Manchester No Borders call for action on Calais crisis
Article published: Wednesday, September 23rd 2009
Solidarity campaigners attempt to prevent police incursions
Manchester No Borders have called for action against the mass evictions and arrests of refugees taking place in the French port town of Calais.
On Friday a protest was held outside the French consulate in Manchester, and this week members of the group will travel to Calais to give practical help to the migrants there, and to monitor and frustrate, the clearance attempts.
Last Wednesday, French immigration minister, Eric Besson, announced that the Calais area will be a “migrant-free zone” by the end of next week. Large areas of woodland known locally as the ‘jungle’, where young men, many still children, have set up temporary shelters are currently being cleared and bulldozed. Volunteer Erika Smith, from Stockport, who is already in Calais, reported by phone: “French riot police have arrived in Calais with army trucks. They are ready to use chemical gas and other weapons to drive migrants from the jungle.”
Hundreds of migrants, mostly from Afghanistan and many of them minors, have been rounded up in military trucks and placed in detention. They face an uncertain future. Thousands more are believed to have fled the area before the clearances began. Amid celebrations in the right wing press and warnings from aid organisations of an intensification of the humanitarian crisis facing migrants in Northern France, British Home Secretary Alan Johnson yesterday asserted that he was “delighted” with the situation.
Matt Clifton, who will travel to Calais tomorrow, said: “It is unbelievable. They have escaped the violence of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, and now it’s the French government waging war on them. Where are they supposed to go?” A spokesperson for No Borders, Jack Brendon, said: “Many migrants, even the children, will disappear in one of Europe’s immigration prisons, probably in Greece or Italy. But others will eventually make it to Britain. It is also the UK’s responsibility to recognise how its border controls affects people’s lives.”
The No Borders network have appealed for those unable to travel to Calais to undertake solidarity actions in the UK by putting pressure on the Border and Immigration Agency. More information here.
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Comments
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It really is horrific. It was ghoulish to see Eric Besson proudly walking through the wreckage of peoples lives after they’d all been cleared out.
Comment by brian on September 25, 2009 at 4:37 pm
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