Calais Day 9

Today has been a really hard and depressing day. Last Friday the French authorities announced that they intend to clear 20% of the camp to create a 100 metre buffer zone starting from the motorway and extending into the camp. There are several possible reasons for this. One is that 100 metres is the distance that the police require to be out of range of the stones thrown at them when they offensively tear gas the refugees. Another is that the French authorities have just spent 20 million Euros converting some shipping containers into 'homes' for 12 refugees. The containers are in a section of the camp that is fenced off and securitised. Any refugees who live in them will have to sign in using biometric data - their palm prints and will only be allowed out between 8am and 10pm. This means that will be known to the authorities and if they go out at night to attempt to get onto a lorry or boat it will also be known to the authorities.

When this announcement was made, the authorities said that if the aid agencies in Calais help the refugees to move they will be given more time to do it but if they don't help the police will move in and do it themselves which will mean bulldozers and tear gas at dawn. This puts the aid agencies in a very awkward position because if they help the refugees to move, which obviously they will want to do in order to avoid the trauma of forced clearances, they may appear to be complicit in the clearances.

Bearing all of this is mind, Care4Calais decided that we would spend the day advising the affected refugees to keep all their valuables on their persons this week in case they have to run from forced clearances.

Many of them wanted to know where they could go but unfortunately we didn't have any answers. There was a rumour going around that another organistaion was clearing land for them to move on to but it was unconfirmed so we couldn't tell them where they could move to. Some asked if they would have to go to the container compound and expressed a desire not to go because they were unhappy about the biometric entry system. Others asked if they would have to fight the police. I said they probably would have to if they didn't move voluntarily.

As we were going around trying to help the refugees prepare for forthcomng events, the police were also going around the affected areas auditing the number of people living in each tent and checking whether there were any women and children in the tents in the affected area.

By the main entrance to the camp, known as the bridge because it is underneath the motorway bridge from where the refugees try to board lorries, there are usually 4 CRS vans parked on a daily basis. Today there were 9.

And around the corner, where we parked our vehicles there were CRS vans monitoring the transfer of hundreds of refugees who had been told that if they left the camp voluntarily and went to what we suspect to be a detention centre they could apply for French asylum.

I spoke to Afghans, Kurds, Syrians, Eritreans, Sudanese and Pakistanis who were all going to be affected by the clearances but the last area of the camp I went to was the Syrians which broke my heart when they asked if they should go back to Syria to fight ISIS. They were such a lovely group of men and one of them gave me his hat to say thank you for helping them. These are not Jihadis or terrorists or dangerous people. They are people whose country and homes have been destroyed by an American imperialist war supported by the US, France and other allies. They only want a safe and secure life away from the violence and instability in Syria and the treatment they receive from the French and British authorities is brutal and sickening. It contravenes international humanitarian law and refugee law.

After we had spoken to as many refugees as possible, we went on a walk around the affected areas to see what we could do to help and found a group of Afghans who were moving their wood-framed shelters so we helped them to clear the land of rubbish and brambles.

But despite this, they were struggling to reconstruct their shelters because they didn't have any nails.

At the end of this harrowing day, we felt that the best thing we can do to help tomorrow is to clear land in the safe zone so that the refugees who have to move have somewhere to move to. As I write, the head of Care4Calais is in the hardware shop buying spades, strimmers, nails and all the equipment the refugees need to make moving possible and to make it possible for us to help them.

#campclearance #teargas #bulldozer #CRS #syria #Afghanistan #Sudan #Eritrea #Ethiopia #Pakistan #moving #detentioncentre #Frenchasylum