World News Online Information Update France Calais Associations, health, injuries, living conditions and a mega rubbish collection‏

SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

Associations, health, injuries, living conditions and a mega rubbish collection

The Medicins du Monde dispensary in the jungle has been improved and made larger with Medicins Sans Frontiers’ help. The two associations are trying to remedy the huge failure of the French government – there is only one nurse in the Jules-Ferry day centre for three hours per day. Though still insufficient, with so many injuries occurring and so many people living in the jungle, the MdM dispensary is a great help. For serious and life threatening injuries people are taken to hospital by ambulance, straight away. The new PASS clinic at the new hospital is very far and the quality of care is very bad. MdM and MSF are also working at documenting injuries from accidents, razor wire and police, denouncing the catastrophic sanitary situation and the fact that people are already gravely traumatized, coming from war situations. Concern about the dire conditions in the jungle have now prompted calls for action from the UK’s leading medical union, the British Medical Association (BMA). I think this is very important, and pressure from all these medical associations will have an effect. Personally I think the MdM dispensary in the jungle is a very good initiative, the volunteers who run it are quite amazing and we should look towards co-operation with the associations if possible  in denouncing the violence of the border and the inhumane living conditions in the jungle, like already done in the past, rather than attacking them for not doing enough.  The government is responsible for the situation, not the associations. The Independent wrote quite a good article on Medicins du Monde, in English Doctors of the World, please read it. Only it fails to mention the presence of Medicins Sans Frontiers who are now working to Calais too, with MdM.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/calais-crisis-migrants-are-living-in-appalling-conditions-say-doctors-a6668631.html

There is also a new team of activist medics who are well trained, have got their own caravan and are there every day, for long term. Perhaps other medics could join them. In one day they treated 50 injuries. Yet between them and MdM dispensary, it is still not enough! Also it would be good if people can send medical supplies such as bandages, disinfectants, plasters, pain killers and Maalox, and money to buy them. I started distributing medical supplies to the migrants themselves, some are doctors and many can do first aid, and most injuries happen at night when there is nobody, all dispensaries are closed.

It is the Jules-Ferry centre who is financed by the government, provides sub-standard services and do checks and controls on the migrants. It is the association La vie active who is paid to run the J-F centre, not Salam. La vie active receive money to make one meal per day for 1500 people, it is a government’s decision. They are currently serving 2500 to 3000 meals. Thousands of English and other people who are collecting food and clothes and money to build shelters are doing a vitally important job: nobody would be able to survive in the jungle without their help. It is also amazing to see so much solidarity. According to a survey by The Independent 1 in 4 people in UK have helped refugees in some capacity! after so many years of xenophobic and racist propaganda! The fact that the distributions are often messy depends on the fact that there is no infrastructure in Calais, it is just being built, there was nobody doing distributions in the jungle but two heroic couples of middle aged pensioners who are going there every day to help, bless them, now many English & others are volunteering too and a large warehouse has been rented, 2 km from the jungle. The Belgian people were told not to go there and attempt to do distributions by themselves but did not listen. There is no drainage system nowhere in the jungle, apart from a water pump bought by the volunteers with which they try to remove the flood water, and to say it is discarded clothes who cause the floods is an absurdity. MdM did say from the very beginning that the ground is not suitable to build a camp because of clay under the sand, parts of the camp get flooded every time there is strong rain for that reason. It was a government’s choice to send people to that former dump and leave without anything, the government did not provide a single tent or shelter and it is all done by volunteers and associations with private donations. Despite so many inevitable shortcomings I think they did a great job. My position remains that nobody should be there, the men women and children who sleep in the jungle should be re-housed somewhere decent, with sewers, a decent water system and in smaller places, as it is unthinkable to any rational person but Cazeneuve that some 4000 people of different nationalities who do not know each other can all be dumped together in a bidonville/ghetto. I never met anyone who is happy to be there. The news that police are to go to into the jungle with OFPII are far from reassuring…

by Chiara

Last job MdM and MSF did, with the help of over 100 volunteer from England and other countries, and with the help of many people livng in the jungle: they collected all the rubbish that was an amazing quantity all over the place, tons of it, put it into sacks, but the Town Hall are refusing to take it away.

please contact:

Natacha Bouchart

Mairie de Calais
Place du Soldat Inconnu
CS30329
62107 CALAIS Cedex
Tel : 03 21 46 62 00 

Fax : 03 21 46 62 09

Envoyez un e-mail à la mairie de Calais :
Secrétariat du Maire de Calais : secretariat-particulier@mairie-calais.fr
Cabinet direction de la mairie Calais : dir-cabinet@mairie-calais.fr
Maire de Calais : maire@mairie-calais.fr

Calais Migrant Solidarity

Documenting police harassment of migrants in Calais and strengthening resistance against the border regime

(en) Brazil, Coletivo Anarquista Luta de CLasses ? CALC: Nesting Mother Earth San Gabriel RS: Four years without water, electricity, road, education, health, housing ... (pt)

We nesting families Terra Madre regional San Gabriel MST / RS came hereby opine on the 
situation of extreme insecurity and abandonment that we are subjected to almost four 
years. Bearing in mind that we are not an isolated case, but rather the product of a 
national policy favoring agribusiness at the expense of human rights, biodiversity and all 
ways of life and traditional cultures. ---- After resist long periods camped and have been 
part of historical journeys of struggle for land in RS, as the occupations of Southall in 
San Gabriel, farm Coconut War in South After we fought all the brutality of the murderer 
government Yeda associated with agribusiness and be together and at the forefront in many 
other journeys struggles of workers in the field and in the city for almost ten years, we 
the eighty-seven families settled in July 2009 live despite "settled" facing a series of 
difficulties leaving the neglect of the federal government and its supporters to hold a 
land reform that actually offers the conditions for our own families survive with dignity 
and work in the field.

We played in a settlement project 80 km from the city, no structure, no water, no light, 
no medical aid, no roads, and here were forgotten. Depend for a long period of humiliating 
and degrading basket INCRA, which sometimes contained up rotten powdered milk to sustain 
our children.

Medical and hospital assistance within the settlement never knew what it is. There is no 
follow up accordingly and transportation in emergencies only internal solidarity can 
solve, but a storm last December a companion hit in the head by a tabua waited 7 am 
followed by bleeding, so that led gushing blood in the back of a van, could get near a 
SAMU ambulance. This fellow just came out of the coma in March and even losing some 
movement was discharged back to where settlement through a joint effort was built in order 
their first wooden shed. It was for this wood by one of these boards that was reached in 
December temporal as these boards took over 3 years to come and perhaps are not as scarce 
to give the floor, so that fellow suffer and your family like every other one more 
pampeano harsh winter conditions without minimum housing.

Without running water that we hope not stop raining. In last year's drought had to dig 
holes in the fields in order to quench the thirst of our families, or seek long distances 
Sanghas dams and sharing the same water with all kinds of animals. INCRA officials, who 
did not appear so often that there are very few to serve the entire region, just had to 
watch it without the resources to change things.

Regarding education after much ado and promise of state and local government, no school 
and no internal roads our children from first to eighth grade even have to wake up at 3:30 
am to catch a 6:00 a bus falling apart in the central area of ??the settlement and travel 
another two hours for a distance of nearly 30 km to reach the nearest school. The hardness 
is such that classes are in full shift and every two days when it does not rain. In this 
context of overall insecurity it creates all conditions so that no young person remains in 
the field.

Without the internal roads is also frustrated because the production is impossible to 
carry cargo, including milk that is goal of most settlers produce here, but that is only a 
dream for that to make matters worse, the power key to this line of production exists only 
on projects that never go out of paper or speeches of a Light for All that the field does 
not quite "all". Although we had the roads and energy, indispensable, with four years of 
settlement have not accessed or a third of the meager credits that should receive 
minimally to invest in production.

In view of all this we have the full assurance that for agribusiness, for landlordism, and 
for all large fish farming does not work so well, because only in 2012 the federal 
government allocated about 100 billion reais to buy machines businessmen and landowners, 
transgenic seeds, and poisons multinational companies and well below polluting the land 
and concentrating. We also know that we live in inhuman situation is also the result of a 
strategy that the time left to face the pressure and began to focus on the struggles of 
the cabinet, leaving aside the basic organization and betting all the chips in power 
structures. A strategy that could go into enemy territory, but that the internal dynamics 
of this type of trigger was soon confused the enemy with helping him to manage the misery 
in much of the areas of Agrarian Reform.

For all this we decided to turn our indignation in struggle and organization. And ask for 
this solidarity with that struggle, militancy, other social movements, unions, basic, and 
supporters of the fight for Earth against agribusiness, to kickstart our achievements and 
to show that the oppressed and exploited our rights only FIGHT asserts. For if the state 
formerly used batons, tear gas, methods of torture, rubber bullets and tin to demobilize 
us, today he uses methods more subtle but no less effective as abandonment, bureaucracy, 
inflexibility, cooptation leaders, and isolation. And it is precisely to escape this 
situation we seek those who fight because we know it's only between those who find mates.

Coordination of groups of families nesting MOTHER EARTH

Group of female nesting MOTHER EARTH

Collective youth nesting

From: 
http://vermelhoenegro.org/blog/2013/04/01/assentamento-madre-terra-sao-gabriel-rs-quatro-anos-sem-agua-luz-estrada-educacao-saude-habitacao/