Calais No Border Camp Call-Out 23–29 June 2009

The Calais No Bor­der camp is a joint ven­ture between French and Bel­gian activists and migrant sup­port groups and the UK No Bor­ders Net­work.

It aims to high­light the real­i­ties of the sit­u­a­tion in Calais and North­ern France; to build links with the migrant com­mu­ni­ties; to help build links between migrants sup­port groups; and last­ly, but not least, to chal­lenge the author­i­ties on the ground, to protest against increased repres­sion of migrants and local activists alike.

This camp calls for the free­dom of move­ment for all, an end to bor­ders and to all migra­tion con­trols. We call for a rad­i­cal move­ment against the sys­tems of con­trol, divid­ing us into cit­i­zens and non-cit­i­zens, into the doc­u­ment­ed and the undoc­u­ment­ed.

Why Calais?

We have cho­sen Calais for two main rea­sons; it is an impor­tant loca­tion in the his­to­ry, devel­op­ment and prac­tice of Euro­pean migra­tion con­trols and has long been a major bot­tle­neck for those seek­ing to get to Britain. But more impor­tant­ly, it is also a focus of the strug­gle between those who would see an end to all migra­tion into the EU, and those try­ing to break down the bar­ri­ers between peo­ples, the bor­ders that pre­vent the free­dom of move­ment for all, not just the priv­i­leged few.

Since the mid-nineties tens of thou­sands have lived in des­ti­tu­tion, sleep­ing rough in Calais, wait­ing for their chance to cross the chan­nel to Eng­land. Between 1999 and 2002 the Red Cross ran a cen­tre at neigh­bour­ing San­gat­te but this was forced to close after polit­i­cal pres­sure from France and Britain. Since then, the mas­sive police pres­ence and repres­sion in Calais has forced thou­sands of men woman and chil­dren to wan­der the Calais region and all along the North coast of France, Bel­gium and Hol­land. They are rou­tine­ly bru­talised by the police; tear-gassed, beat­en, arrest­ed and repeat­ed­ly interned at the near­by Coquelles deten­tion cen­tre. The police reg­u­lar­ly burn their shel­ters and the few mea­gre pos­ses­sions that they con­tain. The local groups that sup­port the migrants by pro­vid­ing food and oth­er human­i­tar­i­an aid are com­ing under increas­ing attack from the police and a num­ber of activists have been arrest­ed in recent months. Mean­while British Immi­gra­tion Min­is­ter Phil Woolas has been call­ing for the con­struc­tion of a per­ma­nent holding/detention cen­tre for migrants in Calais docks.

The Big­ger Pic­ture

Calais how­ev­er remains only one small part of the over­all pic­ture of Euro­pean migra­tion con­trols, a major inter­nal bor­der with­in the hi-tech EU bor­ders regime. Since the begin­ning of the decade, the EU been attempt­ing to build ‘Fortress Europe’; exter­nal­is­ing EU bor­ders into Africa and Asia with EU bor­der guards patrolling the Mediter­ranean, in Libya and off the West Coast of Africa cour­tesy of the Fron­tex bor­ders agency; and via the Euro­pean Neigh­bour­hood Pol­i­cy, where coun­tries from the Ukraine all the way round the Mediter­ranean to Moroc­co are now paid by the EU to do its migra­tion pre­ven­tion work for it.

Migrants’ Rights Are Work­ers’ Rights

Through this sys­tem of bor­der con­trols, author­i­ties cre­ate two kinds of migrants: a small num­ber of ‘skilled’ migrants, who are des­ig­nat­ed as ‘use­ful’ to the state; and a mas­sive num­ber of undoc­u­ment­ed work­ers who have no rights and are there­fore exploitable as cheap labour. Thus is our fight for free­dom of move­ment also a fight for the rights of all work­ers.

Transna­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty works!

Build­ing links and work­ing togeth­er allows us to share infor­ma­tion between us on a transna­tion­al lev­el. It also allows us to exploit the fault-lines and cracks in Fortress Europe. Last Novem­ber, transna­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty helped to pre­vent the planned depor­ta­tion of Afghans from Calais to Kab­ul.

Cam­paign­ing Against Bor­ders

This camp will con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of the No Bor­der camps across the world since the late 1990s and, like the camp tak­ing place this year in Lesvos in August, it will be a space to share infor­ma­tion, skills, knowl­edge and expe­ri­ences; a place to plan and take action togeth­er against the sys­tem of bor­ders which divides us all. For cen­turies Euro­pean impe­r­i­al pow­ers have exploit­ed the land, resources and peo­ple of the major­i­ty world to become wealthy and pow­er­ful, leav­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and mas­sive inequal­i­ty in their wake. Those who attempt the jour­ney to the UK or else­where in Europe are chal­leng­ing this injus­tice by their move­ment. The sit­u­a­tion in Calais is a result of the com­pro­mise and con­flict of inter­est between French and UK immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy and we call on groups, net­works and indi­vid­u­als here to take action across Europe and to become part of a glob­al move­ment of sol­i­dar­i­ty that defends their right to choose where they move .

Equal rights for all !!

*No One Is Ille­gal. Free­dom Of Move­ment And The Right To Stay For All*

http://calaisnoborder.eu.org/

http://london.noborders.org.uk/calais2009