Calais Migrant Solidarity
Resisting the border regime since 2009 ***
ألشعب يريد إسقاط الحدود
This week in Calais
Here is a summary of some of the more ‘routine’ things that happened in the jungle this week. These things happen all the time and yet, because they happen all the time, they somehow become not news worthy, or become repetitive as news. We include them here because they are not normal, even if they happen all the time.
From the beginning of the week, Gendarmes began having their vans and officers continuously present on a stretch of the motorway from Marck to Calais port.
Early Tuesday morning, after some people living in the jungle made a traffic jam on the motorway running past the jungle, police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Witnesses say that one guy was running way from police when he was shot by a rubber bullet in the back of the leg and broke his leg. Friends carried him out of the jungle and were fired upon with gas. Having called for an ambulance and told they would be better taking him themselves to the hospital, they discovered and ambulance sitting round the corner from them. Another person was shot in the mouth with a rubber bullet, breaking numerous teeth.
On Tuesday daytime, CRS made a road block on one of the exits from the jungle. Vehicles leaving the jungle were stopped and required to show documents for the drivers and all passengers. Vehicles were searched for people without papers.
On Wednesday, people from the jungle made a traffic jam at the Eurotunnel. Many hundreds of people crossed the city to be there, and were pushed back through the city by police. Many made it through police lines to the traffic jam, and for several hours were met with tear gas.
Thursday, one person involved in CMS was denied exit from the jungle, and told ‘the jungle is closed today’.
In the afternoon there were a lot of people on the motorway around the Eurotunnel after untrue rumours spread of a traffic jam there. A teenager from Sudan – Youssef – was killed on the motorway. That night, around 100 people marched to the hospital to pray for their their dead friend. Having only been in the jungle 3 days, nobody knew anything more about him than that his name was Youssef and he was from Sudan.
Demonstration by some people in the jungle 12/05/2015
Today some 300 people, mainly from the Sudanese community but also some other communities too, held a protest after the death of teenage Youssef, hit by a car on the motorway two days ago. The day before, an Ethiopian man who is still unknown died in similar circumstances. At least three people are in hospital in a serious condition at the moment after being hit by vehicles. Many more are in hospital suffering injuries or by police.
The crowd marched through the jungle and carried banners in different languages saying things like ‘Today Youssef. Tomorrow who?’, ‘No to racism. Yes to rights. No to terrorism’ and ‘Do survivors of war not have the right to live in peace?’ The crowd were blocked at the entrance to the jungle by a line of CRS. After an hour of occupation, the people returned to the jungle and held a vigil in front of the Jules Ferry centre. After they held a meeting in which people discussed how to continue to mobilize for freedom of movement. There was the feeling that numbers and unity between communities in the jungle can help break the state of siege in which people find themselves, and they are asking for French and international support to do this.
Earlier in November, a protest by families and children living in the jungle was attacked by police
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5dm65GXvBk
and a peaceful demonstration by Beduins from Kuwait managed to march to the ferry port and back without being stopped.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5dm65GXvBk
and a peaceful demonstration by Beduins from Kuwait managed to march to the ferry port and back without being stopped.
Police Violence at the Jungle / November 2015
This video is a montage of some of the numerous tear gas attacks by the CRS into the jungle. The clips have been recorded on 25th and 26th of November. They show police firing gas directly at people and into people’s homes, things that are forbidden in regulations on its use in crowd control (these rules are also broken when it comes to rubber bullets and stun grenades).
For sure these scenes are only part of the story. The montage does not show some of the people in the camp trying to make traffic jams (the action that often brings the police to the jungle in the first place), or returning police fire with stones. Leaving these details out can paint a picture of the people living in the jungle as passive victims.
This is not the case. People defend themselves by throwing stones. They create opportunities to cross by making a traffic jam. They take their freedom of movement even when it is denied to them.
But we chose not to include footage of people throwing stones for several reasons:
Firstly, when the police fire tear gas, we are also there, getting gassed. Like the rest of the crowd, our attention is very much in the direction of the threat. This montage reflects our focus, on police violence.
Secondly, we don’t want to put anyone on film doing things that might jeopardise their safety, or be used against them. We always try to avoid filming people in the camp anyway (unless they specifically request to be filmed), because most people don’t like that intrusion. We try to avoid filming people in situations like the ones in this footage specifically because we also don’t want cameras facing the crowd to inhibit people taking action.
This video is not the whole story, but then, a lot of what makes up the struggle for the freedom of movement is invisible and remains powerful by being that way.
To those who say that the behaviour of the police in such situations is self defence, we say this is a backward logic. The idea that people throwing stones is equal to the violence backed up by the weight of the state is ridiculous. Just in the last week, several people we know of have ended up in the hospital with injuries either directly or indirectly caused by tear gas or rubber bullets. Throwing stones in these situations is self-defence.
To those who say that the people living in the camp only make the situation worse for themselves when they use violence, we say that when you have been forced back into a wasteland outside of the city, denied access to mainstream society at every step, denied every dignity within that society, we ask, why should people be well behaved? Too many times we hear people say that they came to Europe to find some rights for themselves and cannot believe what they discover in its place. Why should people respond respectfully when faced with the barbarism of this society, even if that barbarism is dressed up in the respectability of the law? What, exactly, is their motivation to do so?
We shot these images and this is just our analysis from them. Some might say that we don’t have a right to offer our analysis of other people’s actions, that we speak on their behalf.
But this analysis is also how we feel when we are gassed, and how we feel when we step outside a system that denies equality. With them, we seek out our own ways of dignity and equality together, outside of this diseased system. This is our struggle too, and this is how we see it for those that we stand next to during events like these. What else can we say? When we say nothing, this is a statement in of itself.
The Border Takes Another Life
Yesterday afternoon, a 16 year old Sudanese boy was killed on the A16 motorway, near the entrance to the Euro tunnel. He was hit by a van at around 5.50pm. He was in cardiac arrest when the paramedics found him on the hard shoulder, and they were unable to revive him.
Later that evening, a group of mostly Sudanese refugees marched to the hospital. There they were met with masked police with flash ball guns, who intimidated and filmed the people as they grieved and tried to come to terms with what had happened. Eventually, after saying a prayer for the deceased, the people left the hospital and returned to the jungle.
This is the 22nd death in Calais this year that we are aware of. (The full list is here)
links to media⁚
December 14th, a call to fight borders and police repression / 14 décembre un appel à lutter contre les frontières et la répression policière
‘They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds’
In recent months, from Ventimiglia to Calais, state violence has increased against those who travel without papers. We see this in the re-introduction of border controls in various states in the Schengen zone that (among other things) resulted in new jungles in places like Ventimiglia, to the subsequent violent destruction of that jungle on the 30th of September, to the vast increase in French and British police in Calais, (plus the army at times), not counting the proliferation of measures that deny people access to European travel papers in the first place. Those who stand in solidarity with them have faced increased levels of repression too.
On December 14th, 2 people connected to the No Border Network will stand trial in Nice and Boulogne, France. One of them was arrested simply for being present in front of the border police station of Menton (on the French side of the border with Italy, close to Ventimiglia) during one of the many deportations of people from France to Italy. The other is accused of having organised riots in the Calais jungle, which is ridiculous, as those living in the jungle are perfectly capable of taking political action on their own intitiative.
These two trials show the willpower of the french and british state to break up the No Border Network, which has struggled for many years for the freedom of movement for all, without which those humanitarian emergency situations that create exiles will never be solved.
Now the french state is trying to muzzle any expression that stands against its goals by establishing a state of emergency, within a Fortress Europe that again reinforces an inside and an outside. We have to, now more than ever, affirm our determination and our unity against the repressive strategies of the state.
Let’s fight back and make December 14th a day of action against state repression, but above all against borders, against deportations and against all nation states.
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Ils ont essayé de nous enterrer. Ils ne savaient pas que nous étions des graines. »
Ces derniers mois, de Calais à Vintimille, la violence de l’État n’a fait que s’intensifier contre les populations migrantes. On voit bien cela, entre autres, à la réintroduction des contrôles à la frontière dans différents pays de la zone Schengen, qui a créé des nouvelles jungles comme à Vintimille, à la violente destruction de cette même jungle le 30 septembre dernier, à l’augmentation énorme de la présence de la police française ou anglaise à Calais (plus l’armée parfois), sans compter la prolifération des mesures pour empêcher les gens d’accéder à des documents leur permettant de traverser l’Europe. En parallèle, la répression s’abat sur les personnes qui tentent de soutenir les migrants dans la guerre impitoyable que l’Europe mène contre eux.
Ainsi, le 14 décembre prochain, à Nice et à Boulogne, deux personnes liées au réseau No Border vont comparaître en justice. Un des deux s’est fait arrêter simplement pour avoir été présent devant le poste de la police aux frontières de Menton lors d’une des nombreuses déportations de migrants vers l’Italie. L’autre est ridiculement accusé d’avoir organisé les émeutes qu’ont mené les migrants à la jungle de Calais, comme si ceux qui vivent dans la jungle n’étaient pas capables de mener des actions politiques de leur propre initiative.
Ces deux procès reflètent la volonté de l’État français de briser le réseau No Border, qui lutte depuis des années pour l’ouverture des frontières et la liberté de circulation pour tous sans lesquelles les situations d’urgence humanitaire que connaissent tous les exilé-es de se résoudront jamais.
À l’heure où l’État francais tente de museler toute expression un tant soit peu contraire à ses objectifs par l’instauration de l’état « d’urgence » et où l’Europe forteresse referme encore plus toutes ses frontières intérieures et extérieures, il faut plus que jamais affirmer notre détermination et notre unité face aux stratégies répressives de l’État.
Ne nous laissons pas faire, faisons du 14 décembre un jour d’action contre la répression mais surtout contre les frontières, les déportations et toutes les nations.
Solidarity demo with and of sans papiers held in Paris at the weekend / Manifestation de Solidarité avec et par les sans-papiers ce week-end à Paris
On Sunday the 22nd of November a demonstration happened in Paris – called by a number of different groups; some in solidarity with sans papiers; some lead by sans papiers – in solidarity with migrants. The demonstration defied the state of emergency that prohibits outdoor political expression by more than 2 people. By 3.15 there was over 500 people from many walks of life in front of the Bastille; lots of middle aged French women. Many chanted “Sou sou solidarity avec la refugees” as 30 or so gendarmes in riot gear watched the crowd. The demonstration moved off across a roundabout, blocking traffic. More police arrived, and they tried to block the march, but they had protesters on both sides of them. Police used pepper-spray and batons but were overwhelmed and let the protesters continue en route. People moved quickly and spread out. Many people stayed in Bastille.
As the march reached La Republique many people were already there, with maybe 1000 people in the square. The atmosphere was good. Tea was being given out and skate boarders played on the road shut by the police. It was exciting that people could still express themselves without being hit with the full weight of police. It is yet to be seen what effect the state of emergency will have on freedom of speech but this was a positive sign.
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Dimanche 22 Novembre, une manifestation a eu lieu à Paris – à l’appel d’un certain nombre de groupes : certains en solidarité avec les sans-papiers; d’autres menés par les sans-papiers eux mêmes, en solidarité avec les migrants.
La manifestation s’est faite malgré, et en opposition à, l’état d’urgence qui interdit tout rassemblement politique de plus de deux personnes. A 15 h 15, il y avait plus de 500 personnes à la Bastille, d’origines très différentes; par exemple un grand nombre de françaises d’âge mûr qui chantaient “So So So solidarité avec les réfugies” pendant que 30 gendarmes anti-émeutes surveillaient la foule. Le rassemblement s’est ensuite déplacé sur un rond point, bloquant le trafic. Des renforcements policier sont arrivés et ont tenté de bloquer la marche, mais ils étaient entourés de manifestant-e-s. Malgré lacrymogènes et matraques, la police, débordée, a du laisser la manifestation continuer. Certains manifestant-e-s se sont déplacés et éparpillés rapidement. La
plupart sont restés à Bastille.
plupart sont restés à Bastille.
Quand la manif est arrivée sur la place de la République, un millier de personnes était déjà là. L’atmosphère était bonne. Pendant que des skateurs utilisaient la rue bouclée par la police, du thé chaud était servi. La foule semblait contente de pouvoir s’exprimer sans subir de répression trop intense. Il est encore trop tôt pour établir l’effet de l’état d’urgence sur la liberté de parole, mais cette manifestation était un signe relativement encourageant.
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