Call for support from Calais - protest against police harassment and evictions

Faced with this announcement, local associations challenge the public agency which owns the place to renounce the expulsion time that negotiations opened and solutions are found for the relocation and immigration status of individuals (see above).

You can support this action by calling the president r.vandierendonck (at) senat.fr and the director :: epf-npdc.fr/Acces-directs/Nous-contacter of that agency, the Etablissement Public Foncier North - Pas-de-Calais.

You can copy or inspire you the following:

"Mr. Chairman / CEO Mr.,
I am very worried about the fate of the exiles who found refuge in old factory buildings Noyon in Calais, to be expelled the near future. The eviction of the squat in June of the rue Descartes was indeed followed by three weeks of tracking down the exiled through Calais to prevent them from relocating to another place, without them no solution is proposed.
So I ask you to postpone the expulsion time that alternative accommodation could be found for everyone - not just for asylum seekers - and the administrative situation of each can be studied.
Please accept, mister, the assurances of my citizen's greetings."

General Update from Tuesday, 11th October 2011

Perhaps due to the recent big police operations in Dunkerque, Oostende and other coastal towns, the number of migrants in Calais has risen suddenly. We are now seeing growing communities of people who have had a small or non existent presence in recent months - such as Pashtun and Somali.

The weather has been very unpleasant in few past days with wind and rain. It's particularly unwelcome to those with little or no shelter, and with a shortage of tents many people have been forced to sleep in doorways and under the eaves of buildings to escape the rain.The police are still their usual unpleasant selves. Stopping people in the street based upon racial profiling, raiding squats and jungles and sinking again to the lows of stealing/destroying peoples personal possessions. Bikes continue to be sabotaged with knives stabbed into wheels and recently two men had their phone chargers "confiscated" from them during an ID check.

There has also been a noticeable rise in racist behavior from the local population, it's quite common now on evenings - especially weekends - for people (considered to look like migrants) to have stones thrown at them by youths. Just yesterday one Calais Migrant Solidarity (CMS) activist was followed all the way across town by a car, for 30 minutes, as she walked back to the CMS office from a migrant squat.


News from outside Calais On Friday, 7th of October 2011, some CMS activists went to visit the jungles in St.Omer and Steenvorde. In St. Omer, where they dropped off a car full of blankets and winter clothing, the jungle remains as disastrous as it has been in the past months and years. There are about 30 people living in makeshift shelters, that are not at all constructed to resist a cold and rainy winter. At the moment there are two families with several very small children.

In Steenvorde there is a hall open all day, that Terre d'Errance Steenvorde provides. People can have hot drinks there, cook, use a washing machine, play games or simply take a rest without the damp cold of the outside. Due to the very high security at the parking, where people try to get into trucks, the jungle in Steenvorde has recently been more crowded than the usual. After visiting the hall the CMS activists were invited to have a delicious dinner in the jungle and enjoyed the pleasant atmosphere, chatting to the people living there, until late into the day.

Source :: calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com