Saturday 7th May sees the second SteenRock music festival calling for an end to detention in front of the closed detention centre 127 bis of Steenokkerzeel, near Brussels. The inaugural “SteenRock” in April 2010 attracted more than 300 people.
On Sunday 17th April activists from France and Italy attempted to board the “Train of Dignity” in Ventimille (north-west Italy) to cross the border into France in a protest against French imposition of border controls in the south west of the country. The French authorities responded by ordering a temporary closure of the border, thus preventing the train from departing, See the Al Jazeera article here.
Today Monday 11th April at a meeting of EU immigration ministers in Luxembourg Melchior Wathelet, the Belgium Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, threatened that his country would reintroduce border controls in protest at Italy’s decision to grant temporary Schengen visas to 22,000 Tunisians last week.
Today several videos have been released by No Border activists in Calais which document the everyday harassment that the migrants and they as activists experience daily. Click here to watch the videos and read a text (in French) entitled “Police harassment in Calais: the videos that shame”.
9 months ago as the end of a series of strikes the CGT union negotiated with the French government to look at the cases of 3900 sans papier. So far, only 200 have been given papers, and 1200 of them have not even been given a receipt acknowledging that their case is being looked at. Francine Blanche of the CGT has said the failure of the prefectures to complete the cases by the deadline of 31st March this year shows a lack of “political will”.
Earlier today Sunday 3rd April several hundred people marched from central Liege to Vottem detention centre demanding the closure of all centres. When they arrived at the centre, 49 demonstators climbed over the fences and broke into the courtyard. A helicopter came and hovered 15m over them whilst a planned concert continued outside. After an hour, police came and arrested the 49, whilst being subjected to a shower of projectiles thrown by the detainees.
On Tuesday 29th March at 6am 150 police evicted a Roma camp along the back of the Ourcq canal near Bobigny, north east of Paris. The camp had been there for two years and housed 270 people. Throughout the morning caravans which were mobile were removed and other shelters were destroyed. The mayor of Bobibny, Catherine Peyge, said that they had had no warning from the prefecture about the eviction, and denounced the “security and anti-immigration policies of the government”. 48 of the evictees moved to a plot in Bobigny, the rest were housed in a sports hall which Peyge had opened as an emergency measure.
The collective D’alliers nous sommes d’ici (Besides we are from here) is calling for a national day of mobilisation across France on 28th May against racism and government immigration policies and for the regularisation of sans papier. The littoral (coastal) collective have called for a demo in Calais from the food distribution point to the town hall.
On Friday 1st April there will be a demo in front of the Office des étrangers in central Brussels calling for the regularisation of a group of sans papiers who have waited several years for papers from the government.
According to railway workers, on 15th March French police requisitioned a carriage of a train to try and send 20 sans-papier back to Italy. At 9.30am a ticket inspector found 7 border police on a platform in Cannes with the sans-papiers. She asked the police if they had travel documents for everyone, they said that they did not intend to put them on board the train. However the police then boarded the two-carriage train, asked all the passengers in the front carriage to move to the back one, and then got on the front carriage with the sans-papiers. At Nice station the police told the driver and the ticket inspector that they would get off the train at Menton, as they cannot go to Italy.