Monthly Archives: May 2015

Residents of Austrian village resist deportation to Syria

The residents of Austrian village Alberschwende resisted the deportations to Syria, reports Joop.nl. On Monday 11th May, 8 police teams searched in the village for a Syrian refugee. They wanted to deport him with others to Hungary. However, they were unable to find him.

8 Syrian refugees live in the village, and 5 of them should be deported to Hungary, according to the Dublin II regulations. Many residents in the village were against this as the refugees are likely to be imprisoned in Hungary. Over 150 residents had signed up for a ‘rescue team’ to form a human chain to protect the refugees from deportation. The police action on Monday was so sudden that the team did not have time to mobilise. However, the police were unable to find the refugee. According to the mayor there is no suspicion of him going into hiding.

Refugees in Austria can apply for asylum after being in the country for more than 6 months. For the 5 aforementioned refugees, they will have been in Austria for 6 months on 22nd June. There is a big chance that they wil get asylum, according to Joop.nl, and so the immigration service wants to deport them before that date.

Calais: recording reveals gendarmes sending away migrants who wanted to file complaints about police violence

French newspaper Libération was recently given a recording showing how the gendarmes snubbed migrants who had come to file a complaint against police violence in Calais.

On 24th June 2014,Clémence Gautier, lawyer at the Calaisien migrant support association Plateforme de services aux migrants, went to gendarmes in Norrent-Fontes (Pas-de-Calais) with Eritrean migrants to file a complaint against the police and a lorry driver for assault and inflicting injuries. She recorded several minutes of dialogue and gave the recording to Libération.

Clémence had been confident of being treated well by the police, but was seriously disappointed. The gendarmes dissuaded the migrants from filing a complaint and alluded to taking the migrants to a detention centre.  One gendarme said that it was “excusable” that the lorry driver had hit the migrants.

In the days following the failed attempt to file a complaint, the gendarmes stepped up their presence in Norrent-Fontes, where the migrants were sleeping next to the motorway.