Vol. 79/No. 31 September 7, 2015
“We met in Sudan,” David and Kebron, students originally from Ethiopia, told members of the Communist League from the U.K. who visited the camp here Aug. 8 and joined in an “Open the Borders” protest.
Three British dailies — the Times, Express and Telegraph — reported the CL’s participation.
The two youth detailed their long journey — including a 12-day high-speed, nonstop car ride across the Sahara Desert from Sudan into Libya. Like many camp residents, all of whom are deemed “illegal” by the French and British governments, they declined to give their last names.
Both David and Kebron were arrested in Libya. Kebron was taken from the women’s prison to the home of a prison guard and forced to work without pay as a domestic servant. Both escaped from captivity, reuniting to cross the Mediterranean.
Nearly 250,000 people have made the sea crossing to Italy or Greece this year, and more than 2,000 have died trying.
‘Here we are brothers and sisters’
David and Kebron succeeded and made it to Calais. While Ethiopian and Eritrean working people are pitted against each other by the divide-and-rule politics of capitalist politicians in the Horn of Africa, in the New Jungle “we are brothers and sisters,” camp residents told us over and over.The New Jungle also houses immigrants from the Middle East and Asia. Originally from Pakistan, Zee told us how he and others trek to Calais, crossing Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Italy.
The makeshift camp is taking on aspects of permanence. There are two schools, two mosques, a church, three “restaurants” and a few food stores. Some days there’s a generator for charging mobile phones.
The French government has established a center at the edge of the camp, providing a meal a day during the week and some limited housing for women and children.
“The government wanted to stop camps springing up around the city,” said François Guenoc, one of some 200 volunteers who bring food and assistance to New Jungle residents.
“We’d like to go to the U.K. because we speak English,” David told us. “But new measures taken by the British government and saturation policing by the French government has made it more difficult.”
While cops have recently backed off from directly intervening in the New Jungle itself, they move in against people attempting the crossing with batons, tear gas and pepper spray. Cops have also entered houses of Calais residents they accuse of illegally giving food and shelter to undocumented immigrants.
Wave of migration to Europe
The vast majority of the new arrivals in Europe head for Germany or Sweden, travelling up through Greece and Hungary. The German government estimates that some 800,000 will arrive this year.En route immigrants face riot police in Greece, cops and soldiers in Macedonia, increased border controls in Hungary and the U.K. and intensified anti-immigrant propaganda by the propertied rulers.
The drive by some European Union member governments to shore up their borders and political disagreement among them on how to respond to the wave of immigration is accelerating the erosion of the “ever closer union” enshrined in the EU’s founding treaty.
Rightist organizations have held anti-immigrant protests in Germany, where there have also been dozens of reported arson attacks. Anti-immigrant actions in France and Britain have drawn few participants.
At the same time, many working people across Europe have expressed solidarity. In response to the Hungarian government’s decision to build an anti-immigrant fence along its southern border with Serbia, 100 volunteers in Szeged, the country’s third largest city, have formed “Migrant Solidarity.” The group provides food, health care and help with asylum applications for those who want to stay.
The U.K. government continues to ramp up its anti-immigrant stance. “Europe can’t protect itself, preserve its standard of living and social infrastructure if it has to absorb millions of migrants from Africa,” Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told the BBC Aug. 9.
The opposition Labour Party has also pushed for restrictions on immigration.
The government has announced plans to jail landlords renting accommodation to undocumented workers, and step up raids against immigrants who work illegally and bosses who knowingly employ them.
There have been actions in the U.K. in defense of immigrants. The Movement for Justice mobilized 400 people outside the Yarlswood immigration detention center in Bedfordshire Aug. 8 to demand its closure, the second such action in three months.
Some 200 people, including 20 rabbis, signed a letter from the Jewish Council for Racial Equality condemning the government’s approach. “Our experience as refugees is not so distant that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be demonised for seeking safety,” they write, referring to the plight of Jews fleeing Nazi terror following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933.
The immigration question is a hot topic of discussion in workplaces up and down the country. Many echo the government’s stance. Others disagree.
“Immigration nowadays is forced immigration,” said Teame Berhe, a worker at the McVitie’s cookie factory in London originally from Eritrea. “And the main contributors to the problem are countries like Britain and the U.S. that directly or indirectly interfere or create political upheaval. These countries have to take responsibility for refugees rather than preventing them from coming.”
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