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Daily Archives: December 14, 2015

I did not want to go back to the Jungle

14 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by cheztopflight in All, Politics, Refugees

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Tags

asylum, calais, EU, followtherefugees, France, human rights, humanitarianism, immigration, Jungle, middle east, openeuborders, refugees

photo 4 (1)Since I began my blog in Athens there has not been one day where I didn’t want to get out of bed. I was absolutely exhausted for those 9 days, but not once did I consider piking. On Sunday morning I did not want to go back to the Jungle. I did not want to see it, hear it, smell it or feel it. I selfishly did not want to absorb its unhappiness. It took a lot of internal self-reproach to get me into the taxi and tell the driver where I wanted to go.

It rained constantly over night and the mud is worse, more like a dirty river or one big puddle that seeps into every corner of every ‘street’. It’s impossible to stay clean. And I’ve made my peace that my boots will not see Paris again. There were also more people than yesterday. Many ‘tourists’ showed up to look at the new Banksy and take photos. And on my way in there were more cops decked out in riot gear.

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Inside my tent we use candles, as we have no generators, it is very dangerous. The camp gets set on fire all the time.

A volunteer I met organised a meeting with a British MEP scheduled to speak about opening the border. I spent a good portion of Saturday handing out fliers with her and encouraging people to show up. And they have. Everyone is packed into Cafe Kabul until it becomes clear that there is nowhere near enough room. To my great claustrophobic relief we move to a bigger venue, the only venue here really, ‘the dome’. The Daily Mail article I mentioned tried to make it out as if the Dome was a nightclub. In reality, it’s the only enclosed space that will host more than a few dozen people in the Jungle where they can meet.

IMG_2405

This represents the long time I spent in prison in my country. I feel like I’ve gone from one prison to another.

Art is posted on the walls inside giving refugees a chance to express themselves. And some of the quotes that are attached about freedom and living like animals make me squirm. The purpose of the meeting is for everyone to share stories and people who know what they’re talking about to talk about human rights. But it’s all a bit of a mess and ends up in a hopeful chant of ‘UK, UK, UK, UK!’ The British delegation in particular seems a bit overwhelmed, though after everyone sounds their support there are a lot of cheers and applause. It seems cruel that this has given them false hope.

IMG_2404

Sometimes I come here and I stand for a few minutes, imagining that this is what England looks like.

After I step outside for some air, 24 year old Ali comes over. He left Afghanistan in August. His uncle is in the Taliban and was trying to recruit him four years ago, but he managed to run away to Kabul. There he found a good job with the municipality and he proudly shows me his id card. He said he had a good life and earned a good salary, until the Taliban started strengthening again and his uncle came for him. ‘I love Afghanistan’ he tells me, ‘the mountains are so beautiful and I would go back to my good life in Kabul if I could… but the Taliban is very, very bad.’ I almost want to laugh at the persuasive tone in his voice, as if he needs to convince me that the Taliban is evil. His uncle first came looking for him last year, and his mother told him to run. He tells me that he couldn’t stay and just say no, they would find him and kill him. ‘I do not want to fight for them’ he says, ‘they do very bad things’. So he left, he travelled through Iran, Turkey, Greece and along the usual route until he ended up in the Jungle two months ago.

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Tear gas, why?

He has tried daily to get into England, one time being beaten up so badly by the police his eye socket was broken. Two weeks ago they arrested him and shipped him to a gaol in Metz, near the border with Germany. After telling the judge what he’d been through, that he wanted to get to the UK and if they were going to send him back to Afghanistan ‘could they please shoot him?’ the case was dismissed and he came back to this hell hole. Again I start listing the reasons to claim asylum in France. He shakes his head and tells me he has been through too much to start with a new culture. ‘I know English, and I have friends in UK, people who will help me, it will be quicker to start a life and work.’ While he is open to considering a new country he tells me he is too depressed and there are ‘things wrong with his brain now… I will have problems to learn’.

‘Some days’, he says, ‘I wish they would just come in and shoot us’. It’s not even fear of going back to Kabul, he just has no thirst for life. I try and wonder what that would be like, to have no fear of death, and in a weird way even welcome it. To almost be indifferent as to whether you live or die. Ali shares a minuscule blue ten with 3 other men from Afghanistan. Today it is sunken and the mud has run in. He tells me he is good with clothes and could be a tailor, but would do any kind of job. ‘I just want to work… when you can work, life is good’. What a luxury I have to be irritated at my job for not being everything I want it to be.
IMG_2395-0Throughout his story he repeatedly shrugs his shoulders and says ‘what can I do?’ and I nod dumbly and understandingly. But he repeats it when we say goodbye, and I realise it’s not a rhetorical question. ‘What would you do?’ he asks, pleading for some kind of guidance or advice. I don’t know what to tell him. I can’t tell him his situation is hopeless or that he’s done anything wrong. And I can’t judge any one decision he’s made. ‘I would have left as well…’ I say, ‘but I wouldn’t stay here’. He nods sadly, ‘I just didn’t want to fight for the Taliban’ he says again before he walks away.

Another man who’s been listening to our conversation walks over. His English is much better, almost unaccented, and he clearly wants to talk. ‘Why do they not want us?’ Again I’m hoping this is a rhetorical question, but again he seems to want an answer. I try to explain why people are nervous and the fears people have about differences and the chance of terrorism. I try to be very delicate in how I pick my words but the pain on his face tells me I’ve clearly failed. ‘There is no Daesh here’ he says. Though I couldn’t say for sure I would tend to agree, purely because I cannot imagine anyone voluntarily choosing to live in the jungle. He then urges me to look up some survey online that shows people from Afghanistan are the most peaceful in Europe. I promise to type that into google, though I’m doubtful about the existence of such a study.

photo 2 (1)He asks where I’m from, expresses amazement that I have come so far, and I do the usual living in Paris spiel. Recognition flashes over his face and he asks if I was ok when the attacks happened last month. I don’t know why after all the people I’ve met his concern still takes me aback, but it does. I assure him everyone I know was ok. He nods his head, ‘that is good…. but what happens in Paris, it happens every day in Afghanistan.’ He nods goodbye and walks away, but not before delivering the most common line I’ve heard from refugees from Eritrea to Kuwait, ‘we just want a life’.

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A place to call their own

14 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by cheztopflight in Politics, Refugees

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

asylum, britain, calais, discrimination, england, EU, followtherefugees, France, frontnational, human rights, humanitarianism, immigration, Jungle, middle east, openeuborders, poverty, refugees, refugeeswelcome, syria, uk, war

There are teenage boys everywhere. I’m told a story of 13 and 14 yr old brothers who travelled from Kurdistan. They were with their 21 year old brother who managed to get to England two months ago. Now they have no one and have attached themselves to a male volunteer who doesn’t look much older than 21 himself. A child’s right to education is in the International Bill of Human Rights, the Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s also French and British national law. But the children here do not go to school.  Instead they sit here every day in the dirt, sometimes kicking a football around, dreaming of England. If they weren’t traumatised and destroyed before they got here, they certainly will be once they leave.

calaisTo counter this, l’auberge des migrants has set up a women’s centre and safe space for kids and their mums to come. Because the teenage boys kept drifting in they also set up a caravan across the road for adolescent males where they can hang out, talk to other guys, and when I see them, breakdance. I meet one British woman called Alice who has started a community centre with her own money and serves 400 hot meals a day. She recently burned through her savings and had to start a crowd funding page. I can’t hide my horror when she tells me she sleeps here. I would not be in this place alone after dark. Every week she allows a Narcotics Anonymous meeting to take place in what is essentially her bedroom. She tells me that opium and heroin are big problems here, and they are trying to give people some support. I guess it’s no surprise that in such a place people turn to drugs, but it’s incredible the amount that is smuggled in here. I’m told that most of it comes from England. More people profiting from refugees misery.

photo 2There are several pregnant women. Mimi from Eritrea is 8.5 months along. She lives in one of the huts built by l’auberge des migrants, a small shack where thin wooden boards are nailed together, but better than a flimsy tent. It’s amazing how tidy she keeps it, all shoes are left outside and inside feels very comfortable, kind of like a blanket fort you’d make as a kid. Thanks to l’auberge des migrants there are no longer any women with kids living in tents, they have all been built one of these makeshift cabins that have pitiful looking padlocks on the door. It’s not much, but it’s a space to call their own. Mimi invites us in and offers us tea and food, and tells me how two and a half months ago her husband left and is now in England. She is desperate to get there. I cannot hide the outrage on my face as she tells us they don’t talk on the phone because it is too hard for him to hear about the Jungle. We sit in her tiny room in the dark and the helplessness in her face as she pleads with us to find her a way to Britain is painful. I try and convince her to stay in France and claim asylum here, but she is not interested. Many refugees tell me they fear the French will be unwelcoming and are more likely to be racist than the British. I am not so sure about this. They also worry about how long it will take to learn the language, though considering some have been in the Jungle for a year this seems misguided. Mimi tells me she is expecting to give birth here. On the floor of her shack, unless of course she goes into labour outside in the mud. I open my mouth to reassure her that there’s no way the authorities would let her have a baby here and someone will get her to a hospital, but I stop. I’m not so sure about anything anymore.

I meet two more of Mimi’s friends, also alone and from Eritrea, one of them is also 7.5 months pregnant. I am so surprised by how strongly they are opposed to seeking asylum in France. They treat me with suspicion for even suggesting it and one of them shuts down and just doesn’t want to talk anymore. It’s amazing to me that they have such a rose coloured view of how life will be in England. I don’t get how they can think that having to learn French or go through the asylum process here would be worse than living in this breeding ground of misery. Another thing I’m noticing is that people are less open. In Greece and the Balkans everyone wanted to talk, but in the Jungle residents are so used to journalists coming and asking about their history. At first people were hopeful that telling their stories would result in governments actually doing something, but it has been so long now that they see no point in sharing their pain. They’ve lost all faith that anyone will help.

IMG_2400I say goodbye to Mimi and her friends. Though her little home did offer some shelter from the hideous weather outside, it was beginning to get a bit awkward with me sitting there and no one talking. Almost immediately I regret the decision. There is depression and horror everywhere. Anytime a car pulls up refugees crowd around asking for food or clothes or blankets and are yelled at to keep in line. It resembles cattle being herded. Sometimes the nervousness becomes aggressive, though I don’t see anyone get physical. People are much more desperate here than further south. It’s also a lot colder and no one seems to be looking forward to the future. One man pulls me over and asks where I’m from. He then gets excited and pulls out his phone to tell me his nephew is in Melbourne, and have I met him? And can I help him to get there? I wouldn’t have thought I’d be telling anyone the better option to anything was to stay in the Jungle, but if Manus is anything like this and people are locked in…. Maybe there’s always a worse place, I just wish it wasn’t run by my government.

photo 5There is a huge police presence. Saturday was pretty calm, but I’m told that the cops regularly come in here with tear gas, even using it on women and children. Police brutality seems to be a big problem and adds to everyone’s anxiety; the refugees, workers and volunteers. I know it’s naive to think of police as protectors, but here they are regarded by everyone as the aggressors. Complaints have been made to the local station but are dismissed; one guy tells me he was laughed out when he went in to protest about them using tear gas on children. Around the corner from the jungle are a dozen vans full of riot police, just in case. Just in case of what I’m not sure. Certainly not what police are supposed to do. I hear of three different murders that have taken place, and a few cases of sexual assault, none of which have been thoroughly investigated by the police. Why bother, these people aren’t really human and resources are obviously better spent gassing them into submissive terror.

IMG_2378When I got back into town I was in a bit of a daze. I went and got a hot chocolate to fix everything and the very cheery woman who made me the most amazing one ever asked me if I was ok. But I didn’t want to tell her what was wrong in case she turned out to be a racist Front National loon and I’d be obligated to hate her and couldn’t come back for another chocolat tomorrow. There are posters everywhere of the candidates for the Sunday election, and I am pleased to see that most of the Le Pen ones have been defaced. Calais has a weird feel to it. When you’re in the centre you would have no idea that the Jungle was only 4kms away. There are Christmas decorations and music everywhere, and I wonder how many locals have actually visited the camp and know what it’s really like. When you mention the place to anyone you get a mixture of sympathetic tuts and distasteful expressions. The owner of my hotel was not impressed when I asked him for directions. Certainly people did not on the whole react in a similar manner to what I heard in Greece or the Balkans, though given the sheer scope of the Jungle situation perhaps that’s an unfair comparison.

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Forever intrepid gypsy at heart. Lover of pasta, the ocean, yoga and red wine. Believer in human rights, international law and justice. Can't sing, spell or cook. Terrified of snakes and diets. Views are my own.
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  • This is why you’re not supposed to get into cars with strangers
  • ‘You explain me, here is not the worst’
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  • ‘Do you think they will open the border and let us in?’
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