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Rape in the Jungle? : the Daily Mail hate of migrants.

- | 29.08.2008 03:21 | Migration | Other Press | World

Today's British press will report a story of a gang rape by illegal migrants hoping to enter the UK of a British journalism student who was in a migrant camp to report sympathetically on their misery.

fact 1) She's Canadian.
fact 2) It happened last Monday.
fact 3) the prosecutor specifically said in his statement on Friday that it was not a "gang rape" but (presumedly based on evidence) the crime of a known rapist.
fact 4) The site known as "la jungle" only exists because of the opposition of the UK government to the former Red Cross camp of Sangatte which provided for those who had nowhere else to go.


These articles are utter embellishments to the point of wanton fabrication & an insult to the ethics of professional journalism made all the worse because the victim of the assault is specified as a student of journalism who wished to draw attention to the inhumane conditions of the last camp before the white chalks of blighty.

But the Daily Mail carefully put "alledged" at the end of their first sentence : "A British woman has been raped by a gang of asylum seekers in Calais, it has been alleged."

Exactly who did the alledging sits in the centre of prejudice which is the "Daily Mail" & affiliated "Mail on Sunday" & "This is London" news services. A prejudice shared by
both the European distribution franchise free distribution "Metro" & "daily Telegraph".

fact 5.

Those who live in the jungle are prey to human traffickers and without any hope of returning home, not even through the French illegal migrant system who considers trapped at the last hurdle of their route to the UK and the point of no return to France. This fact has reached as far as the US "international herald tribune" which ran a feature on the camp earlier this year in April http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/28/europe/calais.php?page=1
as did the Spanish "El Pais"  http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/miserables/Calais/elpepuint/20070428elpepiint_1/Tes
Neither newspaper was feeling particularly humanitarian at the time, it was just the constant reports of tear gas & systematic violence which leaked through human rights networks.

fact 6) the camp is located on common ground and therefore is not those living there are not squatters as the Daily Mail reports.

fact 7) there has been indication of the nationality of the rapist.

fact 8) the manipulated reporting of this incident will only compound the suffering of a woman whose political and humanitarian viewpoints must be obvious.

fact 9) the UK and France routinely send victims of multiple rape who have been coerced into the sex trade through the illegal migrant deportion system without counselling or adequate support.
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the reports French media is rather less hysterical because their police don't need excuses to round-up migrants from "the jungle" or anywhere else.

local press
 http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/Region/actualite/Secteur_Region/2008/08/28/article_viol-d-une-etudiante-en-journalisme-par.shtml
from a Parisien tabloid
 http://www.leparisien.fr/liveafp-france/une-jeune-canadienne-violee-lors-d-un-reportage-sur-les-migrants-en-france-28-08-2008-180145.php
& Associated Press from whom the Daily Mail got their inspiration for today's hate.
 http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hf-1E3FtjOEzSTcJSiTfywxr2jYg

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