Image La Linière refugee camp near Dunkirk, France. Photo: Mid-Wales Refugee Action
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Lotte Reimer: In December, a group of volunteers from Mid-Wales Refugee Action went to work at La Linière refugee camp near Dunkirk, France. Mainly from Machynlleth and the surrounding area, they brought much needed supplies of sleeping bags, blankets and clothes donated by people across mid-Wales. For a week, they volunteered with Kesha Niya, a…
In 2015, there was one death for every 269 arrivals. This year, the UN reports, the rate for migrants crossing the Mediterranean has risen to one death for 88 arrivals.
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Owen and I have just spent three weeks volunteering in the refugee camp in Calais, France, working with two grassroots organisations – Care4Calais and Auberge/Help Refugees – which provide most of the food, clothes, shelter and other support the camp receives.
The media often refers to the camp as the ‘Jungle’, a name which some I spoke to rejected because it makes them feel as if the world sees them as…
As Ellie has highlighted, our time in Calais was very challenging. I was confronted with the huge unfairness of the world in a more direct way than I had ever experienced before. What a lottery life is, depending on where you are born and who your parents are.
We went to Calais after spending two weeks walking in beautiful and remote Lapland in the Arctic north of Sweden,…
In her foreword to this short story collection, publisher Meike Ziervogel writes that she ‘commissioned Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes to go to the Calais refugee camp to distil stories into a work of fiction about escape, hope and aspiration.’
The ethical challenge of distilling the stories of people living so precariously into a work of fiction is clear: the charge of exploitation lies in ambush behind every sentence. This risky endeavour has paid off, however, producing a…
Brexit hasn’t just been a shot in the arm for people on the Right, it’s kicked a lot of Greens, anarchists and socialists into positive action. The vote on 23 June to Leave the EU has energised progressive people in a lot of places around the UK to put renewed energy into tackling racism…
As the title suggests, boats of all kinds – inflatables, wooden fishing boats and vessels whose leaking engine fumes poison their passengers – are a central theme of this book. Another is the poignant list of items that refugees carry with them: handbags, hair gel, babies’ nappies, a box of soap powder.
With these details Patrick Kingsley brings together some of the many personal stories of refugees themselves, as they travel to Europe from sub-Saharan Africa, Syria, and…
In 1999, the French government opened Sangatte, a disused storage warehouse, as a response to the migrants sleeping on the streets of Calais. Until its closure in 2002, the centre was accused of attracting migrants heading for the UK. Sangatte was the scene of mass breakthroughs of Eurotunnel fencing, violence between police and migrants, and grim conditions. But its closure did nothing to reduce the numbers of migrants. They were simply pushed back into the streets, squats and ‘jungles’ of…
24 October 2015
When I can’t sleep at night I have the bad habit of listening to world news on the radio. This seems to be a family trait that I inherited from my father. The wave of refugees trying to find safety in European countries continues unabated. The numbers are staggering. As someone from the US, I am shamed by our lack of response and indifference, as well as our inability to acknowledge our responsibility in…
My name is Majdy Al-Kassem, from Syria, Idlib city. I’m 26-years-old. I am married and have one child. I have BA of English. I was planning to get a job as a teacher of English Language but because of war, and the suppression of the regime, obliging young men to go to the military service and killing Syrian people, I refused to kill anyone and decided to escape from Syria alone after six months of marriage, leaving my wife who was pregnant.
If I stayed in Syria and refused to kill…
Previously an investigative journalist in Africa, Almamy is now a human rights activist and a caseworker with HOPE Projects in Birmingham (he manages directly nine houses for destitute asylum-seekers and refugees). As PN spoke to him, Almamy was organising a demonstration in Birmingham calling for an amnesty for asylum seekers and migrants already in the UK.…
There is a lot to admire about Germany’s response to the refugee crisis. The warm welcome extended by thousands of ordinary Germans (overwhelmingly women, mostly university-educated, either young or older folk) has been inspiring. A poll at the beginning of September found 87 percent of Germans were ashamed of recent anti-refugee attacks.
The German government has also been very welcoming of refugees from the Syrian warzone.
At the same time, the government has…
If you’d like to help in the refugee crisis, you can:
1. Donate food and other goods for migrants in Calais
The situation on the ground is constantly changing, so it’s best to double-check what’s needed. Whatever you’re giving, please sort and label your donations, by type, gender and size. At the time of writing, there seemed to be an urgent need for firewood, food and shelter. Calais People to People Solidarity are an older group. Calaid and Calais Action are more recently-…
This is a picture of my great-grandmother swimming across the river Drava carrying my Naganyja Ilona and my greatuncle Zoltan on her back. Behind her is my great-grandfather Shaffer. I have drawn him naked because he didn’t cross the river with his family and escape the pogrom, and all my great-grandmother had left was a photograph of him with no clothes on.
I…
The internet has been transformed from a tool of emancipation ‘into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen’. Thus wrote Julian Assange* in his 2012 introduction to Cypherpunks, an eye-opening annotated transcript of a conversation between the Wikileaks founder and three other prominent internet activists.
At that time, such a claim might have appeared hyperbolic. However, in the wake of Edward Snowden’s 2013 exposure of the global surveillance…
