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Photos from Calais this morning

calaismigrantsolidarity | 22.09.2009 10:09 | Anti-racism | Migration | Repression | South Coast | World

Photos from Pashto 'jungle'









photos

calaismigrantsolidarity
- e-mail: calaisolidarity AT gmail.com
- Homepage: http://www.calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com

Additions

Bulldozers move in to Pashto 'jungle'

22.09.2009 12:17

Bulldozers raze the Pashto camp
Bulldozers raze the Pashto camp

Great, what a solution...

calaismigrantsolidarity
- Homepage: http://www.calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com


Comments

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Call for actions at UK Border Agency

22.09.2009 10:40

calaismigrantsolidarity


278 arrests so far

22.09.2009 11:02

11.48: Sub Prefect of Police in Calais Bosqueti announces that 278 Pashtun arrested, 146 over 18 years old, 132 under 18 years old. Not being held in police station or Coquelles detention centre, not sure where.

The police knew how many minors there were in the camps before, why no support for under 18s as legally required, such as housing?

Still, it makes Besson and Alan Johnson look tough on immigration, who needs to offer any real solutions eh?!

calaismigrantsolidarity
- Homepage: http://www.calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com


UK Govt response...they are 'delighted'

22.09.2009 11:33

"Home Secretary Alan Johnson said he was "delighted" about its closure. Britain has ruled out taking them in, and Mr Johnson said genuine refugees should apply for asylum in the country where they entered the EU."

Yahoo News:
 http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090922/tuk-french-move-to-close-jungle-camp-6323e80.html

FG
- Homepage: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090922/tuk-french-move-to-close-jungle-camp-6323e80.html


message from Calais

22.09.2009 13:04

there are lots of migrants going to No Borders actvists for help, but people don't know what to do or to offer them.

There is noone else present for the moment


according to an activist at Grand Synthe and Loon plages there were arrests but the camps were not razed However there is a lot of concern that they and the squats will be over the coming days so surveillence is very important

the No Border activists in calais need support , In short they are tired and the situation is overwhelming .

calaismigrantsolidarity


I may be missing something...

22.09.2009 13:10

"Home Secretary Alan Johnson said he was "delighted" about its closure. Britain has ruled out taking them in, and Mr Johnson said genuine refugees should apply for asylum in the country where they entered the EU."

I really can't see what's wrong with that, a genuine asylum seeker in fear of his life does not need to come to the UK once s/he is safe in France or any other EU country.

Perhaps I'm wrong but by attempting to do so they move from being Asylum seekers to economic migrants. the two are different things and should not be confused.

In fact illegal economic migration has the effect of turning public opinion against those with a genuine need for asylum with the knock on effect of making aslyum much harder to claim. False asylum claims also have the effect of slowing down and overwhelming systems and charities established to process and assist asylum seekers.

I speak as one who has significant experience of the UK's very poor aslyum system and is married to somebody who left Yugoslavia for aslyum in Sweden.

I.P.Freely


Sub Prefect press statement

22.09.2009 13:23

Sub Prefect of Police in Calais Debousquey announces that 278 Pashtun arrested, 146 over 18 years old, 132 under 18 years old. Not being held in police station or Coquelles detention centre, not sure where.

In his statement to the press outside the cleared Pashto ‘jungle’ Debousquey states that “…we couldn’t accept this jungle which is a scandal in terms of rights and sanitation, in terms of delinquency of whom the first victims were the migrants who camped here”. Yet the police and Calais authorities:

> refused showers to be set up by Secours Catholiques in July

> manouevred legally to frustrate Medecins du Monde and Medecins sans Frontieres’ plans to attempt to deal with the scabies outbreak among migrants in Calais

> reneged on their legal responsibilities to house and support under 18s, by Debousquey’s own reckoning about half of those arrested this morning

> regularly harrassed migrants on their way to the afternoon PASS medical clinic, often picking up migrants and dropping them off 3km out of Calais

> and many indiscriminate violent and illegal actions against migrants, individually and collectively, such as spraying the one water hydrant at the Pashto jungle with tear gas to make it unusable

> FRENCH LAW makes it illegal to support anyone without papers – an activist was arrested earlier in the summer for lending her mobile phone to a migrant. We have obviously flouted this ridiculous law in our work with migrants

Hear Debousquey himself at
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/22/french-police-jungle-calais

calaismigrantsolidarity


Asylum Seekers Should Stay in the Country They Arrive At?

23.09.2009 07:46

""Home Secretary Alan Johnson said he was "delighted" about its closure. Britain has ruled out taking them in, and Mr Johnson said genuine refugees should apply for asylum in the country where they entered the EU."

I really can't see what's wrong with that, a genuine asylum seeker in fear of his life does not need to come to the UK once s/he is safe in France or any other EU country."

Very convenient for countries not on borders which migrants can easily reach. Who is going to travel by boat from Libya, past Italy, past Gibraltar, past Portugal and France, and then land on the beaches of southern England?

Such an argument is basically saying that only those asylum seekers who can afford to jump on a plane (in a country where the police might kill them anyway - so who would dare -) can come to the UK.

It's stupid. I'm assuming, in my reply, that you have even a modicum of geographical knowledge, because I don't even need to look at a map to know that most asylum seekers don't plan on recreating the KonTiki expedition to get to safety. This argument basically says that most countries of Europe - apart from perhaps Bulgaria, Italy, Greece, Spain, should accept asylum seekers. The rest - because they are inaccessible - should not.

It's a thin, easily destroyed argument from a racist. And proves the UK government is racist from top (Brown and the rest), to bottom (the police).

Krop


the UK

23.09.2009 21:59

> It's stupid. I'm assuming, in my reply, that you have even a modicum of geographical knowledge, because I don't even need to look at a map to know that most asylum seekers don't plan on recreating the KonTiki expedition to get to safety

Plenty try to get in the UK having completed a huge, long trip. They've not only "planned" it, they've almost completely implemented it too. Some take a years to get here. To come specifically to the UK.

Besides that. I dont get it. What if "no borders" get their way and they all do come into the country?
They can't work. They have no money. They probably have no where to live. What happens to them when they get into the UK?

Max


why why

24.09.2009 01:02

why can't "they" work? why can't "they" make a home? there's plenty of empties...

and while we are at it why did a previous poster need to make such a distinction between "economic migrants" and "asylum seekers". if you and your children are dying, would you make a distinction between death by starvation/poverty or death by the state's weaponry? economics kill too.

why