Destruction of Calais migrant camps planned next week

*  http://lille.indymedia.org/article17126.html - calais : mobilisation contre la destruction de la ’jungle’ (in french)

*  http://no-racism.net/thema/70 - borderregime france / grenzregime frankreich: collected articles in no-racism.net (german/english)

*  https://at.indymedia.org/node/15112 - article in german and adresses for protests (embassies and consulates in austria)

who ended up serving 10 yrs in 1998 for deporting Jews

They ethnic cleanse them over there I guess like they do with the other ones.

anyone in the bristol area tomorrow please come along to this migrant solidarity demo  http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/690702

The major reason why so many migrants come to the UK stems from one reason above all: Imperialism.

You won't find that many migrants who point to this as the deciding factor, but is because of Britain's role in the world and the impact that the British military machine has had.

The Afghani who worked for the British Army as a translator who has to flee when the Taleban took control of his village is well within his rights to flee to the UK. Where else should he go?

It is the fault of British politicians and businessmen that so many places in the world are so dangerous, migrants are the human face of the destruction that is caused.


People who scream 'they don't belong here' would do well to learn the history of Britain's role in the world.

> The major reason why so many migrants come to the UK stems from one reason above all: Imperialism.

I can't see why that would be an incentive. Just doesn't make any sense.
"Amjab, Where are you going to go?"
"The UK"
"Why? For safety?"
"No, I go because of imperialism"

> You won't find that many migrants who point to this as the deciding factor, but is because of Britain's role in the world and the impact that the British military machine has had.

If britain is so bad, then why would they come here? It doesn't make any sense.
I think they are coming here because the the perceived incentives make it an attractive option compared to staying where they are under the violent rule of the taleban (who do daft stuff like stone woman for trying to get an education or showing their faces)

> The Afghani who worked for the British Army as a translator who has to flee when the Taleban took control of his village is well within his rights to flee to the UK. Where else should he go?

Ok thats one, what about the rest of them? Lets do a case by case rather than let the floodgates open.

> It is the fault of British politicians and businessmen that so many places in the world are so dangerous, migrants are the human face of the destruction that is caused.

Not necessarily. Many countries are corrupt through their own internal problems of religion and/or government. The british government doesn't encourage hardline islam to behave the way it does (except in this country of course).

> People who scream 'they don't belong here' would do well to learn the history of Britain's role in the world.

I don't think you can blame everything on the UK. You will not find a single country that hasn't brought war and pillaging on another. Many of these countries civilisations are a lot older than the english empire, and yet they still had pretty much the same problems back then as they do now even before england grew out of diapers.

The differences was, we crawled out of the christian dark ages and embraced science and reason rather than backward religious controlling values. Unfortunatley, we once again are slipping through continued appeasement.

* Tuesday July 2009 (9:20 am) The night passed with activists hanging around with migrants who were more visibly shaken than usual by the deportation threats. Activists patrolled other jungles in cars in an attempt to monitor the police. It has been a night of people arriving from Netherlands Belgium UK France to show solidarity withy migrants in Calais. Early in the morning CRS riot police shot tear gas into the Pastun jungle and beat up and removed five people. Unfortunately this is nothing new in Calais these days

Some UK and Dutch press arrived. The morning saw Eritrean and Iranian migrants being stopped and detained on the streets of Calais; again nothing new. Whether 48 hours detention or deportation for Iranians we don’t know. The racism of police actions was visible in their removal of black sans papiers while white activists refusing to show ID were let go as we watched our friends being taken away
giving us the thumbs up from the windows of the unmarked police van. We condemn these acts of terror. As the repression continues the links between migrant activists and resident activists grow..

 http://www.calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com

If you opened the borders we would be over run, how would we manage to keep these foreigners in food clothing and state benefit when our economy is near bankruptcy, there are 32+ million to many people on this island, it is environmentally damaging and simply not sustainable to welcome surplus here, in fact people have got to go, population numbers have to be reduced, maybe transported to countries of bigger land mass, time is running out till we inevitability face climate disaster, maybe we don't have time for 1 child per family measures like china has previously enjoyed, we sure as hell should not be importing more immigrants in especially as we are facing economic collapse of unknown proportions, it sounds like you need to get real and get your head off your citizen smith trip.

. . you are prioritising the rights of people who don't even live here while people here are struggling. if you were people who had created strong communities where you live, people who looked after their neighbours instead of regarding them as racists, people who had stopped bad housing, cheap labour and all the rest, then maybe supporting migrants in calais might make sense. but you have not, so all this meaningless support and pride of place on indymedia just plays into the hands of the BNP

@ James - the deported Jews were whites (who in the hindsight won the battle of ideas coupled with the christian guilt of mass-murdering them), these Afghan aren't, worse they come from a muslim background.

@Durruti02 - anararchists (and I hope Indymedia/No Borders as well) were, are and will support people's right to choose where they want to live, period. Got it? Were you in the nazi Germany, would you 've 'prioritised' rights of the indigenous pure blooded 'aryans' over the infesting jews? WIth the benefit of hindsight we can tell you what would the present times been calling you had you chosen that path - a nazi scum. Do learn something from the past.

I would give you the credit for raising a valid point i.e. the dire need to build a community based anti-racist movement; stop the childish finger-pointing and get on with it, it's never too late to fight for a better, beautiful, and just world.

In solidarity with Calais struggle !!!

The picture of this 'article' is really very bad and only speaks of one thing really

MEAL TICKET

LimpShtick wrote @Durruti02 - anararchists (and I hope Indymedia/No Borders as well) were, are and will support people's right to choose where they want to live, period. Got it? Were you in the nazi Germany, would you 've 'prioritised' rights of the indigenous pure blooded 'aryans' over the infesting jews? WIth the benefit of hindsight we can tell you what would the present times been calling you had you chosen that path - a nazi scum. Do learn something from the past.



BUT Limp Shtick .. supporting people right to live where they want to live is meaningless. If you are an anarchist you should understand that society is based on power. The reason migrants are ****ed is that they have no power.

What have you, NB etc actually done achieved for these migrants? Nothing, simply nothing. It is just liberal chest beating that achieves nothing.

Do something that gives you the power to help migrants before offering them empty gestures. And stop doing this stuff that makes the vast majority of people think that this is all @s do!

Look at the Indymedia features and it is ALL this distraction stuff. And you never wonder why people turn to the BNP instead of US?????????

And what a sad pathetic and oh so typical attempt at smearing. You know what mate? I would have been the the concentration camps way before your liberal m/c arse, as both a red/@ union organiser and as yes a (partly) 'infesting jew'.

i drag myself and go to a job that i hate doing to put some honest money in my pocket, so excuse me if i'm sick and tired of funding other people's stomaches.

i'm not interested in paying some immigrant food ticket. I'm not interested in paying some public sector employee who probably earns about twice what i do to promote and lecture me about how people should get "what they are entitled to" off the state. If their so concerned why do they cut their wage bill in half?

I'll tell you why - its because they arnt concerned. Just leeching off workers What do beaurocrats and immigrants ever give me? Fuck all. What if i'm hungry and got no money - not one of them is gonna help me out.

Theres no advantages to me feeding yet more needy people. I can't feed everyone in the fucking world because they decide to support stupid backward religions that ban them from getting educated or working. The more i contribute to their food bill, the less reason they have got to support themselves.

Hell, i wouldn't have to work if my food and board were paid for me.

fucking sick of it

There's a lot of bullshit flying around here. For a start, you need to make some kind of distinction between economic migrants and asylum seekers / refugees. Economic migrants come to the UK (and other rich countries) purely for economic reasons whereas those claiming asylum as refugees come to Europe to escape from dire, untenable and in many cases life-threatening situations at home. As most of the migrants stuck in Calais are in the latter category (believe me, I've been there and seen it for myself), it makes no sense to go on some Daily Mail rant here about 'immigrants' coming in and living off the benefit system, 'stealing' British jobs or whatever. Asylum seekers do not get state benefits and are not allowed to work in the UK. In reality they form an invisible underclass of people who exist all around you but you don't ever see because no matter how hard core or working class you are, you're still fucking privileged. If they work, they do so illegally, doing hideous jobs that no-one wants, for well below minimum wage, in borderline slave conditions, in order to pay off their debts to the traffickers. What I'm talking about here are the jobs that no-one else will do, such as sweatshop labour, and picking vegetables for farmers who can't afford to employ a workforce because they have been crippled by factors like the Common Agricultural Policy. This slave labour props up the British economy, just as it does in the rest of Europe and the US. Remember a couple of years ago when Bush and co had the bright idea of kicking out all the 'illegal' hispanics from the USA, until people started to realise that without that invisible workforce the American economy would have crashed?

If migrants get refugee status (which is a lot harder than you think), they get benefits well below what unemployed British citizens get. But don't we have a moral obligation to support refugees, given that they mostly come from countries the UK has had a hand in destroying, whether recently (Iraq, Afghanistan), or further back, with our colonial legacy of creating unstable situations all over Africa, Asia and the Middle-East? It's very easy to point the finger of blame at corrupt and murderous governments in parts of Africa, and say that people there should sort themselves out rather than jump the sinking ship, but if you know your history you will understand that it was the European powers who butchered up those tribal lands with ruler-straight lines drawn on maps, pit one tribe against another in order to divide and rule, and then crippled the newly independent countries with world debt and structural adjustment programs. The UK, along with Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal and others, created an enormous quagmire, and now you sit in your safe European home and bitch about people fleeing the devastation we've caused.

Part of our colonial legacy is that ties were established between Britain and the countries we colonised. British people may not take this very seriously but that's because our privileged position in that power relationship lends us the luxury of complacency regarding its effects. You may wonder what reason someone from Iraq could possibly have to come to the UK, after the damage we've cause to their country. But maybe their grandfather fought as part of a British regiment in World War II, and they feel some kind of affinity for this place. Maybe that Sudanese refugee sees Britain as a good bet because they speak English; language is another legacy of British colonialism. What you find is that people from ex-British colonies tend to come to the UK, people from ex-Belgian colonies tend to go to Belgium, and so on. The idea that everyone in the world wants to be on this island is a myth created by the sensationalist mass media, which is then disseminated across our whole society as a means of scapegoating a group of people to distract our attention from unjustified wars, the erosion of our civil liberties, the rape of our environment and the daily realities of our oppression by the capitalist system. You would do well to shed your illusions and gain some perspective.

As for the idiots slating people for following Islam because of the intolerant acts of a fundamentalist group, I think it's time you took stock of your own intolerance. I know many Muslims and none of them are inclined to stone someone for trying to get an education. Tarring all Afghans with the brush of the Taliban is like assuming all Americans to be fundamentalist Christians. Take your bigotry and your racism elsewhere, please.

I'm worried by the number of dick-heads, racists, UKIPS and BNP-ers that are invading Indymedia. I think we should put a cap on their numbers!

'Migration Who Pays'...while your desire for first class primary education is touching I suggest you read a book like 'Bloody Foreigners' by Robert Winder which sets out quite clearly the fact that there has always been inward and outward migration throughout history, now is no different. It is obviously very convenient for the govt. and groups like Migration Watch, BNP etc to scapegoat migrants for our failed economic policies, sadly this has always been the way. It is sad, however, to see on indymedia people trying to mask their zenaphobia and racism by using cut and paste govt. stats. For all those foreign men/women out there, they must be all very disappointed to find that someone as clearly clued up as yourself only wants to procreate with fellow true Brits.

Re. Am I Worried's comment. The only no go areas involving Afghanis are in Afghanistan itself where the UK are spending billions on bombing the country and thus creating forced migration. I guess if we were not spending so much on our brave lads fighting the war against terror we could spend more on your daughter's education, perhaps allowing her the chance to grow up less bigoted then her mum. Regards whether you're racist or not, I hate to break it to you but I think you probably are a bit, what do you reckon? Go on admit it, just a titchy bit racist! x

If there wasnt an underclass of migrants classed as 'illegal' who could thus be exploited with icredibly low wages/conditions, the affect on UK jobs would be much less. Also remember more people in a country means more jobs are required.

I think you'll find the statistics above advise that aprox 1 in 7 primary school childred dont speak english as a FIRST launguage, not that they dont speak it at all. and as per 'If we tolerate this's comment, the amount of money the uk spends on causing a lot of this migration in the first place could be better spent on public services. As could the money from income tax if more migrants were allowed to work legally.
The many other contributions to the UK economy that migrants give are certainly a help to our public services as it is, the NHS especially would completley collapse were it not for the migrants working in it as doctors, nurses and support staff.

Not everyone that lives in afghanistan is a fundimentalist islamic radical. Infact having lived under a reigeme with these ideas many of them are very opposed to radical islam. When i hear radical muslims trying to "convert" peopel with there rants they tend to focus on the fact that the uk military kills a lot of muslims, the fact the uk economic policy has historicly and recently abused the resources of muslim countrys while leaving them as poor as posisble, and the general anti-islamic abuse that many of them suffer.

I've never been to an area run by Afghan asylum seekers, but i'm going to go out on a limb and say its probably not a rich area, probably not a nice area, infact from talking to migrants in the UK i'd imagine its some kind of council owned ghetto. when people have next to nothing then organised criminals often consider them easy prey - something i learned in calais-, but people don't want to invade us... they just want a safe comfortable place to work for a decent life and i dont see anything wrong with that.

I suspect that someone is trying to wind up No Borders... Probably not worth feeding the trolls!

"I'm sure i remember reading the UN charter was for the first country to offer sanctuary.
There was nothing about getting a 'choice' in which place you want to reside."

- Just because something is written in the UN charter doesn't make it right. As a white European you are free to go almost anywhere in the world, settle down and make yourself at home. To insinuate that others should not have the same right just because they are Kurdish, Afghan or Eritrean is clearly racist, whilst to deny your own freedom of movement can only ever be a personal choice. The only way out of this debacle is for freedom of movement to be extended to all.

We are all descended from migrants. The word 'English' is derived from 'Angleish'. Anglo-Saxon people were descended from Angles and Saxons from Scandinavia. Even the Celts migrated to this island from elsewhere. Further back, DNA profiling has shown that every human being on the planet is descended from one small tribe in Africa. Freedom of movement is a basic human right; people have migrated in search of better lives since the dawn of time, long before land was 'owned' or states were established. Who are you to say it should be otherwise?

Perhaphs we should all move to Afghanistan to enjoy greater freedom and safety... why can't you indymedia guys take these idiocies out? I don' mind a bit of debate with peple who have different views, but these comments are below the lowest level of the lowest IQ of ignorant racists - including the alleged 'anarchist' Durruti02: why should we waste time with them? It may also be possible some of these fucks are paid by the government to badmouth the no borders movement or perhaps they are doing it free of charge just because they are racist and xenophobic. In both cases I really think we should not give them a showcase. Racists fuck off !

I agree it is a bad photo, it just point out how miserable life is for these migrants but it does not show their amazing courage and resiliance pride and dignity and sense of humor. Yesterday night as we were 'patrolling' the jungels in a car we met some 12 to 15 years old Afghani boys who had just escaped a police raid and do you know what they asked us? If we can play them some music.

as someone who's been to a no border camp before and seen firsthand how the organizers made very little effort to talk to the local community, and made very little effort afterwards to deal with the increased militarization and repercussions of their martyr heroic white guy getting beat by police antics, this raid by the police to clear the migrant camps just seems so obviously motivated by the recent no borders camp in calais, no?

No, the current attacks on the migrants in Calais have nothing to do with the No Borders camp and very much to do with the Evian accords, and more generally with Dublin2 and with the EU policies of externalistion of borders. No Borders activists have been present on the ground in Calais ever since the No Borders camp, supporting the migrants in every way they can and talking to the locals, and you are more than likely a troll.

Right before the Red Cross Refugee Camp in Sangatte ( http://noborder.org/archive_item.php?id=168 -  http://www.gisti.org/doc/plein-droit/58/satragne.html) was closed, the police started to hunt migrants. noborder.org wrotes on 8th of November 2002: "Even worse, French police have begun a veritable fox hunt on refugees in the region. According to local sources, it appears that all refugees who are caught and arrested are forced to sign an expulsion order, photographed and their personal data is entered on the Schengen Information System (SIS)." ( http://noborder.org/archive_item.php?id=202)

In July 2007, a women died when she was hiding under a lorry ( http://no-racism.net/article/2202). She was not the first and not the last person who was killed while she tried to cross the border. The people have to use more and more dangerous ways to cross the cannel to the UK - whereas the police is hunting them all the time.

A report from Calais tells: "Yesterday (24. Sep 2007) evening, Police forces were deployed to harass and persecute political refugees who live in our streets . Not content only to use tear gas , the destruction of squats and the prosecution of those who are fighting for the defense of human rights , the forces of order , without scruple invade our town with plain clothes policemen who come and go looking out for anyone witnessing their misdeeds. An incredible armada of unmarked vehicles plough the roads of northern Calais , crossed from time to time by coaches of CRS police . An impressive force was sent intowards the hut where the evening meal is distributed to the refugees, to pursue a few refugees around 11.30 pm." (more:  http://no-racism.net/article/2281)

Activsts, who visited a few times with the immigrants in Calais between the summer of 2007 and May 2008, in order to give you an account of their life, wrote:
"On the 17th of January 2008, the residents of the dunes area were painfully waken up with truncheons and teargas. You might say that it's nothing unusual for the immigrants in Calais..." (more:  http://no-racism.net/article/3025)

All this happened before the No Borders focused on the situation of migrants in Calais. And for sure, this will continue until we put an end to it!

Further information:
 http://www.migreurop.org
 http://no-racism.net/thema/70

all you that apose the destrution of this dump in France why not hand your passports in at dover on your way out and fight the good fight with these rapist's and muggers.