Police clear French migrant camp
Posted by admin on Sep 22nd, 2009
BBC, Tuesday, 22 September 2009
French police have moved in to dismantle a makeshift camp set up by migrants near the port of Calais. French officials said 278 migrants had been held in the operation at the camp known as “the jungle”. More than 1,000 were thought to have already left. Rights protesters scuffled with police and some arrests were reported. Rights activists initially formed a human chain as the operation began early on Tuesday.
UK Home Secretary Alan Johnson said reports Britain would be forced to take some of the migrants were wrong but that it would help “genuine refugees”.
France to close Calais migrant camp
Posted by admin on Sep 18th, 2009
Al Jazeera, Friday, September 18, 2009
The French government has announced it will close a camp in a wasteland district of Calais known as “the Jungle” where hundreds of migrants trying to get to Britain have set up home. Eric Besson, the country’s immigration minister, said some of the migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and other troubled or impoverished nations would be sent home from the zone in the Channel port. Besson said a police operation in the scrubland near the main port would take place this week. He said the action would be taken because of rising crime in Calais since “the Jungle” became established.
Life in the Calais Migrant Camp at France/UK border
Posted by admin on Sep 5th, 2009
by Amanda Wilson, The Dominion, September 5, 2009
CALAIS, FRANCE—A tranquil scene greets visitors as they approach Calais, France, on the ferry from Dover, England: people play on the beach and lounge on the balconies of their waterfront condos; children fly kites by the shore. It has all the appearances of a charming place to spend a few days soaking up the sun and practicing your French. But this peaceful façade obscures the harsh reality for thousands of migrants, predominantly from the Middle East and Northern Africa, attempting to complete the final leg of their journey to what they hope will be a better life in the UK.
Kumeyaay Sovereignty and border security
Posted by admin on Aug 26th, 2009
By Victor Morales, Indian Country Today correspondent, Aug 26, 2009
TECATE, Mexico – When Kumeyaay people living on the Mexican side of the Diegueño Nation were – for the first time – denied entry into the United States by border officials, they responded the Indian way. “They would sing Indian songs right there on the border,†said Ron Christman, a Kumeyaay Bird Singer from the Santa Ysabel Reservation in rural San Diego County. He remembers when the Kumeyaay people ran into a wall of tight border security along the U.S.-Mexico border in the 1960s. It came after decades of traveling freely to see relatives living on 12 reservations in California through an obscurely marked border.
