Calais Update 13/05/2018
The solidarity march | The constitutional council called to give his view on migrants’ welcome and fraternity | Book on border violence and impact on the life of displaced people | Héroïque Land and Beaux Marais en fête | Minister at center of “asylum shopping” controversy| Understanding the newcomers | Calais : the city will fence the forest Normandie-Niemen | Blog article from a lawyer in Paris on the asylum and immigration policies
The solidarity march
On Wednesday, 40 people walked from Brignoles to Saint Maximin as captured by Var Azur TV. This was the first stage with an official reception in a town-hall, in Tourves. It was an unexpected official reception in this city which was against welcoming 46 migrants from Calais in 2016. When the march arrived in Saint Maximin, there were 250 people. On Thursday, they walked from Saint-Maximin to Aix en Provence. 60 people had registered. La Marseillaise wrote an article on this stage and the arrival in Aix, the article was entitled « la solidarité avec les migrants, ça marche » (« solidary with migrants, it works »). The article mentioned the different questions : “open borders, free circulation and free people installation, the end of the “délit de solidarité” (solidarity offence)” This walk is also a way for the organizations to give an important voice to these causes, by combining all the networks of migrant aid in the French territory” Cédric Herrou is quoted in the article: “We would like to show that associations, activists and citizens think together on the migration question and search for solutions… what the current government is not doing […] in the Schengen area, goods are free to move everywhere whereas migrants are controlled at each border.”
The arrival in Aix was a big success with 700 to 800 people for a party organized by associations present in Aix (La Cimade, le Café culturel citoyen (3C), le Secours catholique, Amnesty international, la LDH and the collective Agir and the Brazillian music group Metêketu)
Friday led the walkers to Cabriès (35 people had registered). On Saturday, the participants reached Marseille as explained in La Provence. Jean-Baptiste Cayla one of the participants of the welcome collective explained “In Marseille, this welcome collective was created spontaneously with people that don’t necessarily have the same vision of the world and the same political ideas, but got united under the same indignation around migrants’ problems, because that’s a real vision of Humans […] That’s not the migrants’ question that is creating a cleavage, it is fear, phantasms, the amalgam with terrorism, France is welcoming a very little number of migrants . Fundamentally, these men and women are like us, […] Only by meeting one another we become fearless.”Here is a video from La Marseillaise on the arrival in Marseille. It explains participants’ motivation. 1500 people were present in the city to show their support.
The newspaper Marianne released a four pages’ article in immersion with the walkers.
The constitutional council called to give his view on migrants’ welcome and fraternity
The court of cassation, the highest French jurisdiction, decided to send to the constitutional council a question prioritaire de constitutionalité (preliminary ruling on constitutionality) on two articles of the Code of Entry and Residence of foreigners.
Two activists Cédric Herrou and Pierre-Alain Mannoni condemned in 2017 by the court of appeal of Aix-en-Provence: the first to four suspended months in jail after helping 200 migrants to cross the border and housing a select few, the second to two suspended months, after accompanying three Eritreans to a train station.
As explained in the article the issue is about two articles of the Code of Entry and Residence of foreigners : the article 622–1 that punishes the assistance of irregular stay, and the article 622–4, that specifies that this help cannot lead to any persecution when it is done by the family or “any moral or any private individual when the reproached act was not done for any direct or indirect compensation” The text specifies that this help consists of “giving juridical advice or catering, accommodation or medical treatment in order to assure a dignified and decent living conditions to a foreigner, or any other help in order to preserve the dignity or the physical integrity of this person.”
This question prioritaire de constitutionalité (preliminary ruling on constitutionality) on which the constitutional council will have three weeks to rule, directly refers to the law project on asylum and immigration adopted by the national assembly in April, the “délit de solidarité” was softened, with an exemption of sanctions for activists that give medical treatment, accommodation, and food to migrants without any profitable counterpart. Considered as “very insufficient” for the human rights protectors.
Book on border violence and its impact on the life of displaced people
In an article on NonFiction, they share their review on the book by Michel Agier La mort aux frontières de l’Europe : retrouver, identifier, commémorer. (Death at European borders : rediscover, identify, commemorate) Here is an extract of the review:
When we repeat that people fleeing different threats and scourges to try to live a better life in Europe have nothing to lose, sometimes we have difficulties to imagine what it implies exactly “We are merely like dead bodies” said one migrant as we call them
This book is the first publication of the collection Bibliothèque des frontières (the borders’ library) that uses the results from Babels, a collective research project in human and social science directed by the anthropologist Michel Agier. This books gathers contributions from half a dozen of researchers on the “violent and deadly dispositions that are used as European borders” in the book the main issues are the closing of the borders and its consequence : the increasing number of deaths, but also the repression from authorities and their double standards in terms of humanity and repression, as well as the criminalization of the smugglers to turn the eyes away of the public opinion, the necessary commemoration of the victims as a form of resistance, the analysis of the testimonies on the hardship of migration. The authors conclude by putting into question these inequalities of mobility between citizens and the lack of effect of these dissuasive policies.
Reminder projection Héroïque Lande on Friday the 11th 6 :45 pm at l’Alhambra in Calais with the realizators and the event « Beau-marais en fête » on saturay the 12th may from 10 am to 5 pm in Calais
The minister of European at the center of a controversy by speaking of “asylum shopping”
The minister in charge of European affairs declared before the senate “When we arrive from South-Sudan, we can decide to do asylum shopping and decide that it would be better in Swenden than Italy” After creating the controversy by using this wording the minister in charge of European affairs Nathalie Loiseau, declared “I used the expression “asylum shopping” yesterday during a debate at the Senate. This expression is unfortunate” However she added that the expression “is commonly used by the European institutions and specialists of the right to asylum. It designates a contested practice: the fact that contrary to the current European law, some asylum seekers start the procedure not in the country where they entered but in another member state, depending on the welcoming conditions or the probability of success of their efforts.
This expression refers to the practice of an asylum seeker dismissed in a member state who starts a procedure in another.
This position from the minister was very criticized especially by the ecologist senator Esther Benbassa, the socialist mayor of Lille Martine Aubry as well as the member of parliament La République en Marche Matthieu Orphelin qualifying this sentence of “very unhappy and especially far from the reality of these broken destinies”
Understanding the newcomers
Clique TV explains the initiative of four European media (The Guardian, El Pais, Der Spiegel and Le Monde) which have been following during eighteen months the daily life of migrants in their host country in order to understand their feelings.
In this video published by Le Monde on may the 10th, several questions are asked to understand their feelings since their arrival, the difference between their aspirations before the departure and the reality at their arrival, their disappointment, and also the significance of sport and especially football for several men in their new life (on this topic abubu is an association helping refugees to integrate themselves with sport) For Eileen Moral, who wrote the article, “the feeling of disappointment — sometimes disillusion — is a recurrent problem in the answers given. [But she concludes by saying that this short story offers a new vision on the daily life of people starting a new life thousands kilometers away from their home country. A different perspective that beyond giving a voice to these refugees, put an end to this victim based discourse in which they are confined.”
To follow the project, visit the website The New Arrivals, or the section « Les Nouveaux Arrivants » from Le Monde.
Calais : the city will fence the forest Normandie-Niemen
As explained by La Voix du Nord, after the third cleaning of the forest Chico-Mendès in one month, rue Normandie-Niemen in the Beau-Marais in Calais by the State, the mayor Natacha Bouchart decided to set up gratings all around the park. It will cost at least 250 000€ and the mayor would like to put a video surveillance system as well. She declared that “People from Calais don’t have to undergo this and I want to avoid this place from living like this » The situation of the Eritrean migrants living there was not taken into consideration. The creation of an urban park will be discussed during a public meeting on may the 17th and during a specific meeting on June the 12th (salle Gauguin-Matisse)
Blog article from a lawyer in Paris on the asylum and immigration policies
Vincent Brengarth explained in a blog article on the Huffington Post entitled « The society wanted by Macron encourages an inhuman treatment of the migrants and the comeback of the national identity » Here is an extract “the mood around the law project on a regulated immigration and a right to asylum is oppressing, as it describes the foreigner as an enemy of a nation that he would weakened. […] The solidary offence […] is especially a symptom of a society which imposes dehumanization in the name of principles that go against natural values that we shouldn’t be able to violate.
Christian Salomé, l’Auberge des Migrants
Pierre Jothy, l’Auberge des Migrants
