In Paris, from Saturday 12 July, 5 pm and throughout the night, Sans Papiers and supporters are calling the public to join them to sleep in a square where over 100 Irakis-Kurds, Iranians and Afghans asylum seekers have been sleeping rought for months. They demand that the authorities allocate resources for housing, food and legal aid to asylum seekers. This is a letter of support sent by Black Women for Wages for Housework and Payday.

Info in French at  http://www.gisti.org/doc/actions/2003/coucher-dehors/appel.html


To the Sans Papiers and supporters protesting
in Square-Jardin Villemin, Paris, Saturday 12 July 2003

We send solidarity greetings and full support to your struggle for decent living conditions. We are women and men, immigrant and non immigrant, refugee, people of colour, working with others of us who are fighting to get their papers.

Like in France, thousands of people here have been made homeless and destitute after seeking asylum in the UK. Many are women from Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe. Some fled war-torn zones and Western-backed dictatorships, with their children, after suffering rape and other torture, but now face the unbearable choice of living in the street or being sent to detention and accomodation centres, which are prisons. Asylum seeking children are now denied the right to go to school with other children.

The Sans Papier movement, initiated by African women and men, gave new direction to the movement against immigration laws and racism. We have supported the churches occupations and other actions in France since 1996, and in Spain in 2001, where part of our network is based. The Sans Papiers’ determination – especially women’s – to be autonomous from political parties and the established voluntary sector was a crucial precedent for all of us who fight for justice. Autonomy from the voluntary sector is even more crucial today.

The movement for papers for all has spread in Europe and North America, and it is re-energising the movement here in the UK. We are drawing on it, as we daily confront established organisations for which asylum is no longer a human right but a business from which they can profit at our expense.

Under recent legislation, the government privatised state services to asylum seekers contracting them out to the voluntary sector. The Refugee Council (RC) and five other NGOs now administer “support” on behalf of the government.

Together with the organisation Legal Action for Women we are denouncing the voluntary sector for administering racist and inhuman government policies. This includes putting vulnerable women in dilapidated housing where they have to share toilets and bathrooms with men – a woman was recently raped there and there have many many complaints of sexual violence; evicting asylum seekers, including mothers with children, from their accommodation into the streets; dispersing people to isolated areas away from vital support where they are more vulnerable to racist attacks; forcing pregnant, elderly and other vulnerable women to queue at Refugee Council's office as early as 4pm often to be told nothing can be done.

We demand an end to these policies: asylum seekers must be entitled to benefits, housing and education like everyone else.

What you are doing is an inspiration and a power for us. We hope you will also draw on our actions here to strengthen your struggle, and stay in touch!

The struggle continues.

Power to the sisters and therefore to the whole movement against destitution and for freedom of movement.

Sara Callaway Benoit Martin
BWWFH Payday

12 July 2003


Black Women for Wages for Housework & Payday
C/o Crossroads Women’s Centre
PO Box 287 London NW6 5QU
Tel +44 (0)20 7482 2496
Fax +44 (0)20 209 4761
 allwomencount@crossroadswomen.net
 payday@paydaynet.org