Calais Migrant Solidarity
Resisting the border regime since 2009 *** ألشعب يريد إسقاط الحدود
1500 person shipping container camp to be built in the jungle – 400 people told to move
Yesterday Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister of France, came back to Calais to make more annuoncements about future plans for the jungle and the securitization of the border.
In response to his visit, the media has largely focussed on Cazneuve’s ‘humanitarian gesture’ to erect heated tents for 200 women and children. Some have discussed the new plan to build a nice camp for 1,500 people too. Some have congratulated him (or gently chastised him) for committing another 500+ police – both gendarmerie and riot police – to Calais.
What few are talking about is that Cazenueve came to Calais to talk with some associations about moving at least 400 people from their place in the jungle in order to build this new government camp. For those in that space, the association Salam have started to tell people that they have 10 days to move, with plans to start contructing the new camp to start in less than 2 weeks. The crude red pillars that have started to be put up in the jungle mark out the zone for the new camp.
Those forced to move are being offered temporary tents and a place at the front of the queue for the new centre. People moved on good faith to Jules Ferry, forced from their old homes on the promise that living in this land would be tolerated, there would be no evictions and they would not have hassle from the police. For some of them, this now will be the third or fourth time they have been forced to move. For everybody these plans come without any consultation or consent.
From a basic practical sense this camp screams with disrespect. It will be made of shippintg conatiners separated by 3m wide pathways. No architect was involved in the design, and it will be built in the wettest and windiest part of the jungle. The newspaper ‘Liberation’, who have drawn up a mock-up of the planned camp (here) describe it as reminiscent of the concentration camps of the 1930’s.
People in the jungle don’t want the new closed camp. Many see it as what it really is; not a humanitarian gesture offering hygeine, safety and security, but a further step in plans to divide and control people. Throughout their journeys – from Ventimiglia, to Lampedusa all the way back to countries neighbouring Europe – people have experienced what is meant by these camps. More fences, lists of names, curfews, easy police presence, rules, rules, rules and no autonomy.
The new camp will house 1500, but there are around 6000 people in the jungle right now. What about those who don’t fit in the camp? And who will the people who ‘fit’ be? Will they just allow the rest of the camp to live autonomously outside the walls of this prison? It seems unlikely. It seems like a more large scale eviction will happen in the next months.
We condemn this plan. We will stand in solidarity with those who will be forceably moved from their homes once again. We condemn the associations who collaborate with the authorities and in doing so make the forceable possible on behalf of the police and the government.