HELP REFUGEES
Music:
'Etab' from the album Sounds of Refuge, by John Falsetto, Mohamed Sarrar, featuring Ammar Haj Ahmad.
The Backdrop went to Calais, France to volunteer in the warehouse run by Help Refugees. The UK-based NGO provides humanitarian aid to, and advocacy for, refugees around the world.
One key component of Help Refugees’ operation in Calais is the Woodyard. It distributes around 1.4 tonnes of wood every day. Volunteers here take scrap wood, and chop it down into firewood. This will later be distributed to refugees, in order to keep people who are sleeping exposed to the elements warm. It also enables people to cook for themselves which is the smallest bit of agency in a situation where displaced people are often existing at the mercy of the police and reliant on hand outs. The ability to cook and share food together is a fundamental that we can all appreciate.
“If you open me up when I am dead you will find calais engraved on my heart” One of your Queens said that. Is it true for you? Maybe because your armies fought over Calais for so many centuries, which is bizarre to me. Have you ever been there? Or maybe if you like history it’s because you know that Julius Caesar invaded from Calais in 54 BC. Or maybe the other B.C. - Booze Cruise…?
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It takes pain to live side by side. If you are born in the same country as another person this is true. If you are born in a different country, a different continent, even more so. Some people will tell you living together is easy, but you musn’t trust them. These are difficult things.”
Dom Bryant reports
Calais is a place that has gained infamy since the refugee crisis really took over our screens in 2015. However, despite what you witness through various media and screens it is quite something else to put into words once you actually set foot there.
It truly is an unremarkable place with little to highlight it beyond its port and close connection to the UK. For many, it would not be seen as a place of desperate survival, dangerous conditions and, of course, the never-ending hope. However, this has what made this port-town worldwide news. Refugees from many countries have flocked to Calais seeking refuge. They have undergone wild and potentially fatal journeys to reach here and it is chilling to think our own comfortable countries and governments turn a blind eye.
My first day consisted of arriving ridiculously late in the evening, so unlike my fellow volunteers I had not immediately seen the young men stood, huddled in groups, desperately bracing themselves against the cold. But on joining Help Refugees it took little time to understand how desperate this situation was. As the wind whipped up off the Channel and made me shiver in the cold, my thoughts turned to these brave men in France being made to lie in ditches and survive off donated clothes, firewood and food.
This is precisely what Help Refugees does. Every single day, 365 days a year, from a warehouse compound, hundreds of volunteers from all over Europe gather to do their best to alleviate the dire conditions the refugees suffer in. This band of brothers and sisters mentality is what drives the volunteers to do their best to supply their fellow man, all while petty politicians squabble about Brexit and fail to recognise the rights of ordinary human beings - whom, I hasten to add, would often rather live in their home countries, but have been forced out for a variety of reasons.
The generosity of those who suffer always leaves a lasting impression. On the distribution of firewood, we are gifted oranges by a group of men as a means of thanks - despite our reluctance to take from them. Sometimes those who give the most are those with the least to spare. Each day at Help Refugees brings with it a greater awareness of the coordinated chaos of the cluster of aid organisations in Calais ensuring the needs of the refugees are met. The work is so admirable, the volunteers mental and physical strength is impressive and every single drop of sweat and small shiver in the cold by those who lend a hand is so important for those who simply seek a better life.
Some facts about the situation in Calais
- There are still around a thousand refugees across Calais and Dunkirk and the number is constantly fluctuating. Police brutality is a fact of life, and unaccompanied children are at huge risk from the elements as well as the police. Living conditions are appalling:
- The government provides some toilet facilities and a limited number of spaces in a women’s centre, but refugees are reliant on food, clothing, shelter and asylum advice from NGOs operating in Calais.
- The U.N. cannot help the situation in Calais as they have to be invited. Similarly the Red Cross are not able to help, because of political considerations. The French and UK governments spend millions on border securirty but virtually nothing on accommodation, information and support systems. Increased border security does not stop refugees fleeing dangerous countries or attempting to get to the U.K.
- The influx against of 1000000 refugees to Europe, with a population of 700,000,000 equates to a proportion of 0.14%. In Jordan a quarter of all people are refugees. In Lebanon, it’s a third.
- A million refugees in Europe. Population of 700,000,000. Thats 0… %. In Jordan its a quarter of people who are refugees. Lebanon its a third.
- People in Calais come from all over the world, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Sudan, Syria to name but a few. To understand a little of why people make the journey, here’s an article by Help Refugees:
- Trenchfoot has been seen in refugees in Northern France, the first cases since the first world war.
- Evictions take place regularly, and tents, sleeping bags and possessions are confiscated, but no alternative accommodation is provided. A site is cleared, and within a few hours, those who were evicted return. Where else could they go?
- This is a first hand report from Help Refugees about the nature of evictions. Posted on facebook on the 12th March 2019
“At 8:58 this morning, police officers in Calais evicted the living space of 250 displaced people. Heavily armed French Gendarmerie officers gave refugees two choices: to get on to buses to unknown accommodation centres or face immediate arrest and detention.
Many living at the site were unaccompanied teenagers and children. Instead of offering protection the French state, with support from the UK, traps these young people between infamously overcrowded accommodation centres, detention, the home they can't return to, and the streets and abandoned areas of Calais.
This method of accommodation is wholly without dignity and only causes further displacement for people that have already suffered more than any human being should.
Many of those who lived in this recently evicted space scattered themselves across Calais before the eviction. They didn’t want to face this dehumanizing removal by police. What little community they had established is now destroyed.
While we welcome action to get people off the streets and in to accommodation, it’s clear to us that this eviction process lacks basic human decency.
Our volunteers and partner organizations, L'Auberge des Migrants, Refugee Community Kitchen and Utopia 56 will tour Calais tonight to provide sleeping bags, tents, information and support for those left outside in the wind and rain with nothing.
The constant destruction of tents and confiscation of blankets and sleeping bags is used by the French government to create as hostile an environment as possible in Calais.
The use of taxpayer money to turn Calais in to a fortress of concrete and razor wire, preventing those sleeping rough from attaining a basic level of shelter in the form of tents and freeway overpasses, is a violation of the human rights of refugees and is unfair for the residents of Calais, both those with and without papers.
Join us in condemning this hostile environment and calling on your elected representatives to speak with us and work out a more effective, more humane solution to the crisis in Calais.
Please share or email calaisvolunteers@helprefugees.org to volunteer with us.”
For more information about the organisations operating in Calais, take a look the websites for a group of organisations who all work together.
https://www.refugeeinfobus.com/
http://www.refugeecommunitykitchen.com/