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This business in Calais


Baltar
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Just fell out with my boss, I try not to speak to the daft cow but she'd mentioned 'swarm', 'benefits' & 'send them back to their own countries' before I had to step in & point out that I wasn't having it.

 

Me - 'What, their countries that the Western World have ruined?'

Her - 'Aye, but it wasn't me who ruined their country.'

Me - 'I wasn't aware that they'd be staying in your house.'

 

Fucking moron.

 

I'm only really writing this in frustration that I can't just tell her she's a fucking moron.

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Just read an article on Vice news and it blew a lot of garbage claims to pieces.

 

It stated that a fair amount of residents of the jungle had claimed Asylum in France and had no desire to come to the UK, but had instead been sent back to the jungle by the French authorities while more permanent housing was sorted out for them.

 

Also, they've sorted out a little community there too, despite initial fighting between the differing ethnicities. There's a church, couple of mosques, a shop, a cafe and some of the Eritreans there have even set up a nightclub.

 

Doc Troy, the situation in Eritrea has apparently changed now re: military service and illegal exit, according to a report by some Danish fact finding mission. 2 years average military service and payment of a punitive tax for illegal exit, hence why the UK have started refusing Eritrean Asylum applications.

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  • 6 months later...

A timely rejoinder to the 'economic migrants' lies of fascist scum. 

 

New report: Developing countries host 80% of refugees

 

A UNHCR report released today June 20, World Refugee Day, reveals deep imbalance in international support for the world's forcibly displaced, with a full four-fifths of the world's refugees being hosted by developing countries – and at a time of rising anti-refugee sentiment in many industrialized ones.

 

“The burden of helping the world’s forcibly displaced people is starkly uneven.,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his message on World Refugee Day. “Poor countries host vastly more displaced people than wealthier ones. While anti-refugee sentiment is heard loudest in industralized countries, developing nations host 80 per cent of the world’s refugees. This situation demands an equitable solution.”

 

UNHCR's 2010 Global Trends report shows that many of the world's poorest countries are hosting huge refugee populations, both in absolute terms and in relation to the size of their economies. Pakistan, Iran and Syria have the largest refugee populations at 1.9 million, 1.1 million and 1 million respectively.

 

Pakistan also has the biggest economic impact with 710 refugees for each US dollar of its per capita GDP (Gross Domestic Product), followed by Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya with 475 and 247 refugees respectively. By comparison, Germany, the industrialized country with the largest refugee population (594,000 people), has 17 refugees for each dollar of per capita GDP.

 

Overall, the picture presented by the 2010 report is of a drastically changed protection environment to that of 60 years ago when the UN refugee agency was founded. At that time UNHCR's caseload was 2.1 million Europeans, uprooted by World War Two.

 

Today, UNHCR's work extends to more than 120 countries and encompasses people forced to flee across borders as well as those in flight within their own countries.

 

The 2010 Global Trends report shows that 43.7 million people are now displaced worldwide – roughly equalling the entire populations of Colombia or South Korea, or of Scandinavia and Sri Lanka combined.

 

Within this total are 15.4 million refugees (10.55 million under UNHCR's care and 4.82 million registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), 27.5 million people displaced within their own country by conflict, and nearly 850,000 asylum-seekers, nearly one fifth of them in South Africa alone.

 

Particularly distressing are the 15,500 asylum applications by unaccompanied or separated children, most of them Somali or Afghan. The report does not cover displacement seen during 2011, including from Libya, Côte d'Ivoire and Syria.

 

"In today's world there are worrying misperceptions about refugee movements and the international protection paradigm," said António Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "Fears about supposed floods of refugees in industrialized countries are being vastly overblown or mistakenly conflated with issues of migration. Meanwhile, it's poorer countries that are left having to pick up the burden."

 

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Never understood all this French hatred, I know a few French people living over here and they are sound. Paris was fine when I went and no more rude or unfriendly than any other large city I've visited. Russians are the most rude arrogant twats I've met on my travels.

I also reckon the French are sound, I got left on my own in Lille after the Europa years ago and ended up with two lots of random French clubbing over the course of the night.

 

Most the French I know in work are sound, don't know where the rep comes from.

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  • 4 months later...

What a splendid use of police resources this is; preventing people from being decent to each other.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/french-authorities-block-british-aid-convoy-for-calais-refugees-at-dover-uk-france-migrants-a7089266.html

 

A convoy of 250 vehicles taking tonnes of aid and donations to refugees in Calais has been refused permission to cross the Channel by French authorities in a decision condemned as “shameful” by volunteers.

Hundreds of people had assembled in Whitehall before driving down to Dover, with ferry tickets booked for a crossing on Saturday afternoon.

But the French police, who carry out border checks on English soil as part of a bilateral treaty, refused entry to the country for unspecified security concerns.

Members of the convoy were held in Dover as the ban was confirmed, holding a rally where protesters waving “refugees welcome” banners chanted: “We’ve got aid, let us through – refugees are people too.”

Kent Police was sent an official notification from French authorities that entry had been refused.

“No agency within the United Kingdom has any grounds to challenge this decision,” a spokesperson said.

“The refusal of entry to France is a matter for the French authorities.”

A spokesperson for the Port of Dover authority said the ensuing demonstration caused “temporary disruption” from midday onwards but that services had returned to normal.

It came after the port in Calais was shut down for several hours in the early hours of Saturday morning when refugees were spotted swimming in the sea, making desperate attempts to board ferries to the UK.

Shipping traffic was stopped shortly after 2am as a search and rescue operation was launched, with those taken out of the water transferred to hospital.

The Convoy to Calais was organised by The People’s Assembly, the Stop the War Coalition, Stand Up To Racism, trade unions and other campaign groups.

John McDonnell, the shadow Chancellor, and shadow International Development Secretary Diane Abbott were among the MPs supporting the effort. 

Zak Cochrane, from Stand Up to Racism, told The Independentpeople had paid more than £8,000 for ferry tickets to take tonnes of aid donated from across the UK to charities working in Calais.

He said the convoy was separated from the rest of ferry traffic in Dover before leaders were handed a letter saying permission to cross had been denied.

“At the request of charities we wanted to deliver a lot of aid, but we also wanted to send a message that a large section of the population want more to be done for refugees,” Mr Cochrane added.

“Throughout the EU referendum, both sides of the debate haveused refugees as a political football.”

The convoy was on its way back to London on Saturday afternoon and heading for the French embassy, where supporters were planning a protest against the blockade.

A lorry carrying donations raised as part of the project was separately allowed to cross to France via the Channel Tunnel.

Steve Sweeney, from the People’s Assembly, called the decision to block the convoy "shameful".

“There is a desperate situation in Calais,” he told The Independent. “The French and British governments are responsible for the crisis just across the water and it’s not acceptable to sit on their hands and do nothing while people suffer.”

Organisers received notification from the French prefecture of Pas-de-Calais last week saying that they would not be permitted to hold a demonstration in France.

But they insisted that a rally was only scheduled on British soil and that the delivery of aid was not covered by the scope of the ban.

France has been under a state of emergency since Isis militants massacred 130 people in November’s Paris attacks, while violence at the Euro 2016 football tournament it is hosting and the assassination of a police officer last week has put added pressure on the security services.

Mr Sweeney said supporters from as far away as the Shetland Islands had travelled to join the convoy and that people who had donated would be “hurt and angry” at the refusal.

“It could be you or me finding ourselves in that situation (as refugees) and they are treated like animals,” he added. “It’s an embarrassment.”

The donations were due to be handled by British charityCare4Calais, which had requested basic items such as warm clothing, non-perishable food, blankets and toiletries for the thousands of asylum seekers they help.

Clare Moseley, a volunteer for the charity, said organisers had offered to receive the convoy 30 miles away from “The Jungle”camp to assuage any concerns but were refused.

“We are desperate for donations at the moment, we are struggling to cope,” she added. “We needed this.”

Ms Moseley told The Independent that since French authorities started destroying parts of the camp earlier this year donations had fallen, because of a perception that the problem had “gone away”.

She said: “There are more than 6,000 people here and more are arriving every day.

“We had managed to get everyone into wooden shelters build by volunteers but then the evictions happened, then we had a fire a couple of weeks ago that destroyed even more.

“Now it just feels like we’re going back to the beginning with everyone living in tents.”

The French government has installed accommodation for refugee families using converted shipping containers on the site but the facility can only hold 1,400 people.

A survey of refugees in Calais by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) found that more than 80 per cent were aiming to reach Britain and that more than two thirds had experienced violence, amid warnings of sexual abuse and exploitation.

An unknown number of asylum seekers have been run over, hit by trains, electrocuted in the Channel Tunnel and drowned in desperate attempts to swim to England.

The number of refugees living in Calais is expected to rise over the coming months as people smugglers exploit calmer summer weather to send overcrowded boats across the Mediterranean.

While arrivals to Greek islands have fallen since the EU-Turkey deal, the number of boats crossing between Libya and Italy has risen dramatically, with almost 3,000 refugees drowning in a succession of disasters so far this year.

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Well, fuck that shit, as they say in Shetland.

 

http://sputniknews.com/europe/20160620/1041624572/shetlands-french-aid-ban.html?utm_source=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F&utm_medium=short_url&utm_content=b5JT&utm_campaign=URL_shortening

 

With the tag line "wir aa wan tribe" ("we are all one tribe") activists from the UK's most Northerly islands defied the French authorities ban on aid vehicles, taking a 'covert mission' through Belgium to deliver aid packages to refugee camps in Calais.

Organizers of the nationwide convoy, which had been planned for months, received a letter just two days before the event, stating that entry would not be allowed due to concerns over football hooliganism, terrorism and trouble caused by demonstrations at the camp.

While 250 vans from across the UK were turned away at Dover, the group from Shetland embarked on a lengthy journey encompassing 44 hours at sea and a 1200 mile drive, entering France via Belgium, to successfully deliver the aid packages to the camps in Calais.

Kaila McCulloch was one of the four Shetlanders that took part in the trip, and told Sputnik of the sheer determination the group had to deliver the collections they had taken in from across the Shetland Islands.

"We were on a mission, we had gathered in all the food and toiletries, a couple of tents and some sleeping bags. We felt that if we hadn't of made it to Calais we'd have failed — so we were going, and we were getting there at all cost."

On hearing the news, just before boarding the Shetland ferry, that the French authorities would be refusing the aid convoy passage to France, the group were concerned that authorities at the Channel Tunnel would have the names of all those planning to take part in the convoy. They decided to head to Hull to find an alternative route to mainland Europe.

"We took another 14 hour ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge (Belgium), and then took a relatively short drive to Calais."

"We weren't so worried on the ferry, we were more worried about entering France and Calais. We didn't want to get lost or pulled aside as obviously our van was full of food and supplies for the refugees. We did feel a bit nervous heading towards the Care for Calais warehouse in case we got stopped, and there was a police presence, certainly, in Calais."

When the group from Shetland arrived they were the first ones that had managed to get passed the French authorities, an achievement which clearly meant a lot to the Shetlanders.

"In Shetland, people are really, really kind and if there's ever a crisis or need for people to rally together Shetland is renowned for being super-good at doing that," McCulloch said, speaking of a community that had come together to provide support, and pointing to all the people who had made their journey possible. "The local hire group Star Rent-A-Car gave us a van for free, NorthLink ferries gave us free passage, Unison Scotland and Unison Shetland gave us money towards our fuel costs and Artmachine provided us with T-shirts."

Alongside clothing, toiletries and non-perishable food items, the group took letters of solidarity from school children in Yell, saying "we care" and "hopefully you'll [sic] life will get better. Love from someone who cares."

After 2 overnight ferries, and driving the length of the UK, the team arrived back in Shetland this morning, being able to use their original return tickets from Calais, giving a slightly shorter and less stressful final leg. "We arrived back home this morning as we all had to get back to work," though spirits are still high following their 3 day voyage.

 

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