Tuesday, 21 September 2010
Brussels No Border Camp
From 25th September to 3rd October migrants, sans-papiers, and activists from all over the world will hold an international No Border camp in Brussels.
The No Border camp will take place principally at "Tour et Taxi" (a deserted open space in the centre of Brussels) -- but diverse decentralised activities will occur across the city.
The Tour et Taxis site is an ideal location for the camp: in the heart of the city of Brussels, not far from the headquarters of capital and Euro-bureaucracy; and in an old industrial centre surrounded by working class immigrant neighbourhoods. Other locations for talks, workshops and film showings will include the squatted Gesu monastery and the Cinema Nova. Three activist kitchens will be cooking tasty vegan food.
The camp is a space of meeting and reflection, but also of actions with common objectives: ending the system of borders which divide us all; defending freedom of movement and settlement; and opposing the capitalist systems and authorities which cause forced exile, war and misery. The camp also coincides with two days of action against Ecofin and the "austerity" measures being introduced in Belgium and across Europe by capital in reaction to the economic crisis.
People don't migrate without a reason. The distinction made between political refugees and economic migrants is nonsensical. For example, when a Senegalese fisherman emigrates because he cannot support his family, underlying this is the politics of the abandonment of the Senegalese coast for Chinese businesses, a politics which operates within a capitalist system that allocates resources for profit. The same principles apply for refugees from war and from climate change.
The No Border network was set up in 1999 to demand freedom of movement and settlement for all. Since that time, numerous camps have been organised at the borders of the European Union in Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, Germany, Sicily, Spain, Calais and finally Lesbos in 2009 (www.noborder.org/camps).
This year's No Border camp will be located not at the periphery but at the heart of Fortress Europe, in Brussels. Belgium assumes the Presidency of the EU from 1st July to 31st December 2010. As capital of the EU, Brussels symbolises the (anti-)migratory politics which the NoBorder movement opposes.
Since the start of the 1980s Europe has turned inwards, putting up walls at its borders, deploying policies which are costly, ineffective and deadly, in the pursuit of the myth of Fortress Europe. A further step was taken in 2003 with the creation of a centralised European agency for external borders, named FRONTEX. This is an administration but also an actual armed border force, which has acquired helicopters and ships, and the agency is not limited to controlling European borders but has externalised to Asia and Africa. In effect, Europe pays various countries to "preventatively" intercept, imprison and deport migrants passing through their territory attempting to reach Europe. Sub-contracting its dirty work to governments which have little regard for human rights seems a priority for Frontex in recent years.
Migration policies currently imprison and deport thousands of people. Thousands of people die at borders every year. For these reasons we demand the abolition of borders, and freedom of movement and settlement for all.
The No Border camp will end on Saturday 2nd October with a mass demonstration in Brussels starting at 1pm.
much more information at:
http://www.noborderbxl.eu.org/?lang=en
The No Border camp will take place principally at "Tour et Taxi" (a deserted open space in the centre of Brussels) -- but diverse decentralised activities will occur across the city.
The Tour et Taxis site is an ideal location for the camp: in the heart of the city of Brussels, not far from the headquarters of capital and Euro-bureaucracy; and in an old industrial centre surrounded by working class immigrant neighbourhoods. Other locations for talks, workshops and film showings will include the squatted Gesu monastery and the Cinema Nova. Three activist kitchens will be cooking tasty vegan food.
The camp is a space of meeting and reflection, but also of actions with common objectives: ending the system of borders which divide us all; defending freedom of movement and settlement; and opposing the capitalist systems and authorities which cause forced exile, war and misery. The camp also coincides with two days of action against Ecofin and the "austerity" measures being introduced in Belgium and across Europe by capital in reaction to the economic crisis.
People don't migrate without a reason. The distinction made between political refugees and economic migrants is nonsensical. For example, when a Senegalese fisherman emigrates because he cannot support his family, underlying this is the politics of the abandonment of the Senegalese coast for Chinese businesses, a politics which operates within a capitalist system that allocates resources for profit. The same principles apply for refugees from war and from climate change.
The No Border network was set up in 1999 to demand freedom of movement and settlement for all. Since that time, numerous camps have been organised at the borders of the European Union in Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, Germany, Sicily, Spain, Calais and finally Lesbos in 2009 (www.noborder.org/camps).
This year's No Border camp will be located not at the periphery but at the heart of Fortress Europe, in Brussels. Belgium assumes the Presidency of the EU from 1st July to 31st December 2010. As capital of the EU, Brussels symbolises the (anti-)migratory politics which the NoBorder movement opposes.
Since the start of the 1980s Europe has turned inwards, putting up walls at its borders, deploying policies which are costly, ineffective and deadly, in the pursuit of the myth of Fortress Europe. A further step was taken in 2003 with the creation of a centralised European agency for external borders, named FRONTEX. This is an administration but also an actual armed border force, which has acquired helicopters and ships, and the agency is not limited to controlling European borders but has externalised to Asia and Africa. In effect, Europe pays various countries to "preventatively" intercept, imprison and deport migrants passing through their territory attempting to reach Europe. Sub-contracting its dirty work to governments which have little regard for human rights seems a priority for Frontex in recent years.
Migration policies currently imprison and deport thousands of people. Thousands of people die at borders every year. For these reasons we demand the abolition of borders, and freedom of movement and settlement for all.
The No Border camp will end on Saturday 2nd October with a mass demonstration in Brussels starting at 1pm.
much more information at:
http://www.noborderbxl.eu.org/?lang=en
End Anti-Gypsy Racism
END ANTI-GYPSY RACISM
Protest rally outside Royal Courts of Justice
11am-12 noon
Friday 24 September
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Travellers Under Pressure To Abandon Community Living
By Grattan Puxon
Though facing imminent eviction, a senior couple have made it known to a judge that they can't accept a council flat because their lives depend on staying within their ethnic community.
John and Mary Flynn's case before Southend County Court, adjourned for a month on Thursday (16 Sept) seemly likely to become a test of the right of Travellers to maintain some essential elements of their traditional mode of living.
Married daughter Michelle Sheridan, who also lives at Dale Farm, Crays Hill, the large Traveller community under threat of destruction by Tory-led Basildon council, said after the initial hearing that her elderly parents would not survive an eviction.
"They would be dead within a week," commented Mrs Sheridan. "The council might as well shoot us all."
Like thousands of Gypsies around Britain, what the Flynns are asking is that they be allowed a secure place to live together in an extended family group inhabiting their own mobile-homes, small chalets and caravans. They had bought land at Dale Farm but have been refused a permit as the old clean-out scrap yard falls within a greenbelt zone.
Basildon has long refused to accept the need to re-accommodate some hundred Gypsies families at Dale Farm and nearby Hovefields in the manner they request. The Travellers say they want to stay where they are but would develop their own sites elsewhere if given permission.
Up until now council leader Tony Ball, pledged to resign if he does not get the Travellers out by next May's election, has claimed there is no spare land. However, a government body has stepped in offering several locations. The Homes and Communities Agency says Travellers are welcome to live on any of its land-holdings, providing Basildon agrees.
Possibly embarrased by this offer and upset over media leaks, Basildon made a surprise announcement at the county court to the effect that it was breaking off any further negotiations with the Travellers.
Undeterred, Dale Farm Housing Association has submitted a planning application to create a mobile-home park on an HCA site at Pound Lane, Lainden.
Brutal Eviction
Unfortunately, the HCA proposal has not helped families evicted earlier this month in a brutal operation at Hovefields, Wickford. They saw their homes bulldozed by Gypsy eviction specialists Constant & Co and have been forced out on the road with nowhere to go.
Out of seven families, two sisters alone found a legal plot in Braintree. Others headed for Kent while four caravans ended up on a car-park belonging the HCA but leased to Selex Systems. Ignoring a legal requirement to consider welfare needs, Essex police moved them on the next day despite the presence of two pregnant mothers, a lad with learning difficulties and small children who had just been through the trauma of seeing their homes bulldozed.
Worse, the notorious s61 of the Criminal Justice Act l994, a piece of legislation which has proved to be the death knell of the old travelling life, was used against them again that night when they tried to find respite at a car-wash forecourt. Exhausted, the four families next day again entered HCA land at Gardiners Lane, Basildon, one of the locations proposed for a permanent site.
But this time the HCA itself objected and the police issued another s61 order forcing them to take to the road once more. Landing up somewhere in Bedfordshire, one mother feared she would abort and called a midwife. Only after a plea from the midwife would Bedforshiore police allow the families to remain the rest of that night on some factory land.
Essex University Human Rights Law Clinic is now preparing a complaint against the police for repeated misuse of s61 which it says may have amounted to deliberate harassment.
The situation facing Gypsies in Britain, similar to and not unrelated to that of Roma across Europe, underscored as it is by an inexplicable and deep-rooted racial prejudice, will be aired in the courts again shortly.
Alone among the families at Hovefields, Matilda Boswell was able to obtain an injunction stopping Basildon from busting up her little property. On 24 September at the High Court she will be seeking a judicial review of the council's decision to enforce planning law without first fulfilling its duties towards her as a homeless person.
As at Southend last week, Travellers and Gypsies will protest outside the court with their growing number of supporters against what they feel is a concerted and relentless effort to pressure them to abandon their community-based life.
Protest rally outside Royal Courts of Justice
11am-12 noon
Friday 24 September
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Travellers Under Pressure To Abandon Community Living
By Grattan Puxon
Though facing imminent eviction, a senior couple have made it known to a judge that they can't accept a council flat because their lives depend on staying within their ethnic community.
John and Mary Flynn's case before Southend County Court, adjourned for a month on Thursday (16 Sept) seemly likely to become a test of the right of Travellers to maintain some essential elements of their traditional mode of living.
Married daughter Michelle Sheridan, who also lives at Dale Farm, Crays Hill, the large Traveller community under threat of destruction by Tory-led Basildon council, said after the initial hearing that her elderly parents would not survive an eviction.
"They would be dead within a week," commented Mrs Sheridan. "The council might as well shoot us all."
Like thousands of Gypsies around Britain, what the Flynns are asking is that they be allowed a secure place to live together in an extended family group inhabiting their own mobile-homes, small chalets and caravans. They had bought land at Dale Farm but have been refused a permit as the old clean-out scrap yard falls within a greenbelt zone.
Basildon has long refused to accept the need to re-accommodate some hundred Gypsies families at Dale Farm and nearby Hovefields in the manner they request. The Travellers say they want to stay where they are but would develop their own sites elsewhere if given permission.
Up until now council leader Tony Ball, pledged to resign if he does not get the Travellers out by next May's election, has claimed there is no spare land. However, a government body has stepped in offering several locations. The Homes and Communities Agency says Travellers are welcome to live on any of its land-holdings, providing Basildon agrees.
Possibly embarrased by this offer and upset over media leaks, Basildon made a surprise announcement at the county court to the effect that it was breaking off any further negotiations with the Travellers.
Undeterred, Dale Farm Housing Association has submitted a planning application to create a mobile-home park on an HCA site at Pound Lane, Lainden.
Brutal Eviction
Unfortunately, the HCA proposal has not helped families evicted earlier this month in a brutal operation at Hovefields, Wickford. They saw their homes bulldozed by Gypsy eviction specialists Constant & Co and have been forced out on the road with nowhere to go.
Out of seven families, two sisters alone found a legal plot in Braintree. Others headed for Kent while four caravans ended up on a car-park belonging the HCA but leased to Selex Systems. Ignoring a legal requirement to consider welfare needs, Essex police moved them on the next day despite the presence of two pregnant mothers, a lad with learning difficulties and small children who had just been through the trauma of seeing their homes bulldozed.
Worse, the notorious s61 of the Criminal Justice Act l994, a piece of legislation which has proved to be the death knell of the old travelling life, was used against them again that night when they tried to find respite at a car-wash forecourt. Exhausted, the four families next day again entered HCA land at Gardiners Lane, Basildon, one of the locations proposed for a permanent site.
But this time the HCA itself objected and the police issued another s61 order forcing them to take to the road once more. Landing up somewhere in Bedfordshire, one mother feared she would abort and called a midwife. Only after a plea from the midwife would Bedforshiore police allow the families to remain the rest of that night on some factory land.
Essex University Human Rights Law Clinic is now preparing a complaint against the police for repeated misuse of s61 which it says may have amounted to deliberate harassment.
The situation facing Gypsies in Britain, similar to and not unrelated to that of Roma across Europe, underscored as it is by an inexplicable and deep-rooted racial prejudice, will be aired in the courts again shortly.
Alone among the families at Hovefields, Matilda Boswell was able to obtain an injunction stopping Basildon from busting up her little property. On 24 September at the High Court she will be seeking a judicial review of the council's decision to enforce planning law without first fulfilling its duties towards her as a homeless person.
As at Southend last week, Travellers and Gypsies will protest outside the court with their growing number of supporters against what they feel is a concerted and relentless effort to pressure them to abandon their community-based life.
Monday, 20 September 2010
Death At Villawood Detention Centre
A 36-year-old Fijian detainee, Josefa Rauluni, in Sydney's Villawood Immigration Detention Centre has died after throwing himself from a roof in order to avoid deportation today. Witnesses say that he jumped when immigration officials arrived with handcuffs to take him and a younger relative to the airport. A protest by detainees have broken out in response to Rauluni's death, whilst sixteen Iranian and Kurdish refugees at Villawood have entered their third day of a food and liquids hunger strike. Refugee advocates say that their condition is deteriorating rapidly in the hot conditions and one hunger striker has already been taken to hospital.
This is just the latest in a series of incidents [1, 2] as the Australian detention estate reaches breaking point and, with something like 5000 people currently in immigration detention, the authorities desperate to find further detention space following the suspension of the processing of asylum claims for Afghan and Sri Lankan refugees.* Sites on the Australian mainland under examination to take an estimated 900 male asylum seekers include more isolated sites such as the Scherger Air Force base in northern Queensland and further expansion of the already overcrowded Curtin Detention Centre in Western Australia. Until the decision to suspend asylum applications is reversed, the situation can only get worse and the government holding out the 'hope' of further off-shore processing of refugees is mere pie-in-the-sky thinking.
* Recently released Australian government figures show that just 75 of the more than six thousand refugees to arrive in Australia in the past two years have had their asylum applications rejected and returned to their country of origin.
This is just the latest in a series of incidents [1, 2] as the Australian detention estate reaches breaking point and, with something like 5000 people currently in immigration detention, the authorities desperate to find further detention space following the suspension of the processing of asylum claims for Afghan and Sri Lankan refugees.* Sites on the Australian mainland under examination to take an estimated 900 male asylum seekers include more isolated sites such as the Scherger Air Force base in northern Queensland and further expansion of the already overcrowded Curtin Detention Centre in Western Australia. Until the decision to suspend asylum applications is reversed, the situation can only get worse and the government holding out the 'hope' of further off-shore processing of refugees is mere pie-in-the-sky thinking.
* Recently released Australian government figures show that just 75 of the more than six thousand refugees to arrive in Australia in the past two years have had their asylum applications rejected and returned to their country of origin.
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Recommended:
more stories that you might have missed (an on-going service designed to cover up the fact that we have either been too busy or too lazy to cover certain news):
France: Amend Immigration Bill to Protect Asylum Seekers - a Human Right Watch article about an attempt to restrict the right of the French government deport asylum applicants before they have fully exhausted their legal rights under French law. The proposed amendment to a new immigration bill seeks to reform the so-called priority procedure and legislate to allow for an in-country appeal.
France's deportation of Roma shown to be illegal in leaked memo, say critics - coverage of a leaked internal order, circulated to police chiefs last month, that states that:
"Three hundred camps or illegal settlements must be cleared within three months, Roma camps are a priority. It is down to the préfect in each department to begin a systematic dismantling of the illegal camps, particularly those of the Roma."
Also covered by the BBC and Telegraph.
French Gypsies recall forgotten wartime internment - the current coverage has dredged up more stories about France's 'forgotten' wartime Gypsy internments and deportations.
Phil Woolas accused of stirring racial division to hold on to seat, Phil Woolas 'tried to foment racial divisions in election campaign' & Phil Woolas 'sought to make white folk angry' in general election campaign - Woolas squirms under legal challenge under his election publicity previous highlighted by this blog.
Illegal immigrants held in isolated jails struggle for legal help, survey finds - the results of a survey by the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center, published in Isolated in Detention, reveals details of the cruel, inhumane and degrading regime routinely operated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in the U.S.A..
35 foreign minors held in jail for over 60 days - like the UK, Israel routinely detains minors.
EU agency demands more coherent asylum procedures - a new report by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency claims that asylum seekers are getting unfair and inconsistent treatment across the EU.
"A lifer is better than a detainee" - revealing figures about detention in the UK in an article flagging up the imminent release of 'No Return No Release No Reason', a report by the London Detainee Support Group.
France: Amend Immigration Bill to Protect Asylum Seekers - a Human Right Watch article about an attempt to restrict the right of the French government deport asylum applicants before they have fully exhausted their legal rights under French law. The proposed amendment to a new immigration bill seeks to reform the so-called priority procedure and legislate to allow for an in-country appeal.
France's deportation of Roma shown to be illegal in leaked memo, say critics - coverage of a leaked internal order, circulated to police chiefs last month, that states that:
"Three hundred camps or illegal settlements must be cleared within three months, Roma camps are a priority. It is down to the préfect in each department to begin a systematic dismantling of the illegal camps, particularly those of the Roma."
Also covered by the BBC and Telegraph.
French Gypsies recall forgotten wartime internment - the current coverage has dredged up more stories about France's 'forgotten' wartime Gypsy internments and deportations.
Phil Woolas accused of stirring racial division to hold on to seat, Phil Woolas 'tried to foment racial divisions in election campaign' & Phil Woolas 'sought to make white folk angry' in general election campaign - Woolas squirms under legal challenge under his election publicity previous highlighted by this blog.
Illegal immigrants held in isolated jails struggle for legal help, survey finds - the results of a survey by the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center, published in Isolated in Detention, reveals details of the cruel, inhumane and degrading regime routinely operated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in the U.S.A..
35 foreign minors held in jail for over 60 days - like the UK, Israel routinely detains minors.
EU agency demands more coherent asylum procedures - a new report by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency claims that asylum seekers are getting unfair and inconsistent treatment across the EU.
"A lifer is better than a detainee" - revealing figures about detention in the UK in an article flagging up the imminent release of 'No Return No Release No Reason', a report by the London Detainee Support Group.
Intrepid Reporting Or Merely Pointless?
Damon Embling, intrepid BBC South reporter, is in Greece and one hopes for the poor licence-payers' sakes he's there on vacation and has just decided to turn it into a bit of a busman's holiday rather than being paid to tag along with a Frontex naval patrol on the Greece-Turkey border. The reason we say this is his article entitled 'On immigration sea patrol with EU border team' seems to only have a very tentative link with the South of England:
"The south of England is particularly vulnerable to illegal immigration - the vast coastline provides a target for those wanting to slip into the UK. The region is also home to busy airports and ports. But where are illegal immigrants coming from right now and how do they get here? European border officials say the biggest flow is from places like Afghanistan, Somalia and West Africa. The current illegal gateway of choice into Europe is the Greek-Turkish border. Britain is often the favourite destination, where people have the chance of a better life."
Really, is this news? And what real relevance has it to the Channel Coast? Maybe Damon is suggesting that Frontex should patrol off the Sussex coast?
"The south of England is particularly vulnerable to illegal immigration - the vast coastline provides a target for those wanting to slip into the UK. The region is also home to busy airports and ports. But where are illegal immigrants coming from right now and how do they get here? European border officials say the biggest flow is from places like Afghanistan, Somalia and West Africa. The current illegal gateway of choice into Europe is the Greek-Turkish border. Britain is often the favourite destination, where people have the chance of a better life."
Really, is this news? And what real relevance has it to the Channel Coast? Maybe Damon is suggesting that Frontex should patrol off the Sussex coast?
Friday, 10 September 2010
Brussels No Border Camp Programme
The programme for the Brussels No Border Camp from September 25 to October 3 is now available for download:
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