Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Calais, Dunkerque, Xmass... please come!

noborderer | 07.12.2010 11:40 | Anti-racism | Migration

At Christmas/ New Year time there will be a festival of resistance in Calais, starting the 17th December with the projection of 'They are humans', award winning film about the Calais no border camp 2009 and what happened after...
...more people are expected to arrive, and it is a good opportunity for new people to get involved, and do something.

Please come to Calais soon if you can, as we cannot be active both in Calais and Dunkerque, unless we have more people on the ground... and the situation in Dunkerque is critical.
our contacts are here:
calaismigrantsolidarity.worpress.com







We went again on Sunday to Grande Synthe and Téteghem, the two remaining jungles near Dunkerque (Loon Plage no longer exists), and a we did a small distribution of clothes and food to cook.
Many people have left to escape police repression. Many people who were taken to deportation centres have now been released, some have returned.
Police harassment however remains very high. Téteghem jungle was raided again on Friday according to the migrants, and police in plainclothes keep going to the camps to count the people, usually at the time volunteers from local associations go there to give food – despite the associations having complained about it, as they do not want to be associated with the police or seen as accessories to police repression. People have been missing their meals for fear of the police.
People who called the emergency number 115 were told there are no bed spaces for the night. A middle aged man found a place in hospital after developing bronchitis, but he was dismissed after only two days and returned to the jungle. All the families with small children are indoors now – thanks to local volunteers, not thanks to the State; most women including one who is 8 months pregnant have left. There are still a number of very young teenagers, some unaccompanied.

In fact, there should be some places for the night now: the authorities suddenly decided to open two new emergency shelters – that are not opened yet, one in Téteghem one in Grande Synthe, and last Friday at 6 pm, out of the blue they called the associations, telling them to get the migrants to the new shelters – by 7.30 pm!!! The associations refused, as they say they are always there to help but they cannot do everything, from transport to accommodation to presence at night, and the shelters do not meet any standards however minimal: there are not even blankets.

People are suffering terribly in Téteghem and Grand Synthe. Not only they develop the usual illnesses from the cold, they also suffer from depression and mental health problems, and they keep saying that someone will die. Every time I leave Téteghem I am in shock and I just want to cry. I never thought I would see refugee camps like that in 21st century Europe, with the associations and local volunteers struggling to guarantee the mere survival of the people who are stuck there. Going to England has became more and more difficult, due to increased border controls. Adding to the other hardships, it is much colder than usual, even colder than last Winter, which renders the conditions of living in the camps almost unbearable. At the end of November there were 10 cm snow and temperatures below -7!

In Calais, Salam association is managing the BCMO, a disused gym that functions as emergency shelter; all other associations withdrew in protest: the place is run entirely by unpaid volunteers, has no toilets but ONE chemical toilet outside, no running water and people sleep on cardboard on the floor with just one blanket… Retrospectively, I think it was a good strategy: the point of the night shelter being totally inadequate has been made, and the migrants have been given some minimal shelter – even the BCMO, bad as it is, is better than sleeping out in freezing temperatures. In fact many migrants have moved to the BCMO from Africa House, from the Pashto jungle, and even from the Hazara jungle, in addition to the many Kurdish who have been sleeping at the BCMO since it opened. There are also some very young teenagers, the youngest is only 12. Unaccompanied minors and people who have applied for asylum in France should be given separate accommodation, according to the law, but there aren’t the provisions. The overcrowding at the BCMO, needless to say, is unbelievable. However, the French State has surprised everybody by allocating 100.000 euros to improve the BCMO. A small victory, but we wonder how such a structure can be improved: 100.000 euros seem a lot of money to buy a few mattresses and a couple of chemical toilets, and the BCMO should be closed all together and replaced with a structure more adequate, with more bed spaces and provided with showers and water taps people can use! and proper toilets inside- especially since the police have been arresting people outside the BCMO. Further, there is no place to go during the day, and people can get hypothermia, bronchitis etc. also during the day if they have to wander the streets from 9 am when the BCMO closes to 7 pm when it reopens, in the extreme cold. Since the money for the night shelter will be handed to the Town Hall- by the 10th of December, it will be in the hands of the Mayor, Natacha Bouchart, who has been very proficient, on behalf of the ruling party, in solving the ‘migrants problem’ in Calais by closing the ghetto further and making scorched hearth for the migrants by destroying their squats and camps.

Africa House, the largest migrant squat in Calais, is threatened with eviction and police keep raiding it on a daily basis, up to 6 times per day, beginning at dawn. Usually there are not many arrests, thanks to our warnings and watch out, but the harassment is very heavy - people can never sleep or rest; consider most people in Africa House are from Darfur, where there is a genocide; consider that people try every night to go to England, until they finally get a lucky chance, and they are going in the most dangerous ways, such as under trains and under lorries, and many people get hurt. The lack of sleep renders their journey even more dangerous.

Pointless repeated arrests have been used for years as a way to ‘persuade’ refugees and migrants to leave, but the situation has escalated to grotesque levels, in Calais and now also in Dunkerque. People can get arrested, released, arrested, released, up to three times per day! Most people come from countries at war such as Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea; they are already traumatised, they get arrested for no reason – also underage kids and people with papers- and they have to walk an hour or more to come back from the police station. Sometimes they are released immediately or after a couple of hours, sometimes they are kept for 12 hours or 24 in filthy overcrowded cells that don’t even have a toilet, just a stinky hole in the floor: they are traumatised again and again, as inflicting suffering is used as a mean to reduce the numbers of migrants

The most unlucky end up in the deportation centre of Coquelles. One of our friends cut his arm in detention, to avoid deportation. Most people are released from detention, usually after two weeks: France, unlike the UK, cannot deport people to countries at war. But people who have their fingerprints in other EU countries often get deported there.

Other Calais squats get lots of police attention too. We have been active at opening and distributing lots of new squats, where people can keep a bit warm and sleep in peace, at least until the police find them. They went again to raid the Palestinian squat... and they did not find anyone because the people had just moved house!

Our presence in Calais over the last year has been a great contribution, and it is very appreciated by the migrants. Levels of physical violence by police against migrants have decreased enourmously, thanks to us being in jungles and squats - with cameras, and exposing the situation.
It would be great to extend activities to Dunkerque too!

We desperately need warm clothes, waterproofs, blankets, sleeping bags, tents and men's shoes to distribute to the migrants. Plus socks, hats, gloves, scarves.

noborderer
- e-mail: calaisolidarity@gmail.com
- Homepage: http://calaismigrantsolidarity.worpress.com

Comments

Display the following 2 comments

  1. site — hollie
  2. Site — anon
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech