According to the Nord Littoral, the main Pashtun 'Jungle' will begin to be dismantled next Tuesday, when Ramadan has ended. This is backed-up by the arrival of major police reinforcements in the area along with a number of bulldozers. So far however, the mobilisation of medical, interpreters and immigration department workers has not been observed. Already the Ethiopian 'Jungle' is empty and the police have thrown all the bedding and other equipment into the street. No one knows where the 30-40 people that were living there are.
Today volunteers from the various humanitarian associations have been in the main 'Jungles' giving what advice they can. Besson says that an "individual solution"* would be found for each and every migrant but that is of not comfort to the migrants, they are as desperate to get out of the 'Jungle' as Besson is to get rid of it. Needless to say as the migrants' situation gets ever more precarious those that prey on the, the traffickers, have upped their prices.
Also today, the Immigration Department released the text of a letter Besson sent to his European counterparts urging "the elaboration of a new doctrine of engagement for maritime operations", conducted in the Mediterranean by Frontex, that stopped all migrants from reaching European shores. Maybe he is aiming for a job in the Italian Government now?
There has been a lot of rhetoric flying around recently, most of it unedifying and some of it definitely contradictory. For example, what ever happened to 'Opération à Blanc' (Operation in White i.e. with health workers), the October dress rehearsal for the full scale dismantlement of the camps that was announced by Besson at the beginning of the month? Where is the evidence to back up the constant references to violence from the migrants that has apparently turned Calais into a "zone of lawlessness"?
Besson on Tuesday repeated these allegations on Tuesday as has Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, on repeated occasions but no one seems able to come up with any verifiable reports of such violence. However one thing is abundantly clear, the only people that appear to be being terrorised at the moment are the migrants being driven into hiding for fear of being returned to war-zones across the world or trying one last desperate attempt to cross the Channel.
Someone also needs to get their figure right. Besson on Wednesday: About 170 people had made requests for asylum in France this year and been issued with temporary leave to remain and accommodation, plus a further 180 had accepted voluntary return to their country of origin. prefect of Pas-de-Calais, Pierre de Bousquet de Florian on 25 August: 152 cases of asylum applications have been filed since the beginning of May, but only one agreed with 43 temporary residence permits. Surely M. Besson is being 'economic with the truth'? As the latest CFDA (Coordination Française pour le Droit d'Asile) press statement says, "How could Eritreans accept a "voluntary" repatriation to their country? Why would Afghans or Sudanese accept, under ... Dublin II, their transfer to Greece, regularly denounced and condemned for repeated abuse and bad treatment of asylum seekers and migrants in general?"
Here's something else that it looks as though the French authorities have not been too frank about either; whilst many of those in the 'Jungles' have slipped away out of sight, a lot of those who remain in there have already made asylum applications and are waiting for the current two and a half months Office Français d’Immigration et d’Intégration backlog in processing applications, having refused the offer of accommodation in a government hostel. Also many migrants who already have their 'green cards' chose to stay in the 'Jungle' rather than anywhere else.
A few other thoughts: if Calais' 'Jungles' and squats are cleared all at the same time, where will they put everyone? There just aren't enough paces in the French detention estate to accommodate all the Calais migrants? Maybe that is why they left it so long before going into action, hoping that the numbers would be lower as people had disappeared? Maybe they are going to revert to mass deportation after all, without processing papers and asylum applications? Deporting people without processing fully any applications or without checking to see if they have been in a 'safe third country' prior to arriving in France happens far more often that the French authorities will admit. Alternatively, they could just destroy all the camps and leave the migrants 'homeless' as they did after Sangatte was closed.
In other news on Calais, the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, has said the UK government should consider granting entry to those who already have large families here. Inevitably, the UK Borders Agency stock reply was that the closure of the camps were "matters for the French government". Now that's a surprise isn't it? Sounds just like the UK Government line in 2002 before they agreed to take the majority of the migrants when the Sangatte camp was closed.
* This may just be PR as France has fallen foul of EU human right legislation over attempts that fall foul of Article 4 forbidding the "collective expulsion of foreigners". [See: Nov 08]
Friday, 18 September 2009
Thursday, 17 September 2009
Brighton Calais Information Night & Fundraiser
Calais Migrant Solidarity is holding a Calais Information Night with short films and a question and answer session with activists who have spent the summer monitoring police and working with the migrants in Calais.Tuesday 22 September 8.00 - 11.00 pm
Members and Guest only.
Calais Migrant Solidarity Fundraising Gig on Friday 2 October 8.00 pm till late.
Sak-less Jack & The Lovely Brothers plus DJs.
Entry by donation.
Members and guests only.
Sak-less Jack & The Lovely Brothers plus DJs.
Entry by donation.
Members and guests only.
Calais: Latest News
In an interview on France's main TV channel TF1 yesterday, French Interior Minister Eric Besson intimated that the destruction of the Pashtun 'Jungle' in Calais would happen within the next week. Whether this will actually be the case or he is anticipating that his statement will induce more of the 'Jungle's' inhabitants to leave, as has happened in recent months, with numbers down to less than 400, half the number present at the beginning of the summer, time will tell.
Some of these have clearly been warned off by the government's statements about the 'Jungle's' destruction, others have been intimidated by the constant round of raids which have included daily sessions of forced filming and photographing of the 'Jungle' inhabitants. Another possibility is that it is going to be the mooted 'trial run' that Besson has mentioned in the pass. It should also be noted that Ramadan ends this weekend and even Sarkozy's government, despite its obvious anti-Islamic tendencies, would not carry out a full-scale destruction of the Pashtun 'Jungle' during this religious festival. We'll just have to wait and see.
One major concern is what is going to happen to the migrants when the shelters are destroyed. Will there be a series of mass deportations or will the migrants merely be driven out from where they have lived to wander the French countryside again, as happen when the Sangatte camp was closed. It is intimated by the French authorities that they will all be rounded up and held in detention centres prior to be offered the alternative of either applying for asylum in France of being deported. Besson has claimed that the vast number of arrests in the past 6 months* have only resulted in 170 people applying for asylum, with a further 'voluntarily' accepting deportation.
In the meantime, activists continue to monitor the police as the raids continue. On Tuesday around 200 migrants were arrested in police raids on the 'Jungle', with almost all being released within 24 hours. When the CRS turned up at the Pashtun 'Jungle' late last night, one migrants asked them if they were there to "arrest all of us?" "No, only 15" was the reply. Earlier in the day PAF (border police) officers arrested 25 Afghans near the town centre, 3 of whom were beaten in plain view of passersby.
We are also preparing for the aftermath. With winter coming, provison will have to be made on the ground by the associations and activists that will inevitably be left to pick up the pieces. To that end groups are starting to organise appeals for tents and sleeping bags and good old-fashioned hard currency.
* Almost all of which end up with the migrants being released within 24 hours, having been fingerprinted and photographed.
Some of these have clearly been warned off by the government's statements about the 'Jungle's' destruction, others have been intimidated by the constant round of raids which have included daily sessions of forced filming and photographing of the 'Jungle' inhabitants. Another possibility is that it is going to be the mooted 'trial run' that Besson has mentioned in the pass. It should also be noted that Ramadan ends this weekend and even Sarkozy's government, despite its obvious anti-Islamic tendencies, would not carry out a full-scale destruction of the Pashtun 'Jungle' during this religious festival. We'll just have to wait and see.
One major concern is what is going to happen to the migrants when the shelters are destroyed. Will there be a series of mass deportations or will the migrants merely be driven out from where they have lived to wander the French countryside again, as happen when the Sangatte camp was closed. It is intimated by the French authorities that they will all be rounded up and held in detention centres prior to be offered the alternative of either applying for asylum in France of being deported. Besson has claimed that the vast number of arrests in the past 6 months* have only resulted in 170 people applying for asylum, with a further 'voluntarily' accepting deportation.
In the meantime, activists continue to monitor the police as the raids continue. On Tuesday around 200 migrants were arrested in police raids on the 'Jungle', with almost all being released within 24 hours. When the CRS turned up at the Pashtun 'Jungle' late last night, one migrants asked them if they were there to "arrest all of us?" "No, only 15" was the reply. Earlier in the day PAF (border police) officers arrested 25 Afghans near the town centre, 3 of whom were beaten in plain view of passersby.
We are also preparing for the aftermath. With winter coming, provison will have to be made on the ground by the associations and activists that will inevitably be left to pick up the pieces. To that end groups are starting to organise appeals for tents and sleeping bags and good old-fashioned hard currency.
* Almost all of which end up with the migrants being released within 24 hours, having been fingerprinted and photographed.
Friday, 11 September 2009
Egyptian Police Shoot Dead Ethiopian Migrants
Egyptian police have shot dead four Ethiopian refugees and wounded two others, one critically, as they tried to cross into Israel south of Rafiah. In a statement Amnesty International Israel said, "The unbridled violence Egypt shows is a result of pressure exerted by Israel is partly the result of Israeli pressure on Cairo to prevent the entry."
This is not the first such incident and Egyptian police have killed at least 12 African migrants at the frontier since May. This comes after a 6 month period with no such deaths and is likely to be linked to the increasingly severe humanitarian crisis in Eastern Africa.
This is not the first such incident and Egyptian police have killed at least 12 African migrants at the frontier since May. This comes after a 6 month period with no such deaths and is likely to be linked to the increasingly severe humanitarian crisis in Eastern Africa.
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Iconoclasts On Radio 4
Heartily recommended is the latest edition of Iconoclasts, where Philippe Legrain, a free-market economist and writer puts one of the best expositions of the No Borders position we've heard in a long time. And that from someone who has worked for the World Bank!
In the programme he takes on Andrew Green (Mr. Migrationwatch - has anyone ever come across somebody else who is in or works for Migrationwatch?), Labour MP Anne Cryer and some ex-immigration officer called Tony Saint. The irony of the programme is that the only one of the three 'challengers' is the ex-immigration officer.
The highlight of the programme though is when Legrain tells Green what we all have always thought, that he thinks he's a racist! Green threatens to set his lawyer on him unless he withdraws the 'accusation'. Pity, for a second there we thought someone had finally shot his fox (surely he must be pro-hunting as well).
Beware the programme is only available to listen to on-line till Wednesday 16th September.
In the programme he takes on Andrew Green (Mr. Migrationwatch - has anyone ever come across somebody else who is in or works for Migrationwatch?), Labour MP Anne Cryer and some ex-immigration officer called Tony Saint. The irony of the programme is that the only one of the three 'challengers' is the ex-immigration officer.
The highlight of the programme though is when Legrain tells Green what we all have always thought, that he thinks he's a racist! Green threatens to set his lawyer on him unless he withdraws the 'accusation'. Pity, for a second there we thought someone had finally shot his fox (surely he must be pro-hunting as well).
Beware the programme is only available to listen to on-line till Wednesday 16th September.
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Camp Besson, Agres, France.
Yesterday morning at 7am, 82 French police officers turned up at the migrants' camp sited in a small copse close to the A26 motorway at Angres, 30km south-west of Lille. The police arrested the 85 Vietnamese, who include 20 women, after first allowing them to collect a bag of personal belongings each. They then proceeded to cut down the trees and torch the camp. 52 of the migrants were taken to the detention centre at Coquelles near Calais and 28 detained at the National Police station in nearby Liévin.
An everyday occurrence across Nord-Pas-de-Calais you would think, except this camp has had strong local support. The camp itself had first sprung up in 2007 and started to receive support from local residents, a phenomenon that has occurred in small towns and villages across Northern France where these migrant camps have established themselves, often at the behest of the locals when they find homeless migrants in and around their communities.
In Angres locals formed a support network called Fraternité-migrants, which has helped them build structures, lend them equipment (some of which the police allowed Fraternité-migrants to retrieve yesterday before trashing the camp), welcoming them into the village for festivals including Tet, intervening when harassed and arrested by cops, etc. Basically Angres made the Vietnamese members of their community.
So when it was discovered that the Police had arrived to remove the camp, supporters rallied around. When the 28 migrants were released from Liévin police station they were there to pick then up and return them to Angres. At 6pm yesterday there was a town meeting at which it was decided to set up a camp outside the town hall to house the 28 released earlier and 7 others who were found wandering around after the camp's destruction. Tents were erected and food shared. Mayors and deputies from surrounding communities turned up and a big spontaneous community event took place.
The original camp had been attacked and 7 migrants hospitalised the previous Friday by what has been described as a large mob armed with guns and knives arrived in 3 or 4 cars and terrorised the migrants for a number of hours. The migrants claimed they were 'Mafia' and were probably either local racists or, more likely, people traffickers. So last night a number of volunteers stayed with the Vietnamese in the tents to help ward-off any further attacks by 'Mafia' of the police.
And today they get down to the task of finding out again what has happened to the Vietnamese members of their community that have been take to Coquelles and face deportation back to Viet Nam. Oh, and, as you may have guessed, they have decided to call the new camp Camp Besson!
UPDATE: Camp Besson has since been replaced by a new purpose built 'Jungle' in nearby woods and, of the migrants detained in Coquelles, 4 have been expelled back to Germany where they had previously been fingerprinted, 11 are due to be deported to Vietnam and one young woman is still detained awaiting an age determination. The rest of the 52 detained on the 8 September have been released.
An everyday occurrence across Nord-Pas-de-Calais you would think, except this camp has had strong local support. The camp itself had first sprung up in 2007 and started to receive support from local residents, a phenomenon that has occurred in small towns and villages across Northern France where these migrant camps have established themselves, often at the behest of the locals when they find homeless migrants in and around their communities.
In Angres locals formed a support network called Fraternité-migrants, which has helped them build structures, lend them equipment (some of which the police allowed Fraternité-migrants to retrieve yesterday before trashing the camp), welcoming them into the village for festivals including Tet, intervening when harassed and arrested by cops, etc. Basically Angres made the Vietnamese members of their community.
So when it was discovered that the Police had arrived to remove the camp, supporters rallied around. When the 28 migrants were released from Liévin police station they were there to pick then up and return them to Angres. At 6pm yesterday there was a town meeting at which it was decided to set up a camp outside the town hall to house the 28 released earlier and 7 others who were found wandering around after the camp's destruction. Tents were erected and food shared. Mayors and deputies from surrounding communities turned up and a big spontaneous community event took place.
The original camp had been attacked and 7 migrants hospitalised the previous Friday by what has been described as a large mob armed with guns and knives arrived in 3 or 4 cars and terrorised the migrants for a number of hours. The migrants claimed they were 'Mafia' and were probably either local racists or, more likely, people traffickers. So last night a number of volunteers stayed with the Vietnamese in the tents to help ward-off any further attacks by 'Mafia' of the police.
And today they get down to the task of finding out again what has happened to the Vietnamese members of their community that have been take to Coquelles and face deportation back to Viet Nam. Oh, and, as you may have guessed, they have decided to call the new camp Camp Besson!
UPDATE: Camp Besson has since been replaced by a new purpose built 'Jungle' in nearby woods and, of the migrants detained in Coquelles, 4 have been expelled back to Germany where they had previously been fingerprinted, 11 are due to be deported to Vietnam and one young woman is still detained awaiting an age determination. The rest of the 52 detained on the 8 September have been released.
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Visa Overstayers No Longer Charged A$250,000 Room & Board
The Australian Senate today repealed a law which led to some clandestine migrants charged up to A$250,000 (£130,250) for the cost of their detention. The repealed legislation applied to migrants who had been found to be in Australia without a valid visa, had been detained by the Immigration Department but eventually allowed to stay because their country of origin was deemed unsafe preventing their forced return or they married an Australian national.
The legislation only just scraped through against strong right-wing opposition, despite the fact that the scheme recouped only 3% of the charges levied and that it cost more to administer than it collected. The far-from-Liberal Party opposition has staunchly opposed other recent small-scale immigration reforms* which have included halting the detention and deportation of visa overstayers.
This of course has made little difference to the estimated 5,000 plus UK passport holders who overstay their visas each year (which equals 10% of all overstayers). Even though Brits have traditionally made up the largest legal immigrant group at 18% of permanent settler arrivals, have also been amongst the largest 'illegal' immigrant group and the largest group of 'illegal' workers, they were never the ones that were locked up if caught.
In other Australian news, the controversy over the SIEV 36 (suspected illegal entry vessel) incident earlier this year has hit the news again. The boat with 47 Afghan asylum seekers and 2 Indonesian crew aboard was stopped by an Australian Defence Force (ADF) vessel HMAS Albany on 15 April and taken under tow en-route to Christmas Island. The next day petrol vapours on the migrants' boat ignited, causing an explosion and fire which left 5 Afghan refugees dead and more than a dozen seriously injured.
The Afghans abandoned ship and, when they tries to climb on board ADF rigid-hulled inflatable boats, they were kicked and beaten and pushed back in the ocean. The ADF made contradictory claims about the incident; one that they were merely trying to rescue their own personnel who had been blown into the sea after the explosion or that their actions may have been caused by concerns that their craft was in danger of capsizing. They did however eventually rescue 45 Afghans from the water.
The reason the case is back in the news is because The Australian newspaper has allegedly seen an ADF video of the incident and has called upon the Northern Territory Coroner, who is investigating the incident, to release the footage to the public. The ADF have neither confirmed nor denied their personnel used violent tactics to prevented the migrants from boarding their inflatables.
* Some have also been reversed by the Labour government themselves under no pressure from the Liberal opposition.
The legislation only just scraped through against strong right-wing opposition, despite the fact that the scheme recouped only 3% of the charges levied and that it cost more to administer than it collected. The far-from-Liberal Party opposition has staunchly opposed other recent small-scale immigration reforms* which have included halting the detention and deportation of visa overstayers.
This of course has made little difference to the estimated 5,000 plus UK passport holders who overstay their visas each year (which equals 10% of all overstayers). Even though Brits have traditionally made up the largest legal immigrant group at 18% of permanent settler arrivals, have also been amongst the largest 'illegal' immigrant group and the largest group of 'illegal' workers, they were never the ones that were locked up if caught.
In other Australian news, the controversy over the SIEV 36 (suspected illegal entry vessel) incident earlier this year has hit the news again. The boat with 47 Afghan asylum seekers and 2 Indonesian crew aboard was stopped by an Australian Defence Force (ADF) vessel HMAS Albany on 15 April and taken under tow en-route to Christmas Island. The next day petrol vapours on the migrants' boat ignited, causing an explosion and fire which left 5 Afghan refugees dead and more than a dozen seriously injured.
The Afghans abandoned ship and, when they tries to climb on board ADF rigid-hulled inflatable boats, they were kicked and beaten and pushed back in the ocean. The ADF made contradictory claims about the incident; one that they were merely trying to rescue their own personnel who had been blown into the sea after the explosion or that their actions may have been caused by concerns that their craft was in danger of capsizing. They did however eventually rescue 45 Afghans from the water.
The reason the case is back in the news is because The Australian newspaper has allegedly seen an ADF video of the incident and has called upon the Northern Territory Coroner, who is investigating the incident, to release the footage to the public. The ADF have neither confirmed nor denied their personnel used violent tactics to prevented the migrants from boarding their inflatables.
* Some have also been reversed by the Labour government themselves under no pressure from the Liberal opposition.
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