From The Commune

Last month the English Defence League announced plans to march in Tower Hamlets, East London, in protest at an Islamist conference planned for June 20th at the Troxy centre. The conference was planned by groups tied to Islamic Forum Europe, among the major Islamist groups in the area.

Anti-racists planned to demonstrate against the EDL: but the SWP-run Unite Against Fascism and its front group United East End insisted this should be on the basis of uncritical support for — and collaboration with — the conference organisers. This meant whitewashing the worst religious fundamentalists and supporting their right to represent the Bengali community in the borough.

While the conference was ultimately cancelled by the Troxy centre, and the EDL abandoned their march, UAF held their demo regardless. Here local Bengali secular activist Ansar Ahmed Ullah reflects on the episode.

What is Islamic Forum Europe?

In 1971, during the Liberation War of Bangladesh, there were widespread killings of the civilians and other atrocities were carried out by the occupying Pakistani forces and their local collaborators.

The collaborators were local Islamist groups, namely Jamaat-e-Islam, Nezam-e-Islam and the Muslim League.

Soon after the independence of Bangladesh in 1971 some of the alleged Jamaat-e-Islami war criminals fled Bangladesh and took refuge in various Arab countries, Pakistan and the UK. A Channel 4 Dispatches programme aired on 1995 exposed such 3 alleged war criminals.

The IFE was set up by one such alleged war criminal in 1989 to disguise their past crimes and fundamentalist ideology.

What was your reaction when the EDL announced their plans to march and UAF planned its counter-demo?

The entry of the English Defence League into Tower Hamlets to protest against the meeting was a direct provocation to stir up racial tensions, foment dissent among faiths and attempt to bring disunity amongst the communities of the borough. We condemned the fascist EDL whose sole objective is to act as storm troopers for the British National Party and pick up the pieces for them after their miserable rout in the local and national elections in neighbouring Barking and Dagenham Council.

However, we are also opposed to fundamentalism and so had watched with growing concern the way in which the United East End coalition become a hub for legitimising the base of Jamaat-e-Islami activists in the borough. We had questioned how and why the Islamic Forum Europe came to occupy such a central place in the mobilisations.

We believe that fascism and fundamentalism should be challenged equally.

They are both right wing forces growing in strength and numbers within local areas, and any campaign against the right wing should encompass an active stand against both fascism and religious fundamentalism.

We continue to oppose the EDL unconditionally but we also do not want to be involved in anything that consolidates the power base of IFE in this way.

We in the Bengali and the Muslim community were being asked to stand side by side with the most reactionary, far right, anti-Bengali, Anti-Hindu, Anti-Jewish, fundamentalist group, IFE. This we refused to do. The IFE does not represent the Muslim community in Tower Hamlets nor do they uphold the glorious tradition of Cable Street, Altab Ali (murdered by racists in 1978) and the anti-racist movement.

Under the patronage of an exclusivist Wahhabi Islam emanating from Saudi Arabia they are attempting to impose it amongst the Bengalis in the borough. Just as the EDL takes the guise of being ordinary English citizens to hide their true identity of fronting the fascist BNP, so do IFE act as the sole representatives of ordinary Muslims but are in fact operating under the direction of their parent organisation Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh.

What effect did this episode have on the Bengali community?

It is hard to say what threat the EDL posed because they do not exist in Tower Hamlets: but whatever the threat the Bengali community is able to defend itself.

The Bengali community has a long tradition of resisting racists from the 1970s to 1990s. Racism has to be fought on many fronts, socially with the local white working class, politically with alliances with other progressive anti-racist parties, institutionally and in unison with all communities.

The cancellation of the Troxy event was a victory for secular forces and those who are opposed to fundamentalism. The majority of Bengalis are secular, (in the South Asian sense, not necessarily opposed to religion but against religious persecution). Like any other community, the Bengali community has many factions based on ideology, class, region, profession and party political lines. But a sense of community does exist when it comes to the greater welfare of the whole Bengali community.

Why have Islamist groups become influential in Tower Hamlets, and why do the left associate with them?

By the 1990s another key development was the increasing importance of religion, in the case of Bengalis, Islam. This was partly due to New Labour government association of faith in its agenda.

In addition, in the weeks after 11th September 2001, with the prospect of a US-led war in Afghanistan, the Stop the War Coalition was founded in London, bringing together a number of organisations, the largest of which was the Socialist Workers Party and more importantly MAB (Muslim Association of Britain) associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and MCB (Muslim Council of Britain) its leadership associated with the Jamaat-e-Islami. The inclusion of MAB & MCB enabled the mobilisation thousands of Muslims, including the young, to get involved in the anti-war movement. This ensured for the first time that large numbers of third generation Muslims took part in global political campaigns.

The MCB-linked Jamaat-e-Islami is the largest Islamist political party of the Indian sub-continent, that operates under various charities and religious organisations centred around the East London’s biggest mosque. Its activists have managed to infiltrate all the major political parties including the Respect Party that came out of SWP-MCB partnership.

The SWP under the banner of Stop the War Coalition and Respect Party has been working with Islamist groups. This wasn’t surprising as in 1994, Chris Harman, one of the SWP’s chief ideologists argued that the party should make common cause on the issue of “anti-imperialism” with Islamist movements, in part as a way of recruiting their members.

George Galloway’s victory in the 2005 General Election in the Bethnal Green and Bow area was seen as a protest against the Labour Party’s foreign policy. But it also demonstrated the strength of the Islamists within the community and the dramatic shift in British politics when it came to securing the support of Muslim voters. It reaffirmed that global issues were prioritised in the Islamist agenda and when it came to appeal to the Bengali voters, the ‘Muslim’ sentiment was the focus of the election campaign.

We must challenge those who advocate the racialisation of politics.

Southwark Trade Union Council presents: Southwark Unites against the Emergency Budget at the Salvation Army Community Church Hall, 1 Princess Street, London SE1 6HH on Monday 19th July 2010 at 7pm.

The Coalition Government have declared war against working people and the poor. Despite attempts to dress up the budget as “progressive”, independent economists have given it a damning verdict.

Join the fight for our rights and collective interests and get involved

At The Multicultural Politic, we support campaigns against discrimination everywhere and anywhere in the world. Across Europe and especially in Hungary and Slovakia, the global recession has strengthened far-right parties and fascist groups. The Gypsy and Roma people have been at the front line of persecution and discrimination especially by these groups in Eastern Europe.

by Ulrike Schmidt & Justin Baidoo

Magyar Garda - The Fascist "Hungarian Guard"

The rise of right extremist and fascist parties and organisations in some European countries, particularly in Hungary have brought a sharp increase in violent attacks on Roma people. Often these attacks occur after a meeting or demonstration of fascist organisations like Magyar Garda or the “Hungarian Guard”.

The attacks often involve shootings of random Roma people and firebombing of houses. In this racist crime wave, very rarely are the attackers brought to justice, which might not be coincidental as one trade union of police officers has affiliated itself to the Jobbik Party and called in their newsletter for war against Gypsis and Jews. Ketrin Balogh and her mother Maria Balogh were attacked in their home at night and shot. Maria died, her 13 year old daughter Ketrin survived with severe injuries which might never heal. Amnesty International Hungary is running a solidarity campaign for Ketrin.

In Italy, the right-wing coalition government headed by Silvio Berlusconi has put forward a plan to fingerprint all Roma children, which has been criticised by the European Parliament and UNICEF. A few weeks after announcing these plans Italian citizens are photographed sun-bathing near the dead bodies of two drowned Roma girls. With Italy also legalising far-right militias, attacks on Roma and Gypsy people continue to take place, by forced evictions by authorities as well as vigilante violence. This problem goes as far as the United Kingdom as we shouldn’t forget the brutal attacks by Irish Neo Nazis on Roma people in Belfast a year ago.

This Friday 9th July, In London, Amnesty Hackney & Islington and Amnesty Waltham Forest Presents:

“Romani Dreams” - An evening devoted to Romani culture, also highlighting the recent rise of violence against Roma people in Europe.

A night of Refreshments, poetry, music, debate and film

Venue: Amnesty International UK , Human Rights Action Centre, 17‐25 New Inn’s Yard, London EC2A 3EA

Speakers :

Kate Allen – Director of Amnesty International
Ognyan Stanchev – Roma Rights Advocate
Alex Jagger – AI/UK co‐ordinator for Central Europe
Barbora Cernusakova – Researcher for Amnesty International IS
Weyman Bennett – Joint Secretary, Unite Against Fascism

A news report about the rise of the Hungarian Guard:

by Chuka Umunna

So now we know: the action being taken by this Lib-Con government in the name of deficit reduction will cost at least 1.1m jobs across the public and private sectors. How do we know this? Because the Treasury says so, hence today’s big story.

But far from the media circus, a new deficit is growing. Not a fiscal deficit, but a generational one. It takes the form of the thousands of young people who will leave school this September with no prospects of work or training and who risk slipping into a crippling cycle of long-term unemployment. It is a debt that the new government is racking up in order to fund a macho, ideologically motivated drive to slash government spending deep and fast. And unlike the fiscal deficit, it will not take four or six or 10 years to pay down; it will take a generation.

The cause? The cavalier approach of this government to youth unemployment. After less than three weeks in, the coalition announced it would be abolishing Labour’s £1.2bn Future Jobs Fund (FJF), substituting it with apprenticeship funding worth some 12% of the original total. This move ditches the 100,000 jobs for 18-24 year olds funded by the FJF this year alone.

In my neck of the woods, the FJF has provided £1.2m to support 200 posts for local young people who, otherwise, would be in the dole queue, losing hope and motivation with every passing month. Instead, it has given them valuable new skills, self-esteem and a sense of structure and purpose – all of which stimulates the local economy, cuts crime and makes everyone healthier and wealthier.

A cursory glance at Labour’s budget in March shows the FJF was entirely compatible with the goal of reducing government debt. It has helped boost the fragile recovery and, in the medium term, will actually reduce government outgoings. Research by the Treasury has shown that every £1 invested in similar schemes in the past saved the taxpayer £3 in benefits. It’s no-brainer, but Britain’s new chancellor doesn’t get it.

And the similarities between his emergency budget and Geoffrey Howe’s budgets in the early 1980s are deeply worrying when one considers the civil unrest which followed then. It is all the more worrying given that Howe sought to reduce spending by 4% and George Osborne now seeks to do so by a whopping 25%. Then, as now, the government cut too soon and too deep, with no effectual schemes to keep young people active.

It sends a shiver down my spine to reflect on the effect this had on my area – riots in the north of my constituency in the 1980s tore my community apart. On one occasion, my mum was out shopping with my sister and me when unrest broke out. She had to drop the shopping, grab us and run. Yes, police racism was a big cause of the trouble but those riots were also rooted in the deprivation and despair of long-term youth unemployment. The Scarman inquiry, which followed the riots, was clear: “There can be no doubt that [unemployment] was a major factor.”

Today, once again, we witness a Conservative government abandoning young people – this time abetted by the Liberal Democrats. In the long term, this will increase pressure on welfare spending and reduce economic growth, a debt that will cost future governments many billions when the brewing “generational credit crunch” hits. The government appears to suggest we cannot afford to provide the training, employment schemes and apprenticeships needed. They are wrong – we cannot afford not to do so.

Chuka Umunna is the founder of TMP and also the Member of Parliament for Streatham.

From the texts I got last night, it appears a lot of my English friends are all Ghanaians now with the disgraceful crashing out of the Capello’s men. England is going home, unsurprising when England failed to beat Algeria, it was a harbinger of worse things to come. The millionaire footballers failed to deliver and Sunny Hundal, editor of Liberal Conspiracy tweeted last night:

England today destroyed right-wing meme that more incentives means people work harder. Cut footballers & boardroom pay!

That tired meme favoured by ideologues of the Right can be summarised further:

It isn’t for anyone to decide wages, laissez-faire capitalism: the market knows best.

This idea has covered multitude of sins from England’s poor World Cup campaign to the greatest recession for 70 years, and once again this meme has exposed to be far from a “truism” but instead a pernicious fallacy.

In 1998 the average yearly wage of a Premiership footballer was £190,000 after a period of getting intensely relaxed about the filthy rich, in 2010 it is now £1.4 million. Therefore you could expect that the England team of today are at least twice (if not 9 times) as good as the England team that led the France ‘98 World Cup campaign. It clearly doesn’t add up.

Capitalism promotes the idea that return on investment must be made as quickly as possible and so footballers rather than being nurtured and cultivated are being bought and sold as mere commodities across the globe. This concept has been extended to football clubs, and ownership has passed around without discrimination, from exiled and corrupt billionaires to debt-ridden American businessmen, the Premiership has already bankrupted more than a few football clubs with the promise of more to keep financial administrators busy. This all happens while millionaire footballers, conspire to avoid paying tax in the country that has enriched them.

The marriage of business and football has long been a tradition in FIFA, but in the Premiership it has brought collosal debt, extortionate match ticket prices, a high turnover of managers and players, and the WAG phenomenon.

However the footballing loving public aren’t taking it lying down completely, there are World Cup alternatives and a supporter-led fightback in Manchester United, supporter-owned teams such as Barcelona point to a better sustainable future for football fans, though Spain isn’t immune to big business football.

Meanwhile in the World Cup, Argentina footballing legend and current Argentina manager Maradona is inspiring and getting the best out of his highly paid players, but those who support capitalism in football must answer this question, can Mammon do the same?

A 5 minute video of a “Liberate Tate” action which is part of an upcoming documentary:

Balloon Power from Sharon salazar on Vimeo.

For more info on this action, read Sunny Hundal’s post on Liberal Conspiracy

From Abahlali baseMjondolo – The South African Shackdwellers Movement based in Durban.

The truth remains. The truth frees. The truth cannot be hidden with lies for ever.

For lies to continue to hide the truth they must be constantly sustained and maintained. For truth to be able to emerge from under the lies we have to constantly remember what has really been said and done, by whom and for what purpose.

We have often said that the attack on our movement in the Kennedy Road settlement on the 26th and 27th of September last year was planned at a very high political level. It was planned outside of the Kennedy Road settlement.

The attack took the lives of two people; drove our leaders, their families, their friends and comrades out of the Kennedy Road settlement and left thousands of people homeless and displaced. Thirteen people were arrested for the crime that was planned after several meetings of the ANC structures in and outside the settlement. Eight months later five of those people remain in Westville prison without bail and without any evidence being brought against them.

We have warned that some of the people of Kennedy Road were made to be involved in the attack by turning their anger on their own brothers and sisters. This is something that happened elsewhere in the country in May 2008. It is now happening in eTwatwa. The residents of Kennedy Road who joined this attack had no idea of what was really going on, why
they were being made to attack their own neighbours or who their real enemies are. Even those whose lives were lost may not have known the real reasons why they were fighting. The anger and desperation of people was exploited by those who remoted them to attack their neighbours. Those whose homes and belongings were destroyed or burnt still cannot explain why the poor were used to attack the poor. It makes no sense for any one of us. It only makes sense for those who wish to divide the poor.

The South African Police Services (SAPS) and the Metro Police were at the scene during the attack and can also not explain how they were remoted by the political authorities that instructed them which lives to protect and which lives not to protect. They must have feared to lose their jobs if they acted justly and lawfully.

For a long time now the Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC) have been receiving calls from several individual and groups in the Kennedy Road settlement asking them to return to the settlement.

The people and groups that are demanding the return of the KRDC are saying that the daily life in the settlement has become very threatening and frustrating without the self organisation of the settlement by and for its residents. The KRDC were elected by that process of self organisation. Since the KRDC, as the representatives elected by the self organisation of the poor by the poor and for the poor, were driven from the settlement everything that had been built up and achieved in the settlement has been butchered. There is no more crèche. There is no more care for the sick. There is no more ability to negotiate with the police and the state for a position of collective strength. The crime rate has increased enormously. Kennedy Road has become a settlement of fear and hopeless where there is no law and there is no order.

Willies Mchunu, the MEC for Safety and Security in KwaZulu-Natal, replaced our elected leadership with a Community Policing Forum. But this has not brought safety or security. The community is being abused in many ways.

Once again fires are being used as an excuse to force people into the amatins. The eThekwini Municipality is constantly disconnecting people from electricity. When people
reconnect the connections are not properly organised and some connections are dangerous. The settlement has returned to darkness and fear.

Like they did in the old days, before we organised ourselves, the SAPS come to the settlement, kick in people’s doors and sometimes steal their belongings and money.

Once again, like in the past, the politicians are making their empty promises and disrespecting the people. After the attack Nigel Gumede, the Chairperson of the Housing Portfolio Committee in the eThekwini Municipality, together with Willies Mchunu, promised that the community will be housed by February 2010. Now Gumede and Mchunu are nowhere to be found.

No one tells the community anything. Once again the people of Kennedy Road are on their own.

The community has begun to reorganise itself and to remobilise itself. An underground branch of Abahlali baseMjondolo has been running for sometime.
Recently recruitment to the Abahlali baseMjondolo branch has become more open. In recent days there have been open discussions about the return of the KRDC, its families and others who were displaced. The KRDC has raised the issue of the safety of those who are being asked to return. They have also insisted that either everyone who was displaced will return or no one will return. Those who are calling for the return of the KRDC have said that they have suffered enough and that they will guarantee the safety of the KRDC. A petition calling for the return of the KRDC to the settlement has been openly circulated in the last two days and more than five hundred people have already signed it. Most of these people are women. They cannot guarantee the behaviour of the few people in the settlement who remain loyal to the local ANC councillor, Yakoob Baig, and the local chairperson of the Branch Executive Committee of the ANC, Jackson Gumede. But they have committed themselves to guarantee the safety of everyone that they have asked to return. They will not make this guarantee real with guns and knives. The will make it real with the right that every mother has to insist on the safety of her home and her family. Anyone who plans to attack the KRDC will have to face these women and the strength of their motherliness first.

Along with being the chairperson of the ANC BEC in the area Gumede is a shacklord in the nearby Lacy Road settlement. After the attack he, with the support of Baig and the police, seized control of the settlement. He was chased out of the Kennedy Road settlement in February this year after the ANC failed to respond to the community’s needs after the terrible fires in Kennedy Road.

The Abahlali baseMjondolo leadership and the KRDC have agreed and confirmed that that they will return to Kennedy Road this Sunday and hold an open and public meeting with the Kennedy Road community.

We are willing to return to Kennedy Road. The community understands that the attack on our leaders and our movement was a political plot driven from outside and high up. The history of the truth in this beautiful settlement, beautiful because it became the ground of our hope, will not be wiped away.

We believe that the demand for our return is a democratic and legitimate act by the community to express their vote of no confidence in Baig and those who are trying to impose their authority in the settlement.

Our return to Kennedy Road on Sunday will be completely different to the violence and hatred that drove us out. We will not come with weapons and division. There is no need for the government to send in the riot squad, the water cannons and their helicopters. We will come with open discussion, with isicathimyia and with prayer. Bishop Dladla from the Zionist Christian Church, who was able to remain in the settlement after the attack, will open the meeting with prayer. The Dlamini King Brothers, who were also exiled in the attack, will sing at the meeting.

The meeting on Sunday will be shaped by people’s discussions. We, as elected leaders, will be guided by those discussions. If those discussions conclude that we should return permanently then we will do so. If it is agree that we should return permanently then the first item that we will have to discuss will be to set a date for an election for the 2010 KRDC. The current KRDC were elected for 2009 and then driven from office and their homes in September 2009. Therefore an election needs to be held to elect a KRDC for 2010.

Those few in the settlement who joined the attack on us need not fear our return. We will not be seeking any revenge. We will not be demanding compensation for our destroyed homes, our stolen goods and our time in exile. We wish to move beyond the tragedy of the poor being remoted to attack the poor and to unite the community behind its self organisation. Our duty is to unite the poor and to demand justice from the rich and from the state. We refuse to be made to fight each other. Those who wish to remain active members of the ANC will be free to do so. We will ask only that they respect the democratic process in the settlement.

Dlamini King Brothers – “Abahlali” music video from Sleeping Giant on Vimeo.

The meeting that has been called for the return of the KRDC and the AbM leadership to the Kennedy Road settlement will be held at 10:00 on Sunday 13 June 2010 at the Springfield College Sports Ground which is right next to the settlement.

While the rich are in their stadiums waving their flags and watching football, a game that many of our members play and love, we will be taking forward the responsibility of building the real nation. The nation that excludes no one, the nation in which everyone counts, the nation in which a shack settlement is a community to be supported and not a slum to be eradicated, a nation in which the self organisation of the poor is recognised as the foundation of our democracy and not a threat to society to be smashed by any means necessary.

The World Cup will go but our suffering will remain. Any responsible leader has a duty to concentrate on building the power of the people.

The meeting that will be held this Sunday will, as always, be open to all.
The media are welcome to attend.

We also wish to inform the media that yesterday the case of assault that Zibuyile Ngcobo had laid against Nozuko Hulushe was thrown out by the court. Nozuku is the AbM activist who was assaulted by Ngcobo after insisting, courageously, on her right to organise freely for AbM in the settlement. Nozuku’s case against Ngcobo is going forward.

Thai Lese Majeste laws criminalises the ability to criticise the King

From South Eastern Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA):

Thailand’s Cabinet approved on 15 June 2010 the creation of an online crime agency that will go after violators of the Kingdom’s lese majeste law, media reports said.

Agence France-Presse quoted the government as saying that the Bureau of Prevention and Eradication of Computer Crime was established to protect the royal family.

“The monarchy is crucial for Thai national security because it is an institution that unifies the entire nation,” government spokesman Watchara Kanikar said.

Insulting the King or members of the royal family is a criminal offense in Thailand, carrying a 15-year prison term. Under Article 112 of the country’s Criminal Law, anyone can file a lese majeste complaint against anyone seen as having defamed the Kingdom’s highly-revered monarch and the royal family.

The Computer Crime Act, a law enacted in 2007, carries a five-year prison term and a fine of THB100,000 for anyone found guilty of online defamation, including lese majeste.

The formation of this new agency came at the heels of the months-long Red Shirt protest, its violent dispersal last month and the subsequent rioting in the capital.

The Thai government extended on 6 June 2010 the State of Emergency over Bangkok, empowering the Thai military to restore order and allow the government to impose curfews, ban public gatherings of more than five people, censor and ban media from disseminating news that ’causes panic.’ According to a report by the Associated Press, the measure also “also allows security officials to detain suspects without charge for up to 30 days”.

According to Chiranuch Premchaiporn, webmaster of the independent news website Prachatai, the CRES has announced it has shut down 2,200 websites deemed to be violating the Computer Crime Act since the State of Emergency was imposed in April this year.

African migrants are today going to be left homeless after the French Police this morning evicted an abandoned warehouse in Calais that was home to around 80 African migrants from Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Inside "Africa House" (Source: Photograph: Graeme Robertson, Guardian.co.uk)

The eviction had been announced in yesterday’s local newspapers for 13:00 today. Most of the migrants had therefore left the building when the police arrived. The police have sealed off the building and have placed a chemical toilet outside for the workers who will carry out the demolition.

It is believed that the warehouse will be demolished later this month, along with half a dozen other empty buildings on the same street, including one home, next door to “Africa House”, which belongs to French citizens.

Calais Migrant Solidarity activists are however currently trying to help re-house the African migrants in defiance of both the ban on shelter in Calais and the anti-solidarity laws in France.

The French police, working with the UK government, have escalated their attempts to drive migrants out of the French port town through systematic harassment, of which home demolitions is just one tactic. The process of demolishing migrant homes began publicly last September with the large scale demolition of the Pashtun ‘jungle’, which saw 278 Afghans being detained, of which over half were unaccompanied minors. According to Calais Migrant Solidarity, the local Police regularly slash migrant tents and blankets, ransack homes, destroy property, and assault migrants. They also claim that in the last few weeks’ police have kicked prayer spaces, thrown Qu’rans, drawn fascist symbols on the walls, and made monkey noises at migrants. It is believed that a building lying in ruins about 400 meters along the same road from Africa House, which is currently home to Arabic speaking migrants, will be the next home to be demolished.

There are other reports from migrants of police putting chemicals into drinking water and suspected sleeping-pill substances being put into food served while in detention.

CMS activist Kirsty Johnson said “it is shocking to see in Calais the similarities in state policies and actions of those used against European Jews in the 1930s, which are now supposedly assumed to be found repugnant.”

Many migrants in Calais do not have anywhere to go. Kirsty Johnson described:

“Some of the other communities who are routinely harassed by the police here include unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan, Palestinians from Gaza, and Iranian migrants. Many have travelled for years to get here, risking their lives, in order to find a home. They have lost everything.”

Sammy Umal-Haram from Darfur said,

“The police chase us every day, but they don’t understand why we are here. All across Europe there are borders that are killing many people who are trying to cross from escaping violence and poverty. Many of us have travelled for years, and many are children. Where can we go? This is not a life.” Mohammed, 18, Darfur “Everyday police come, take people to prison and mistreat us. Soemtimes they say to me “You are black, you are shit. You need to leave France.”

6 Darfurian Sudanese individuals have recently been convicted in the French court of law for failing to identify themselves. They were unable to understand the court proceedings as there are 136 languages spoken in Sudan. Around thirty activists from a range of campaigns across northern France attended the trial. The Sudanese are currently in prison at Longuenesse.

Claire Braude added,

“Life on the streets of Calais is the unseen reality of the policies of the French, British and European Union governments that exclude desperate non-EU migrants from accessing the very opportunity that was created out of the historical exploitation of non-European labour and resources.”

However, Jacques Anciot, present at the eviction, said: “They have been met with resistance at every turn. Calais Migrant Solidarity has had a constant presence on the ground since June last year working in solidarity with the different migrant communities and resisting police activity. We demand freedom of movement for all, and the right to stay.”

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