Mar. 2011
Issue four
p. 1
WITHOUT BORDERS
The far left paper that incites people to revolt
In Greece as in Calais
As Europe has closed itself to immigration,
the people who were refused legal entry started
to cross the borders illegally. Europe then
attempts to block its borders, in particular with
the help of Frontex agency. The towns of Ceuta
and Melilla, Spanish enclaves in North Africa,
are surrounded with walls and barbed wire.
Naval patrols hunt for small boats transporting
exilees between Maghreb and the south of Spain,
then between west Africa and the Canaries, then
between Lybia and the south of Italia, finally
between the Turkish coast and the Greek islands.
The land border between Turkey and Greece
thus became the main crossing point for exilees
What comes around, goes around
from Africa and Asia. A pretty dangerous river,
The mistreatments, the intimidations, even the beatings for those
the Evros, makes up the greatest part of that
who refuse to be deported, have become daily bread for the illegal
border, save for a dozen kilometes where Turkey
foreigners locked up in european detention centres.
continues on the west bank of the river. The
After the hunger strikes and escapes last Autumn in the
Greek government has planned to build a wall
on that 12 km portion.
Vincennes et Mesnil Amelot centres, on Sunday 20th of February at
Greece does not respect the right to asylum
the 127 bis detention centre near Brussels, a hunger strike
and locks up the undocumented in sub-human
transformed into an actual revolt.
conditions, a fact established by associations and
The beating of a young 18 year old Egyptian by four warders in
international institutions. Despite this and a
the night of 15th of February had sparked off the anger. He had
recent finding by the European Court of Human
gone through a « c
  onditioning »
  before his deportation to Italy
Rights, most European countries continue to
planned seven days later.
send asylum seekers in Greece within the
He testifies: « I was caught and the four individuals beat me (. .),
framework of the European guideline, Dublin II.
I was told so that you don't come back here in Belgium (. .), I was
Facing the lack of reception in Greece, the
caught and put on the ground, I was handcuffed, and the four
Exiles continue their journey to Italy and wait in
officers injured my hands and feet, and I have head injuries. »
 
the "jungles" of Patras and Igoumenitsa to be
On February 20thth, whilst a supporting demonstration was held
able to get onto a truck that will come aboard a
on the outside with activists for freedom of movement, a fire was
ferry bound for Ancône, Bari or Venise. Others
started by the detainees and one of them managed to escape by
go up through the Balkan states, towards central
climbing the compound fencing.
Europe.
The parts designated for male adults of the 127bis detention
Since January 25th, 300 migrants have been on
centre of Steenokkerzeel have been declared uninhabitable on
a hunger strike in Athens and Thessalonica, to
Sunday night. 23 « i
  nhabitants »
  had to be immediately evacuated
obtain papers, access to the job market and to
to the closed centers of Merksplas, Vottem and Bruges. Later 31
dignified reception conditions.
other individuals will also be moved.
In the next issue of Without Borders, a report
Come Monday, in the « L
  a Libre Belgique »
  paper [1] you could
from our special correspondent.
read: « M
  . Wathelet, asylum and immigration policy secretary of
state called the provocating attitude of the demonstrators
More information at:
unacceptable. « I
  t is an exterior demonstration organized by a left
http://www.m igreu rop.org/
wing grouping that excited the residents putting in danger both the
http://w2eu.net/
personnel and the residents themselves. »
  He also underlines that
http://hungers trike300.espivblogs.net
there are lots of misunderstandings about the situation. »
 
http://ex ilesengrece.over-blog.com/
And, in response, on Brussels Indymedia [2]:
« T
  hose who come to show solidarity with other human beings
whom people lock up because they are without papers, those who
have heard the calls to help from the inside, those who do not
sup port those base treatments that are every day inflicte d on the
detainees, those who, against the silent and deaf majority, hear the
cries and the crying, the hurt and the sorrow, are supposedly guilty
(continued on page 2)

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WITHOUT BORDERS
p. 2
Drowned by the border
of the revolt of the mistreated?? And is it so surprising that he
who tries to escape is supported? Certainly, it would have been a
The Nord-Pas-de-Calais prefect was inhumane case of failure to help a person in danger, had it been otherwise.
enough to state that the drowned man was a Probably we should have pushed him over the other side, and have
wanted smuggler, implying that being a smuggler him go through a 16 ft fall, so as to secure ourselves the respect of
was tantamount to a death sentence, and that the ministers, mayors, police officers and other citizens. . »
 
the strange conditions of the drowning did not
[1] ht tp://www.lalibre.be/sujet/GL/Bruges+%28Fland re -
necessitate any investigation. A man fled the Occidentale%29
law.
[2] ht tp://bxl.indymedia .org/a r ticles/1121
But wasn't he scared, instead, of the PAF
officers' brutality? Scared of being locked up in
A little online game to learn to manage a detention centre:
one of our jails famous for their inhumanity?
http://www.avenue -joinv ille.fr/intention s
Border crossing is a perfectly legal activity,
even if it is criminalized by nationalist
bürokrats. It is as instructive to say of someone
that he or she is a smuggler, as it is to say that
To Madame Bouchart
he or she takes hitch-hikers. The real question is:
To obey your xenophobic government's directives that contradict
did he or she have something to hide, actually? Human Rights, you have put everything in place to make migrants'
We do not know what kind of smuggler that lives hellish on the territory of Calais.
person was: what he or she may have done
You hide behind arguments that fool no one:
outside of smuggling people as he or she has the
- A secure distribution area, that serves as hunting ground for
right to do. To smuggle people is essentially as the CRS
insignificant as giving a lift to someone from
- Squats declared unsafe, when the streets, the cold and isolation
Calais to Lille.
are much less safe
Some criminal networks, however, sometimes
- Cleaning operations with your workers whose objective it is to
use lethal violence to establish their territorial get a hold of the personal belongings of those who already have
monopoly of the black market, to secure profits nothing left.
for themselves. But the crossing is not, in itself,
The State gave you an important sum of money this winter to
violent. We thus cannot judge that poor 24 year improve the care of migrants in times of harsh cold.
old Afghan. No more than can we judge someone
This money should not serve to restore fences and barbed wire
on the basis that he or she has a croissant in the that so help the CRS in their odious manhunt.
morning, for that is as insignificant and
At the last migrants council, you got angry against the
legitimate as crossing borders.
international activists of No Borders, probably because you cannot
Actually, we prefer to assume, considering the exercise any authority over them, as contrary to the humanitarian
facts we do know, that this person had a courage associations on a leash due to your subsidies.
and a sense of justice much more developed than
Take notice that you are facing europeans, french people,
that of the irresponsible robocops who hunted calaisians, world citizens, with papers, and aware of their rights and
him down, and who provoked his death by duties.
drowning.
Forbidding access to the food distribution area amounts to
And we hope the investigation will reveal why discrimination, and we will not hesitate to use judicial means to
it took the police so long to call the fire brigade, protect our fundamental freedom of speech, demonstration,
when their station is 2 minutes away.
movement and international solidarity.
Communications Team of Calais No Borders
A BIG BROTHER's cog: the
From one No Borders to another
Steria group
On February 19th and 20th, members of the No Borders network
"Steria delivers services that rely on new gathered to take stock of the camp that took place from September
technologies and that allow administrations and 27th to October 3rd in Brussels, and talk about what could happen
companies to improve their efficiency and their next.
profitability."
The Brussels camp was a very rich opportunity to meet, to debate
In other words, Steria makes money by helping ideas, to weave networks together and to launch actions. But it was
governments establishing the general filing of also the object of rash police repression, in particular of preventive
populations, and cuts in the personnel of public arrests and violence. The Belgian Human Rights League sent an
services .
account backed up by more than 80 testimonies to the Human
With a 1.6 billion euros turnover [1], and Rights Committee of the UN, who quoted it in their report on
established in 12 european countries in addition Belgium.
to China, Morocco, and Singapore, Steria
The
next camps will take place in Bulgaria (2011) and Sweden
"accompanies the transformation of public (2012). The discussions also bore on Frontex, the European
services" under the cover of "simplifying the deportation policy, and the European companies involved in the
every day life of citizens."
business of deportations.
Biometry, electronical voting, chip-equipped ID
cards
(continued on page 3)

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WITHOUT BORDERS
p. 3
Norrent-Fontes, a report on the march and
the security tentacles are worming their way in
thinking on asylum
everywhere, for our own good, of course, and for
On Saturday the 29th January we participated in a march of the benefit of private groups, with public money.
about 300 people from the village of Isbergues to Norrent-Fontes.
In Britain, Steria works with NOMS, the
As we discussed in the last issue, the Prefect Bousquet has « n
  ational offender management services »
  , to
formally demanded that the Mayor Norrent-Fontes dismantle a put on file and to track any person who has
camp near the town, on the basis that disturbances to public order been jailed. In Spain, Steria has put in place the
have taken place. The Ecologist Mayor Mr Marc Boulnois, has not overhaul of postal services where electronic
complied, and so risks prosecution.
messages are favored as against paper mail.
The march was held to support the Mayor. Attended by other
In Sweden, they manage the privatisation of
Mayors from the area, the vice-president of the Regional Council the student grant, loan, and recovery system.
and a number of associations, including Terres d'errances,
In Belgium, thanks to the chip identity card
Fraternité Migrants, the Belle Etoile. No Borders activists were imposed on all only a little while ago, Steria puts
present. The march ended with a press conference by Marc in place a network system between the FOREM
Boulnois. A lunch was waiting for the marchers, the money made files of job seekers and those of "other structures
went to the Belle Etoile in Calais.
involved in job searching."
It was followed by two workshops, discussions, where you could
In Norway, a fingerprints file with high speed
hear good things from the participants. (But unfortunately not the access for all identity controls. .
right thing.)
With the European Union, Steria is the drive
Jean-Pierre Alaux, member of GISTI [1], pointed out that the behind the establishment of the new Shengen
good reception conditions of Great Britain are a double-edged Information System (SIS II), and the Visa
sword: a person being denied asylum is more easily found if s/he is Information System (VIS).
fed and housed by the state. It is therefore more difficult to then
The security policies of our governments, the
blend into the population.
filing and tracking possibilities offered by
All this was taking place with the backdrop of a banner saying techonological developments, have opened a wide
"Save asylum."
market to private companies.
As No Borders, we do not want to save the asylum. Never again
Our personal information is out of our control.
do we want to accompany a migrant to a government building They now only have to tattoo us when we're
where a person comfortably seated may decide the residence of a born.
person over a geographical area of 600,000 km².
Big brother is watching you
Everyone has the right to asylum, to protection against danger
from his/her government. But what can a bürokrat sitting in a chair [1] http://www.s teria.fr/index.php?
do with his dirty paper ?
pa ge=presentation-s teria
Asylum is a fact of nature, not a piece of paper that is carried in
a pocket. A person leaving a war zone to get to a peace zone is out
of danger by the very fact of being there. Similarly, a person leaving
an area of misery to reach a zone of prosperity.
The only thing that the bürokrat is doing in giving his usurper
permission is to "protect" the Exiles from French police
harassment, de facto racist, if not racist in ideology. An Exile is
given papers and "protected" from the possibility of being sent to
the dangerous country in question. But if it was not given the
Frontex is developing its power
French state would simply become an accomplice and we know that
FRONTEX was set up in 2004, it is the agency
people have been tortured to death in the past, because they were responsible for protecting the external borders
not believed by the French authorities.
of the European Union: surveillance, arrests,
Clearly, this kind of "protection" makes no sense, since the Police and repatriation to their countries of origin or
and the administration have no right to harass or deport migrants third countries such as finance working against
in this way to begin with. But since they do it anyway, and since the Libya.
migrants are unable to change things, they have no choice but to
Members states provide specialists and
submit. Not because they want to, but because they simply cannot budgetery increases.
cope otherwise.
In October 2010, for the first time, rapid
It's on this kind of sickening constraint that "asylum" rests. response teams (RABIT teams) intervened on
Therefore, the right to asylum must disappear, because it is a the Greek-Turkish border at the request of the
declaration of slavery for all foreign people who are already in Greek state. The number of people illegally
enough trouble without having the French state on their backs too.
crossing the Greek border has decreased by 40%
[1] Information and Support Group for Immigrants, and the effectiveness of Frontex is being praised
http://www.gis ti.org/index.php
by European governments.
If you wish to follow us, receive the paper in PDF format, or simply
On January the 20th, from Austria and to the

react to our articles, you may send us an email at
general indifference of the media, 46 Nigerians
san sfrontieres.calais@gm ail.com
were deported to their country as part of a joint
An electronic copy is available on the following blog:
charter led by Frontex.
(continued on page 4)
http://san sfrontieres- calais.blog pos t.com
Comments welcome!

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WITHOUT BORDERS
p. 4
11 countries participated in the operation, Crimes necessary to control borders, March
diluting responsibilities. Among these Nigerians,
a young woman of 27 a victim of forced
2011
prostitution was arrested for illegally staying
Last month, we ended our summary on the 21st of January. New
when she came to ask for help and to denounce information has been added and should be included, for fear of
her torturers. The aircraft took off at 1am to being forgotten. We recount therefore this month from the 20th of
prevent any activist rally at the airport.(1)
January to the 25th February.
The new Hungarian presidency of the EU
For being one of the places of border closure at one end of this
pledged to strengthen the role of Frontex.
world from the free movement of peoples, the town of Calais has
42 million euros in 2007, its budget should seen at least 87 cases of kidnapping, 11 cases of destruction of
amount to 100 million in 2011. (2)
private property, 12 cases of physical aggression, 6 cases of verbal
Switzerland agreed first to cooperate with the aggression, 3 cases of tear gas spraying, 4 cases of harassment, two
agency in February. It is participating in cases of sexual harassment.
Operation "Hermes" which started on February
These are what the Police have been doing to the migrants and
20th due to the influx of refugees from North activists. It is also important to remember the indirect
Africa, by "lending" specially trained border consequences of the manhunt that takes place every day, and which
guards.
have reached severe extremes this month.
This, was despite opposition from the Greens
and Socialist Party politicians who lament that
One person died , d rowned on February the 22nd . Two people
we no longer speak of welcoming refugees but of fell from a roof and suffered multiple fractu res on February
sending them back immediately even before they 10th and January 28th. Two people fell froma a gutter on February
reach the coast.(3)
9th and suffered a broken a rm and a head traum a. Palestinian
Unlike its neighboring Tunisia and Libya, youths disappea red on the night of January the 15th. They have
Algeria is the only Mediterranean country which recently shown signs of life, after at least one month in which
has still not yielded to temptations against the everything and anything could have happened to them. A young 12
EU's financial participation in the supervision year old boy los t a finger while trying to swim to a boat, on
and control of borders with Frontex. Italy is January the 31st.
multiplying meetings to try to convince the
All these figures and facts hardly seem to do justice to the
Algerian government to cooperate.(4)
inhumanity and malevolence of the French police, hiding behind
their duties before the invalid laws. So we also want to mention
(1) ht tp://no -racism .net/a r ticle/3642/
episodes of the month that seem particularly troubling.
(2) ht tp://www.eu2011.hu/fr/news/ la-
The CRS posing on the roof of the squat in rue Descartes with
presidence -ren forcerait-le -role - de -frontex
their guns, and declaring that their work is a game. The PAF
(3) ht tp://www.tsr.ch/in fo/suisse/2971083-
coming into the courtyard of Africa House and waking everyone
des- ga rdes-frontiere -suisses-bientot- en-
very early, with their carlights, or with music, then leaving; this
italie.htm l
happened many times. The PAF stealing the artwork of activists
(4)http://www.elwatan .com/repor ta ge/bient
and people from Africa House. The PAF trying to run over the
ot-des- equipes- d-intervention-rapide -
activists with their vans on several occasions. A man beaten on the
rabits-pour-traquer-les-ha rra ga-09-02-2011-
ground while he appeared to be unconscious and groaning; an
110866_117.php
activist who arrived on the scene saw her camera smashed by the

perpetrators of the beating, who subsequently resumed their
violence. Activists were violently thrown to the ground and beaten
in the stomach and head. One activist was tripped to the ground,
and then the PAF declared that he must be more careful with the
debris on the ground. Officers of the PAF used a migrant to relay
sexual advances toward a female activist. Rumours circulated that
the Police, like last Spring, said to the migrants that female
activists are whores and that they make love with anyone.
Menacing insults, and rape jokes, by male Police towards female
activists, who are believed to be unable to understand French. A
minor was wounded in the arm by the CRS. Black eyes and a broken
nose that are supposed to be the result of a fall on the back.
Officers speak in Arabic to tell the migrants how pathetic they are,
Calais Migrant Solida rity is a transnational and that they have no chance to stay in Calais.
group of activists bringing daily support to
One could go on forever to list all the little daily crimes done by
migrants, through police monitoring, patrols and the "representatives of public order." Calais is a frustrating town, the
watches around squats, jungles and camps, malice and wickedness are daily, too fleeting to be identified and
clothes donations, english and french lessons, and combatted. And so the activists and migrants continue to fight and
other acts of solidarity. There is a great need of support each other as much as they can.
Calaisians! Get in touch by sending an email to
cala isolida rity@gm ail.com

Keep informed by visiting the blog:
http://calaism igrantsolida rity.wordpress.co
m

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Document Outline

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