Crawley bus firm WH Tours was visited this morning by anti-deportation campaigners seeking to protest about their regular involvement in transporting immigration detainees from Tinsley House and Brook House detention centres at Gatwick Airport.
Campaigners had got wind of a planned deportations via a charter flight to Nigeria later today. Many of the deportees had recently been involved in the hunger strike at Yarl's Wood against the detention of their children and inadequate health care provision, during which they were brutalised by SERCO guards and dispersed to other detention centres around the country.
Unfortunately the protesters arrived shortly after the WH Tours coach had already left and were unable to carry out the planned blockade. In conversation, WH Tours staff admitted that they were in fact involved in providing transport for UK Borders Agency mass expulsions, something that had previously been confirmed by the G4S (the company that run the 2 Gatwick detention centres) press office.
The protesters have vowed to continue their campaign against WH Tours (a company that promotes itself with the legend "Relaxing Short Breaks & Day Trips Across UK & Europe") and other the companies that profit from the misery involved in this form of human trafficking.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Friday, 26 June 2009
Why Let The Facts Spoil A Good Story (Again)?
Yes the Daily Mail is at it again, pedalling lies and reactionary propaganda. In a story entitled "Police arrest 47 anarchists threatening to lead swarms of illegal migrants through Channel tunnel to Britain", this right-wing rag has sought to create yet another non-story out of half-truths and innuendo.
Lets take the lies and half-truths one by one:
1. The headline clearly implies that 47 people were caught in the act of trying to tear down the fences at the entrance to the Channel Tunnel. FACT - 29 of the 30 people blockading Losquin CRE in Lille (60 miles/95 km from Calais) with 29 being detained.
2. "Weapons including machetes, metal poles and a spiked club were found hidden by the activists during raids in Calais late on Wednesday." 3 people were detained at the train station for carrying camping equipment! If one goes camping one normally takes tent poles (metal poles with a spike), a mallet (club with no spikes) to drive in tent pegs and of course a knife as either cutlery or for those essentials like slicing apples or getting stones out of horses' hooves. They were later released after having the knives confiscated and being charged with minor 'common law' charges.
3. One woman was arrested for shoplifting and was later released.
4. Of the other 13 people arrested, all were for 'common law' offences which the police refuse to specify. 5 remain in custody on, as yet, unknown charges.
No one was arrested anywhere near the Channel Tunnel entrance.
5. No Borders is a transnational network of groups and activists across the world who struggle for the freedom of movement and equal rights for all people and fight against all immigration controls. It is not a single group.
6. Neither is No Borders an anarchist organisation. If you have to label us as part of you attempts to marginalise us, we are part of the anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist spectrum and our views are shared by many who are not in a No Borders group.
7. The Camp is not "aimed at helping the migrants to ‘tear down the borders’ to England."
8. There have been no "email threats by protesters pledging to destroy wire fences and other security measures around the Channel Tunnel." This is a fabrication.
9. There have been no "threats to burn ‘symbols of capitalism’ including local government offices, and even hotels run by prominent global chains."
10. Police intelligence is an oxymoron and has not "revealed plans for wide scale violence".
11. The views of Sarkozy and Bouchart are not "heartily supported by the militants organising the ‘No Border’ demonstrations." They are a pair of reactionary, right-wing ideologues. One is directly responsible for the increased repression of the migrants in Calais, the routine tear-gassing of them as they sleep in the 'Jungles', the routine harassment and beating they endure, the daily arrests and detention. In fact it was he who was key to bringing about the end of the Red Cross humanitarian effort at the Sangatte camp in 2002. The other has tried at every turn to put barriers in the way of the current efforts of groups like Belle Etoile and Salam to provide humanitarian aid to the migrants in Calais. She has also sought to demonise the No Border Camp and to prevent it from ever happening. It is an insult to even suggest that No Borders has anything in common with them.
The truth is Calais is under siege from hundreds of CRS riots police who constantly stop and search anyone who even vaguely looks as if they may be associated with the Camp. And the local population are getting very pissed off with the whole thing. If you have black clothes, are wearing a hoodie, have badges on your clothes, look like a punk or have piercings you are a target. So, to an extent, both the campers and some of the locals are getting just a small taste of what the migrants do through daily throughout the year.
And the Camp members are not even allowed to hand out the free Camp newspaper Nomade. Yesterday about 30 campers left for the centre of town to had out copies to shoppers and 25 were handcuffed and detained for an hour whilst ID checks were carried out. This is harassment pure and simple.
The authorities, in the guise of Pierre de Bousquet de Florian (the préfet of Pas-de-Calais) and Jean-Philippe Joubert (the Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor), have clearly decided that not only protest but any form of peaceful assembly is banned for the duration even if they cannot enforce that under the law. Instead they are just going to make it so painful for the campers that they will never think about coming back to Calais ever again!
Lets take the lies and half-truths one by one:
1. The headline clearly implies that 47 people were caught in the act of trying to tear down the fences at the entrance to the Channel Tunnel. FACT - 29 of the 30 people blockading Losquin CRE in Lille (60 miles/95 km from Calais) with 29 being detained.
2. "Weapons including machetes, metal poles and a spiked club were found hidden by the activists during raids in Calais late on Wednesday." 3 people were detained at the train station for carrying camping equipment! If one goes camping one normally takes tent poles (metal poles with a spike), a mallet (club with no spikes) to drive in tent pegs and of course a knife as either cutlery or for those essentials like slicing apples or getting stones out of horses' hooves. They were later released after having the knives confiscated and being charged with minor 'common law' charges.
3. One woman was arrested for shoplifting and was later released.
4. Of the other 13 people arrested, all were for 'common law' offences which the police refuse to specify. 5 remain in custody on, as yet, unknown charges.
No one was arrested anywhere near the Channel Tunnel entrance.
5. No Borders is a transnational network of groups and activists across the world who struggle for the freedom of movement and equal rights for all people and fight against all immigration controls. It is not a single group.
6. Neither is No Borders an anarchist organisation. If you have to label us as part of you attempts to marginalise us, we are part of the anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist spectrum and our views are shared by many who are not in a No Borders group.
7. The Camp is not "aimed at helping the migrants to ‘tear down the borders’ to England."
8. There have been no "email threats by protesters pledging to destroy wire fences and other security measures around the Channel Tunnel." This is a fabrication.
9. There have been no "threats to burn ‘symbols of capitalism’ including local government offices, and even hotels run by prominent global chains."
10. Police intelligence is an oxymoron and has not "revealed plans for wide scale violence".
11. The views of Sarkozy and Bouchart are not "heartily supported by the militants organising the ‘No Border’ demonstrations." They are a pair of reactionary, right-wing ideologues. One is directly responsible for the increased repression of the migrants in Calais, the routine tear-gassing of them as they sleep in the 'Jungles', the routine harassment and beating they endure, the daily arrests and detention. In fact it was he who was key to bringing about the end of the Red Cross humanitarian effort at the Sangatte camp in 2002. The other has tried at every turn to put barriers in the way of the current efforts of groups like Belle Etoile and Salam to provide humanitarian aid to the migrants in Calais. She has also sought to demonise the No Border Camp and to prevent it from ever happening. It is an insult to even suggest that No Borders has anything in common with them.
The truth is Calais is under siege from hundreds of CRS riots police who constantly stop and search anyone who even vaguely looks as if they may be associated with the Camp. And the local population are getting very pissed off with the whole thing. If you have black clothes, are wearing a hoodie, have badges on your clothes, look like a punk or have piercings you are a target. So, to an extent, both the campers and some of the locals are getting just a small taste of what the migrants do through daily throughout the year.
And the Camp members are not even allowed to hand out the free Camp newspaper Nomade. Yesterday about 30 campers left for the centre of town to had out copies to shoppers and 25 were handcuffed and detained for an hour whilst ID checks were carried out. This is harassment pure and simple.
The authorities, in the guise of Pierre de Bousquet de Florian (the préfet of Pas-de-Calais) and Jean-Philippe Joubert (the Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor), have clearly decided that not only protest but any form of peaceful assembly is banned for the duration even if they cannot enforce that under the law. Instead they are just going to make it so painful for the campers that they will never think about coming back to Calais ever again!
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Nomade - the Calais No Border Camp Newspaper
The Calais No Border Camp has a daily newspaper which is designed to cover both the events planned for the Camp itself but to also communicate with the residents of Calais and the migrants in and around the town. All the issues will be available for download from the Camp website site. [Issue 1, Issue 2]
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Another UKBA Farce
The government's attempt to find an alternative to imprisoning the children of 'refused' asylum seekers, a practice that is still going on as the current Yarl's Wood hunger strike proves, has been ridiculed in the press and heavily criticised by the Children's Society.
The £1m pilot scheme to house families supposedly due to be returned was run by Migrant Helpline in Kent. However, due to alleged UK Borders Agency ineptitude, of the 260 families due to be processed during the trial, only 13 actually made it there. Of those, only 1 family actually was returned to their country of origin.
The families were given seven days to sell their possessions, take their children out of school and move to the centre after supposedly having taken an informed decision to leave the country. Yet most of the families didn't actually know what the scheme was about, other than it was supposed to be an alternative to a long stay in a detention centre.
On top of that most of the people the UKBA referred to the scheme still had outstanding asylum applications and should not have been there. This lead to the Children's Society stating that the project was "mismanaged from start to finish" and the Border Agency had no clear objectives or evaluation criteria, "so they didn't know actually what it was they were trying to achieve".
Keith Vaz, the Chair of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee chairman was also quoted as saying in response to the story that "it is never acceptable to lock children up with or without their parents." So when are the government going to outlaw this practice as they are bound to do under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?
The £1m pilot scheme to house families supposedly due to be returned was run by Migrant Helpline in Kent. However, due to alleged UK Borders Agency ineptitude, of the 260 families due to be processed during the trial, only 13 actually made it there. Of those, only 1 family actually was returned to their country of origin.
The families were given seven days to sell their possessions, take their children out of school and move to the centre after supposedly having taken an informed decision to leave the country. Yet most of the families didn't actually know what the scheme was about, other than it was supposed to be an alternative to a long stay in a detention centre.
On top of that most of the people the UKBA referred to the scheme still had outstanding asylum applications and should not have been there. This lead to the Children's Society stating that the project was "mismanaged from start to finish" and the Border Agency had no clear objectives or evaluation criteria, "so they didn't know actually what it was they were trying to achieve".
Keith Vaz, the Chair of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee chairman was also quoted as saying in response to the story that "it is never acceptable to lock children up with or without their parents." So when are the government going to outlaw this practice as they are bound to do under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?
More Daily Mail Lies
True to their history of never letting the truth get in the way of a good story, that well known organ of racism and reaction the Daily Mail have printed another story on the Calais No Border Camp by one Peter Allen.
Members of the Calais Camp press team were surprised to be phoned yesterday by reporters asking about an 'attempt to storm' the Channel Tunnel entrance. This was the first we had heard about it. Then we saw the Mail story and we knew what all the fuss was about. Absolutely nothing!
The Mail continues to push the line that the Camp has been set up to help migrants "tear down the borders to England". Utter bollocks! What do they expect us to do? Storm the port and commandeer ferries? Hijack a Eurostar train and ask the driver to "Take me to England?" I repeat, utter bollocks.
There's also the minor point of there are currently only 500 people at the Camp against the estimated 2,000 police in the area, just waiting for an excuse to wade into the protesters and crack a few heads as they have admitted to local activists on a number of occasions recently. The activists involved in the Camp are not as stupid as the Mail would have us believe (though it clearly thinks its readers are stupid enough to believe such rubbish).
The reporter also claims that there have been email threats by the protesters "pledging to destroy wire fences and other security measures around the Channel Tunnel along with "threats to burn ‘symbols of capitalism’ including local government offices, and even hotels run by prominent global chains". Where is the proof? Why is it that the Mail believes any old tosh that the police press office tells them but nothing from No Borders itself? Oh, I forgot - the need for a good story.
The article does allow itself one positive point about the Camp when it quotes a migrant as saying that, "the camp organisers have offered us food and drink." But no, it has to spoil it by adding that we are also offering the migrants "a chance to get to England." More lies. We have specifically told the migrants in leaflets handed out prior to the Camp that we cannot do this. Why would we seek to raise the hopes of people who live for months in conditions that you and I would find it hard to survive by offering to do something we know we cannot hope to follow up on. We don't want to leave the migrants in worse situation after the camp has left than the one they were in before we cam. That is why we are offering no false hopes.
What the article doesn't say is that the locals around the Camp site have been reacting positively to our presence despite the hysteria from the press and local authorities. Some have even been helping in the Camp set-up. Nouchi Pierre, the president of the Union des Métiers de l'Hotel du Calais, has called on its members, the owners of cafes, bars, restaurants and hotels, "not to panic" and to stay open during the week of the Camp. This despite the local paper Nord Littoral stirring things up by suggesting that hotels belonging to the Accor group might be a target after the Strasbourg anti-NATO camp events.
Finally, the paper states that "an uneasy stand-off soon developed with the protesters as a ‘spotter’ helicopter circled the area and police patrols swamped the town." The simple fact is that the only 'uneasy stand-off' here is between the Daily Mail and the truth.
Members of the Calais Camp press team were surprised to be phoned yesterday by reporters asking about an 'attempt to storm' the Channel Tunnel entrance. This was the first we had heard about it. Then we saw the Mail story and we knew what all the fuss was about. Absolutely nothing!
The Mail continues to push the line that the Camp has been set up to help migrants "tear down the borders to England". Utter bollocks! What do they expect us to do? Storm the port and commandeer ferries? Hijack a Eurostar train and ask the driver to "Take me to England?" I repeat, utter bollocks.
There's also the minor point of there are currently only 500 people at the Camp against the estimated 2,000 police in the area, just waiting for an excuse to wade into the protesters and crack a few heads as they have admitted to local activists on a number of occasions recently. The activists involved in the Camp are not as stupid as the Mail would have us believe (though it clearly thinks its readers are stupid enough to believe such rubbish).
The reporter also claims that there have been email threats by the protesters "pledging to destroy wire fences and other security measures around the Channel Tunnel along with "threats to burn ‘symbols of capitalism’ including local government offices, and even hotels run by prominent global chains". Where is the proof? Why is it that the Mail believes any old tosh that the police press office tells them but nothing from No Borders itself? Oh, I forgot - the need for a good story.
The article does allow itself one positive point about the Camp when it quotes a migrant as saying that, "the camp organisers have offered us food and drink." But no, it has to spoil it by adding that we are also offering the migrants "a chance to get to England." More lies. We have specifically told the migrants in leaflets handed out prior to the Camp that we cannot do this. Why would we seek to raise the hopes of people who live for months in conditions that you and I would find it hard to survive by offering to do something we know we cannot hope to follow up on. We don't want to leave the migrants in worse situation after the camp has left than the one they were in before we cam. That is why we are offering no false hopes.
What the article doesn't say is that the locals around the Camp site have been reacting positively to our presence despite the hysteria from the press and local authorities. Some have even been helping in the Camp set-up. Nouchi Pierre, the president of the Union des Métiers de l'Hotel du Calais, has called on its members, the owners of cafes, bars, restaurants and hotels, "not to panic" and to stay open during the week of the Camp. This despite the local paper Nord Littoral stirring things up by suggesting that hotels belonging to the Accor group might be a target after the Strasbourg anti-NATO camp events.
Finally, the paper states that "an uneasy stand-off soon developed with the protesters as a ‘spotter’ helicopter circled the area and police patrols swamped the town." The simple fact is that the only 'uneasy stand-off' here is between the Daily Mail and the truth.
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Roma Driven Out Of Northern Ireland
It seems that the Loyalist racists have finally gotten their way and have driven the Roma out of Northern Ireland. Despite claims by the Police Service of Northern Ireland that the violence directed against the Romanian families wasn't sectarian, the latest round of Combat18 text and e-mails doing the rounds on the Loyalist estates prove different.
The Roma are a people that have survived centuries of persecution across Europe and have been subjected to numerous pogroms especially in Romania. That they have now chosen to return to a land where they have always been treated as second (if not third) class citizens, rather than remain in Belfast and continue to face the racist violence of recent months, says much about the state of Ulster society.
Following the fall of the Iron Curtain and the demise of the Communist governments that had largely kept the lid on the centuries-old endemic anti-Roma racism, an upsurge in racist persecution in the 80's and 90's drove large numbers of the Roma community into Western Europe. In the UK they faced widespread hostility and long waits for their asylum applications to be processed (s19D of the Race Relations Act 1976 specifically allowed discrimination against Roma in the asylum process that continued to exist until the 2000 Act was passed) but following Romania's accession to the EU in January 2007, they became European citizens and therefore had a legal right to remain.*
Many chose Northern Ireland and, with the sectarian troubles in the province, the right-wing bigots in the Loyalist groups had their hands too full hating the Fenians to bother with the Roma. But the end of the 'Troubles' put an end to that and the racists had to look for new more 'acceptable' targets. In 2004 there were estimated to be around 450 race hate crimes in the country. In the past 12 months this has risen to 1,000.
In April this year Poles were driven from their homes in Belfast in a series of coordinated attacks by Loyalist youths times to coincide with a Northern Ireland-Poland World Cup football match. This follows attacks against the Chinese and Slovak communities in the preceding years. Now it is the Roma and, with the electoral successes of the BNP and the growth of far-right splinter groups, it can only get worse.
*In Italy for example, the Roma have also come under increasing attack and the Berlusconi regime has introduced blatantly racist legislation, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of the Blackshirts.
The Roma are a people that have survived centuries of persecution across Europe and have been subjected to numerous pogroms especially in Romania. That they have now chosen to return to a land where they have always been treated as second (if not third) class citizens, rather than remain in Belfast and continue to face the racist violence of recent months, says much about the state of Ulster society.
Following the fall of the Iron Curtain and the demise of the Communist governments that had largely kept the lid on the centuries-old endemic anti-Roma racism, an upsurge in racist persecution in the 80's and 90's drove large numbers of the Roma community into Western Europe. In the UK they faced widespread hostility and long waits for their asylum applications to be processed (s19D of the Race Relations Act 1976 specifically allowed discrimination against Roma in the asylum process that continued to exist until the 2000 Act was passed) but following Romania's accession to the EU in January 2007, they became European citizens and therefore had a legal right to remain.*
Many chose Northern Ireland and, with the sectarian troubles in the province, the right-wing bigots in the Loyalist groups had their hands too full hating the Fenians to bother with the Roma. But the end of the 'Troubles' put an end to that and the racists had to look for new more 'acceptable' targets. In 2004 there were estimated to be around 450 race hate crimes in the country. In the past 12 months this has risen to 1,000.
In April this year Poles were driven from their homes in Belfast in a series of coordinated attacks by Loyalist youths times to coincide with a Northern Ireland-Poland World Cup football match. This follows attacks against the Chinese and Slovak communities in the preceding years. Now it is the Roma and, with the electoral successes of the BNP and the growth of far-right splinter groups, it can only get worse.
*In Italy for example, the Roma have also come under increasing attack and the Berlusconi regime has introduced blatantly racist legislation, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of the Blackshirts.
Friday, 19 June 2009
Migrant Camps in Northern France Bulldozed
It seems that the French authorities are taking the (as they clearly see it) opportunity to up the ante further before the arrival of the No Border Camp in Calais next week by hitting the migrants camps around Calais hard. And maybe even get a bit of practice in before hand for the Camp itself?
At 9 a.m. on the 17th June the bulldozers went into the 'Jungles' at Loon-Plage and Teteghem near Dunkerque, destroying the makeshift homes built of pallets, old doors and tarpaulins, leaving more than a hundred people without even this meagre form of roof over their heads.
In one of the camps the police acted so quickly that the migrants didn't even have enough time to gather together what little they had by way of possessions and they had to leave clothes, money and their copies of the Koran amongst the rubble.
This action was swiftly denounced not only by the local support groups like Terre d'Errance* and MRAP** but also members of the Loon-Plage local council, who had helped finance the rebuilding of the camp after it had been bulldozed previously by the Border police during the severe cold in the middle of December last year.
This comes on top of the news from one unofficial police source that there are now around 1,500 - 1,600 CRS officers at the hotel Suithotel in Coquelles, just outside Calais, which is the semi-permanent CRS base. He bragged that they are going 'one-on-one with the No Border activists. This is total overkill. Clearly No Borders have hit a sensitive spot and every new response from the French state makes them look more and more desperate.
Now, in addition to the ban on sales of petrol and camping gas in the Calais area comes the banning of sales of alcohol - though we are sure that wont apply to les Flics, after all it's thirst work clubbing non-violent protesters. And that is what No Borders activist are, the police and press having still not come forward with any evidence from recent No Border camps despite being challenged to do so.
* Literally 'Land of the Wandering' - a humanitarian organisation that works at the various truck stops camps that exist all along the coast in Northern France and back inland towards Lille.
** Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples (Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples).
At 9 a.m. on the 17th June the bulldozers went into the 'Jungles' at Loon-Plage and Teteghem near Dunkerque, destroying the makeshift homes built of pallets, old doors and tarpaulins, leaving more than a hundred people without even this meagre form of roof over their heads.
In one of the camps the police acted so quickly that the migrants didn't even have enough time to gather together what little they had by way of possessions and they had to leave clothes, money and their copies of the Koran amongst the rubble.
This action was swiftly denounced not only by the local support groups like Terre d'Errance* and MRAP** but also members of the Loon-Plage local council, who had helped finance the rebuilding of the camp after it had been bulldozed previously by the Border police during the severe cold in the middle of December last year.
This comes on top of the news from one unofficial police source that there are now around 1,500 - 1,600 CRS officers at the hotel Suithotel in Coquelles, just outside Calais, which is the semi-permanent CRS base. He bragged that they are going 'one-on-one with the No Border activists. This is total overkill. Clearly No Borders have hit a sensitive spot and every new response from the French state makes them look more and more desperate.
Now, in addition to the ban on sales of petrol and camping gas in the Calais area comes the banning of sales of alcohol - though we are sure that wont apply to les Flics, after all it's thirst work clubbing non-violent protesters. And that is what No Borders activist are, the police and press having still not come forward with any evidence from recent No Border camps despite being challenged to do so.
* Literally 'Land of the Wandering' - a humanitarian organisation that works at the various truck stops camps that exist all along the coast in Northern France and back inland towards Lille.
** Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples (Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples).
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