between peoples, the borders that prevent the freedom of movement for all, not just the privileged few.
Since the mid-nineties tens of thousands have lived in destitution, sleeping rough in Calais, waiting for their chance to cross the channel to England. Between 1999 and 2002 the Red Cross ran a centre at neighbouring Sangatte but this was forced to close after political pressure from France and Britain. Since then, the massive police presence and repression in Calais has forced thousands of men woman and children to wander the Calais region and all along the North coast of France, Belgium and Holland. They are routinely brutalised by the police; tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and repeatedly interned at the nearby Coquelles detention centre. The police regularly burn their shelters and the few meagre possessions that they contain. The local groups that support the migrants by providing food and other humanitarian aid are coming under increasing attack from the police and a number of activists have been arrested in recent months. Meanwhile British Immigration Minister Phil Woolas has been calling for the construction of a permanent holding/detention centre for migrants in Calais docks.
The Bigger Picture
Calais however remains only one small part of the overall picture of European migration controls, a major internal border within the hi-tech EU borders regime. Since the beginning of the decade, the EU been attempting to build 'Fortress Europe'; externalising EU borders into Africa and Asia with EU border guards patrolling the Mediterranean, in Libya and off the West Coast of Africa courtesy of the Frontex borders agency; and via the European Neighbourhood Policy, where countries from the Ukraine all the way round the Mediterranean to Morocco are now paid by the EU to do its migration prevention work for it.
Migrants’ Rights Are Workers’ Rights
Through this system of border controls, authorities create two kinds of migrants: a small number of ‘skilled’ migrants, who are designated as ‘useful’ to the state; and a massive number of undocumented workers who have no rights and are therefore exploitable as cheap labour. Thus is our fight for freedom of movement also a fight for the rights of all workers.
Transnational Solidarity Works!
Building links and working together allows us to share information between us on a transnational level. It also allows us to exploit the fault-lines and cracks in Fortress Europe. Last November, transnational solidarity helped to prevent the planned deportation of Afghans from Calais to Kabul.
Campaigning Against Borders
This camp will continue the tradition of the No Border camps across the world since the late 1990s and, like the camp taking place this year in Lesvos in August, it will be a space to share information, skills, knowledge and experiences; a place to plan and take action together against the system of borders which divides us all. For centuries European imperial powers have exploited the land, resources and people of the majority world to become wealthy and powerful, leaving war, environmental destruction and massive inequality in their wake. Those who attempt the journey to the UK or elsewhere in Europe are challenging this injustice by their movement. The situation in Calais is a result of the compromise and conflict of interest between French and UK immigration policy and we call on groups, networks and individuals here to take action across Europe and to become part of a global movement of solidarity that defends their right to choose where they move.
Equal Rights For All!!
*No One Is Illegal. Freedom Of Movement And The Right To Stay For All*
http://calaisnoborder.eu.org/
http://london.noborders.org.uk/calais2009
UK e-mail contact: calais@riseup.net
Calais Mass Arrests Update
The French authorities have slowly been releasing some of the migrants detained in the early morning mass-raids in and around Calais yesterday. Far from being an action to break any people-smuggling rings as claimed, it now appears that it was merely an attempt at mass intimidation of those Afghans amongst the arrested.
The first person to be released from PAF Coquelles was a 16 year old Afghan, who said he had been pressured into accepting 1000 euros in return for agreeing to return to Afghanistan, despite the fact that he is a minor and has the right to remain in France under French law. There is speculation that those Afghans who continue to be held in Coquelles will not be released until they too have signed up to return to Afghanistan. It also appears that most of the migrants transported to Boulogne were released late yesterday afternoon and have walked the 6 hour 19 mile journey back to Calais.
In separate news Natacha Bouchart, the right-wing mayor of Calais, has called for the French army to be brought in to destroy the 'Jungles' in and around Calais, one and for all. This follows hot on the heels of her claim a couple of days ago that the 'problem' of the migrants in Northern France lies solely at Britain's door, claiming that asylum seekers in Britain lead some mythic easy life and that Britain should either sign up to Schengen or pay the estimated £12M that the Calais Chamber of Trade spend on port security each year (as if that is all spent on preventing migrants entering the port area).
The first person to be released from PAF Coquelles was a 16 year old Afghan, who said he had been pressured into accepting 1000 euros in return for agreeing to return to Afghanistan, despite the fact that he is a minor and has the right to remain in France under French law. There is speculation that those Afghans who continue to be held in Coquelles will not be released until they too have signed up to return to Afghanistan. It also appears that most of the migrants transported to Boulogne were released late yesterday afternoon and have walked the 6 hour 19 mile journey back to Calais.
In separate news Natacha Bouchart, the right-wing mayor of Calais, has called for the French army to be brought in to destroy the 'Jungles' in and around Calais, one and for all. This follows hot on the heels of her claim a couple of days ago that the 'problem' of the migrants in Northern France lies solely at Britain's door, claiming that asylum seekers in Britain lead some mythic easy life and that Britain should either sign up to Schengen or pay the estimated £12M that the Calais Chamber of Trade spend on port security each year (as if that is all spent on preventing migrants entering the port area).
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Mass Raids In The Calais Area
Early this morning, 2 days before the French Immigration Minister Eric Besson is due in town, a major police operation took place in the Calais area that saw nearly 300 police and CRS arrest some 200 undocumented migrants.
Police surrounded one of the major migrant squatter camps, known as 'Jungles', in Calais shortly after 07.00, arresting 150 migrants in an operation that ended at 10:30. A further 33 were arrested at motorway rest stops outside the city and 11 in the nearby town of Saint Omer. Most appear to have been taken to police stations in Calais, Boulogne and Lille as well as the detention centre at Coquelles.
The arrests were allegedly "an attempt to dismantle people trafficking networks. It's an operation to destabilise the networks and try to find the smugglers," according to Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart. However, it follows a week of almost constant attacks by police on the 'Jungles' in and around Calais, that saw regular tear gassing of the migrants' squats and arrest of their occupants.
Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the situation will realise that the traffickers would not be in the Jungles at 7 o'clock in the morning - they do not live in the Jungles and most of the occupants would be asleep anyway after a night out trying to gain access to the lorries parked-up waiting to cross the Channel. This appears merely to be more of the same intimidation tactics that the police and CRS routinely use against the migrants. Except this time it is on a larger scale, no doubt in order to impress Besson in advance of his visit to Calais.
**The will be a No Border Camp in Calais from 23-29 June, jointly organised by the UK No Borders Network and activists from Northern France, Belgium and Holland, details of which will appear here in the run-up to the camp.**
Police surrounded one of the major migrant squatter camps, known as 'Jungles', in Calais shortly after 07.00, arresting 150 migrants in an operation that ended at 10:30. A further 33 were arrested at motorway rest stops outside the city and 11 in the nearby town of Saint Omer. Most appear to have been taken to police stations in Calais, Boulogne and Lille as well as the detention centre at Coquelles.
The arrests were allegedly "an attempt to dismantle people trafficking networks. It's an operation to destabilise the networks and try to find the smugglers," according to Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart. However, it follows a week of almost constant attacks by police on the 'Jungles' in and around Calais, that saw regular tear gassing of the migrants' squats and arrest of their occupants.
Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the situation will realise that the traffickers would not be in the Jungles at 7 o'clock in the morning - they do not live in the Jungles and most of the occupants would be asleep anyway after a night out trying to gain access to the lorries parked-up waiting to cross the Channel. This appears merely to be more of the same intimidation tactics that the police and CRS routinely use against the migrants. Except this time it is on a larger scale, no doubt in order to impress Besson in advance of his visit to Calais.
**The will be a No Border Camp in Calais from 23-29 June, jointly organised by the UK No Borders Network and activists from Northern France, Belgium and Holland, details of which will appear here in the run-up to the camp.**
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