The 3rd Saturday of the month has been set aside for anyone to come and work in the herb garden.

We are redesigning the existing garden to have 5 beds that are 45m long x 1.6m wide with paths 0.9m wide in between the beds.

This was the first Volunteering Saturday for HWB Calais. It was the 21st August. There were 10 volunteers this time and what an amazing help they were.

We all met around 10am in the barn for a tisane or coffee then worked solidly til lunchtime at 1pm. Everyone brought their own lunch but there were some delicious vegan flapjacks and “keto pie” to have with the beverages.

Many plants were dug out and are being kept as stock plants to be replanted in October.

The afternoon seemed to go quickly, 2pm-4pm, with yet more plants dug up for stock. The weather was perfect really….slightly overcast, just a little drizzle and no sweltering sunshine, which would have been a problem for the people and plants!

A big thank you to all who helped.

P.S. We plan on continuing the lifting and storing of stock plants on September the 18th, if you would like to join in text me! herbalist@northdownorchard.co.uk or 07905955242

We welcome volunteers to come and help in the garden every 3rd Saturday in the month harvesting, weeding etc.

There is also indoor work if it is raining, such as preparing ingredients e.g oils, glycerites or ointments for the clinical team to take to Calais, but spaces will be limited.

For more details contact Louise via email: herbalist@northdownorchard.co.uk or by phone: 07905955242

The clinic offers preventative medicine, self-care support, first aid and healthcare access support to hundreds of refugees and undocumented migrants living in the region. Our medicines are are made by local grassroots groups and herbalists across the UK, however, we greatly need to increase our capacity to continue this important work. We are entirely funded by donations and grassroots support.

Please support our Winter Fundraiser!

This year we are selling these beautiful herbal bandanas. The illustrations have been drawn by Amani Omejer. If we can sell 300, then we can get through the next Winter and maintain a consistent mobile herbal clinic.

Buy yours here: https://solidarityapothecary.org/product/herbal-bandana/

Why is this work important?

The refugee crisis has intersecting causes from wars and conflict to climate change. The violence affecting people is an outcome of racism, the growing far right and the British profiteering from the border regime. As you would expect for people living in damp, cold, unsanitary conditions, mundane minor health issues – bites, blisters, become infected and progress to more serious issues. People are suffering from coughs, colds and flu. Bruises and sprains from falling off trucks. Bruises from beatings from French police. Sicknesses incurred from spending time in a refrigerated lorry, or a sinking dingy. Refugees are theoretically able to access emergency medical services and a free clinic in France – but they often don’t know the processes or locations. This is why our presence is so important, because we direct many people to local services while also offering medicines such as cough syrup and chest rubs that bring direct relief.

On Saturday 17 October, thousands of people demonstrated in Paris to demand the regularisation of all “undocumented migrants”, the closure of administrative detention centres and dignified housing for all.

This march is part of the process of the “Solidarity march” of which it is the third act. The first act took place on 30 May this year when thousands of “undocumented migrants” and supporters collectively went over the ban on demonstrations in Paris and several other cities. During the health crisis, they denounced their total abandonment by the authorities and the overcrowded conditions in migrant workers’ homes and detention centres, which are conducive to the spread of the virus. Once again, they had also denounced the harsh economic exploitation of “undocumented migrants”. Many of them were among the front line workers during the confinement. In the days and weeks that followed, tens of thousands of people also demonstrated against racism and police violence, which, as we know, particularly affects illegalised people. During Act 2, on 20 June, new demonstrations took place to demand again the closure of the detention centres, an end to deportations and a massive regularisation campaign.

As a third act, “undocumented migrants” organised a march across France to make their voices heard. The march started on 19 September, while AP-members who were able to travel were meeting in Wukania. Starting first from Marseille and Montpellier, marchers, “undocumented migrants” and supporters from many cities in France joined the march at different stages (see the map here: https://marche-des-sans-papiers.org/). In the course of their journey, the marchers met political representatives, collectives and people fighting for the regularisation of all “undocumented migrants”. This march was an opportunity for “undocumented migrants” to expose their daily struggles and point once againon  the social and economic precariousness to which their administrative situation exposes them. They reaffirmed loud and clear the principles which, throughout France and Europe, are violated on a daily basis: freedom, equality, solidarity and the fight against all forms of domination and discrimination. The march was an opportunity to reaffirm the intersectionality of struggles.

On 17 October, the different marches converged in Paris for a large demonstration. This was an opportunity to pay homage to all the victims of colonialism, racism and police violence and to the ones affected by anti-migration policies, deportations and racist police checks. The slogans were numerous: “Open the borders”, “Papers for all or no papers at all”, “Stop Dublin”, “Freedom of movement for all”, “Set fire to the administrative detention centres”… The day before, a demonstration had been organised in front of the detention centre of Vincennes, with the demonstrators outside mixing their voices with those of the people locked inside, who had also organised collective protests.

Regarding these mobilisations, the reaction of the authorities was the same as usual: indifference, contempt and an attempt to silence these powerful voices. Although the march was initially supposed to converge at the Elysée, a prefectoral decree forbade this section of the demonstration. The march was stopped by the police before reaching its intended destination. The marchers, who had asked to meet Emmanuel Macron, received no response from the president. The only state response was to send a strong police presence to supervise the march. 

However, the visibility gained thanks to this movement is already a small victory. Against borders, racism, violence and unequal rights, anger is growing and struggles are being built. From sea to land, from rubber boats in the Mediterranean to host cities, from Alarm Phone shifts to collectives of “undocumented migrants”… solidarity is growing!

Freedom of movement and settlement everywhere and for everyone!

Some media articles (in French):

https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2020/10/17/il-faut-que-ca-change-il-faut-que-le-gouvernement-nous-ecoute-l-acte-3-de-la-marche-des-sans-papiers_6056434_3224.html

https://www.nouvelobs.com/politique/20201015.OBS34795/marche-des-sans-papiers-vers-l-elysee-c-est-macron-ou-rien.html

https://www.bondyblog.fr/reportages/sans-papiers-une-marche-nationale-pour-lhistoire/?fbclid=IwAR2Up0_8FAOv2mqVzKDMmjqnzHkfM3FpC4yH64LEf6R1ejWSlI2bGIP-g6k

https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/181020/marche-nationale-des-sans-papiers-la-visibilite-gagnee-grace-ce-mouvement-est-deja-une-petite-victoire?fbclid=IwAR0PHVqpgNzYzoYyFCF5bwqeWju35TPvSjiDtcUmIcr8TVCc2K653Y2LNPc

From: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/28/four-migrants-died-channel-part-same-iranian-family

Four Iranian Kurds who died trying to cross the Channel in high winds were members of one family who paid smugglers thousands of euros after two failed attempts to reach Britain, the Guardian has been told.

Rasul Iran Nezhad and his wife, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, and two of their children, Anita, nine, and Armin, six, drowned as they tried to reach Britain by boat, according to a relative of the family and the Iranian-Kurdish human rights organisation Hengaw.

The fate of the family’s third child, 15-month-old Artin, is unknown, though French officials have said it is possible an infant also died when the vessel sank. The family was from the north-western city of Sardasht.

Speaking from Sardasht, Iran Nezhad’s brother Khalil said he had last heard from the family two days ago. He said they had crossed from Iran into Turkey during the summer before proceeding through Europe to France.

A representative from Hengaw said the family had attempted to enter the UK by train twice but failed both times, and so decided to pay a smuggler to take them by sea.

Iran Nezhad was a low-paid labourer while his wife was unemployed, and they sought to escape economic hardship, Khalil Iran Nezhad said.

A friend of the family in Calais, who asked to be called Ali, said he had met the family about a month ago and spoken with Panahi in the lead-up to their departure for the UK. “Shiva and I were talking about the issues with going to England,” he said. “I told her: ‘This is way too dangerous, you have children. Do you think they can survive in the water if, God forbid, something happens?’ And she said, ‘It’s OK, we will do it. Everyone is going there, it’s not a problem.’”

He said the family paid a smuggler about €5,000 to €6,000 to take them on the boat. “Shiva told me they didn’t have enough money to pay the smuggler and she asked her parents and parents-in-law. They sold gold and valuables for them to pay the smugglers and they prepared the money.”

The family believed they would receive accommodation in the UK and could find work paying at least £100 a day, he added.

He said people in the camp had confronted the smuggler who organised their journey after the boat sank. “They asked him: ‘What did you do?’” Ali said. “He only said: ‘They did a good try, they had a good chance.’ These people [smugglers] are so cruel and without heart.”

Ali added: “They took a boat from Turkey to Italy then they were in Italy for 20 days because of Covid, then France.”

French officials said on Tuesday that a man had drowned when the overloaded boat sank in poor weather, and three others died after being pulled from the water. Another 15 survived, though Hengaw said there was a total of 28 people on the boat – suggesting further people could be unaccounted for. The survivors are said to have included Iranian and Iraqi nationals.

Iranian Kurds, who make up about 10% of Iran’s population, report facing significant discrimination in housing and employment as well as political repression, according to human rights monitors, with a UN special rapporteur estimating in 2017 that almost half of the country’s political prisoners belonged to the ethnic minority. Kurdish regions of Iran are some of the poorest and least developed areas in the country and have been hit hard by a recent economic downturn exacerbated by US sanctions.

The deaths have reignited the debate over the UK’s asylum policy and led to renewed calls from humanitarian organisations for “safe and legal” routes to the UK for asylum seekers.

More than 7,400 people have arrived in the UK in small boats this year, according to analysis by PA Media, nearly four times as many as in 2019, with a record 416 arriving on a single day, 2 September. Seven migrants have died trying to cross the Channel this year, three more than last year’s total death toll from crossings.

Groups such as Safe Passage, Amnesty and Choose Love/Help Refugees have warned that the UK government’s hardline approach, which focuses largely on physically obstructing the crossings, will not deter migrants from attempting the dangerous journey.

Safe alternatives such as cross-border family reunion arrangements are the best way to reduce the number of attempted crossings, the groups have said, although as recently as last week the UK government rejected amendments to its immigration bill that would have ensured that rights under British law to family reunion continued after the Brexit transition period.

About the Conference

Promising an amazing online event centred on learning, discussion and celebration.

Open to herbal practitioners, other healthcare providers and the public, the Herbal Medicine Conference is now in its 156th year, but 2020 will be the first, and hopefully only, year it has been entirely digital.

With lectures from outstanding speakers, interactive workshops, a virtual exhibition hall and an awards ceremony the Herbal Medicine Conference is one of the biggest events in the herbal calendar. Despite not being able to gather together in person, the event promises to celebrate the part herbal medicine has to play in ‘the new normal’ and share ideas and insight to support all healthcare practitioners.

For more information visit: https://nimh.org.uk/event/the-herbal-medicine-conference-2020-2/

A collaborative report with Corporate Watch and Calais Migrant Solidarity and friends

Warning: this document contains accounts of violence, attempted suicides and self harm.

The British government has vowed to clamp down on migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, responding as ever to a tabloid media panic. One part of its strategy is a new wave of mass deportations: charter flights, specifically targeting channel-crossers, to France, Germany and Spain.

There have been two flights so far, on the 12 and 26 August. The next one is planned for 3 September. The two recent flights stopped in both Germany (Duesseldorf) and France (Toulouse on the 12, Clermont-Ferrand on the 26). Another flight was planned to Spain on 27 August – but this was cancelled after lawyers managed to get everyone off the flight.

Carried out in a rush by a panicked Home Office, these mass deportations have been particularly brutal, and may have involved serious legal irregularities. This report summarises what we know so far after talking to a number of the people deported and from other sources. It covers:

• The context: Calais boat crossings and the UK-France deal to stop them.
• In the UK: Yarl’s Wood repurposed as Channel-crosser processing centre; Britannia Hotels; Brook House detention centre as brutal as ever.
• The flights: detailed timeline of the 26 August charter to Dusseldorf and Clermont-Ferrand.
• Who’s on the flight: refugees including underage minors and torture survivors.
• Dumped on arrival: people arriving in Germany and France given no opportunity to claim asylum, served with immediate expulsion papers.
• The legalities: use of the Dublin III regulation to evade responsibility for refugees.
• Is it illegal?: rushed process leads to numerous irregularities.

“that night, eight people cut themselves”

“That night before the flight (25 August), when we were locked in our rooms and I heard that I had lost my appeal, I was desperate. I started to cut myself. I wasn’t the only one. Eight people self-harmed or tried to kill themselves rather than be taken on that plane. One guy threw a kettle of boiling water on himself. One man tried to hang himself with the cable of the TV in his room. Three of us were taken to hospital, but sent back to the detention centre after a few hours. The other five they just took to healthcare [the clinic in Brook House] and bandaged up. About 5 in the morning they came to my room, guards with riot shields. On the way to the van, they led me through a kind of corridor which was full of people – guards, managers, officials from the Home Office. They all watched while a doctor examined me, then the doctor said – ‘yes, he’s fit to fly’. On the plane later I saw one guy hurt really badly, fresh blood on his head and on his clothes. He hadn’t just tried to stop the ticket, he really wanted to kill himself. He was taken to Germany.” 

Testimony of a deported person.

The context: boats and deals

The Pluvier patrolling the French coast.

Since the 1990s, tens of thousands of people fleeing war, repression and poverty have crossed the “short straits” between Calais and Dover. Until 2018, people without papers attempting to cross the Channel did so mainly by getting into lorries or on trains through the Channel Tunnel. Security systems around the lorry parks, tunnel and highway were escalated massively following the eviction of the big Jungle in 2016. This forced people into seeking other, ever more dangerous, routes – including crossing one of the world’s busiest waterways in small boats. Around 300 people took this route in 2018, a further 2000 in 2019 – and reportedly more than 5,000 people already by August 2020.

These crossings have been seized on by the UK media in their latest fit of xenophobic scaremongering. The pattern is all too familiar since the Sangatte camp of 1999: right-wing media outlets (most infamously the Daily Mail, but also others) push-out stories about dangerous “illegals” swarming across the Channel; the British government responds with clampdown promises.

Further stoked by Brexit, recent measures have included:

• Home Secretary Priti Patel announcing a new “Fairer Borders” asylum and immigration law that she promises will “send the left into meltdown”.
• A formal request from the Home Office to the Royal Navy to assist in turning back migrants crossing by boat (although this would be illegal).
• Negotiations with the French government, leading to the announcement on 13 August of a “joint operational plan” aimed at “completely cutting this route.”
• The appointment of a “Clandestine Channel Threat Commander” to oversee operations on both sides of the Channel.

The concrete measures are still emerging, but notable developments so far include:

• Further UK payments to France to increase security – reportedly France demanded £30 million.
• French warships from the Naval base at Cherbourg patrolling off the coast of Calais and Dunkirk.
• UK Border Force Cutters and Coastal Patrol Vessels patrolling the British side, supported by flights from Royal Air Force surveillance planes.
• The new charter flight deportation programme — reportedly named “Operation Sillath” by the Home Office.

For the moment, at least, the governments are respecting their minimal legal obligations to protect life at sea. And there has not been evidence of illegal “push backs” or “pull backs”: where the British “push” or the French “pull” boats back across the border line by force. When these boats are intercepted in French waters the travellers are taken back to France. If they make it into UK waters, Border Force pick them up and disembark them at Dover. They are then able to claim asylum in the UK.

There is no legal difference in claiming asylum after arriving by boat, on a plane, or any other way. However, these small boat crossers have been singled out by the government to be processed in a special way seemingly designed to deny them the right to asylum in the UK.

Once people are safely on shore the second part of Priti Patel’s strategy to make this route unviable kicks in: systematically obstruct their asylum claims and, where possible, deport them to France or other European countries. In practice, there is no way the Home Office can deport everyone who makes it across. Rather, as with the vast majority of immigration policy, the aim is to display toughness with a spectacle of enforcement – not only in an attempt to deter other arrivals, but perhaps, above all else, to play to key media audiences.

This is where the new wave of charter flights come in. Deportations require cooperation from the destination country, and the first flight took place on 12 August in the midst of the Franco-British negotiations. Most recently, the flights have fed a new media spectacle in the UK: the Home Office attacking “activist lawyers” for doing their job and challenging major legal flaws in these rushed removals.

The Home Office has tried to present these deportation flights as a strong immediate response to the Channel crossings. The message is: if you make it across, you’ll be back again within days. Again, this is more spectacle than reality. All the people we know of on the flights were in the UK for several months before being deported.

In the UK: Yarl’s Wood repurposed

Once on shore people are taken to one of two places: either the Kent Intake Unit, which is a Home Office holding facility (i.e., a small prefab cell complex) in the Eastern Docks of Dover Port; or the Dover police station. This police stations seems increasingly to be the main location, as the small “intake unit” is often at capacity. There used to be a detention centre in Dover where new arrivals were held, notorious for its run-down state, but this was closed in October 2015.

People are typically held in the police station for no more than a day. The next destination is usually Yarl’s Wood, the Bedfordshire detention centre run by Serco. This was, until recently, a longer term detention centre holding mainly women. However, on 18 August the Home Office announced Yarl’s Wood been repurposed as a “Short Term Holding Facility” (SHTF) specifically to process people who have crossed the Channel. People stay usually just a few days – the legal maximum stay for a “short term” facility is seven days.

Yarl’s Wood has a normal capacity of 410 prisoners. According to sources at Yarl’s Wood:

“last week it was almost full with over 350 people detained. A few days later this number
had fallen to 150, showing how quickly people are moving through the centre. As of Tuesday 25th of August there was no one in the centre at all! It seems likely that numbers will fluctuate in line with Channel crossings.”

The same source adds:

“There is a concern about access to legal aid in Yarl’s Wood. Short Term Holding Facility regulations do not require legal advice to be available on site (in Manchester, for example, there are no duty lawyers). Apparently the rota for duty lawyers is continuing at Yarl’s Wood for the time being. But the speed with which people are being processed now means that it is practically impossible to sign up and get a meeting with the duty solicitor before being moved out.”

The Home Office conducts people’s initial asylum screening interviews whilst they are at Yarl’s Wood. Sometimes these are done in person, or sometimes by phone.

This is a crucial point, as this first interview decides many people’s chance of claiming asylum in the UK. The Home Office uses information from this interview to deport the Channel crossers to France and Germany under the Dublin III regulation. This is EU legislation which allows governments to pass on responsibility for assessing someone’s asylum claim to another state. That is: the UK doesn’t even begin to look at people’s asylum cases.

From what we have seen, many of these Dublin III assessments were made in a rushed and irregular way. They often used only weak circumstantial evidence. Few people had any chance to access legal advice, or even interpreters to explain the process.

We discuss Dublin III and these issues below in the Legal Framework section.

In the UK: Britain’s worst hotels

From Yarl’s Wood, people we spoke to were given immigration bail and sent to asylum accommodation. In the first instance this currently means a cheap hotel. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Home Office ordered its asylum contractors (Mears, Serco) to shut their usual initial asylum accommodation and move people into hotels. It is not clear why this decision was made, as numerous accounts suggest the hotels are much worse as possible COVID incubators. The results of this policy have already proved fatal – we refer to the death of Adnan Olbeh in a Glasgow hotel in April.

Perhaps the government is trying to prop up chains such as Britannia Hotels, judged for seven years running “Britain’s worst hotel chain” by consumer magazine Which?. Several people on the flights were kept in Britannia hotels. The company’s main owner, multi-millionaire Alex Langsam, was dubbed the “asylum king” by British media after winning previous asylum contracts with his slum housing sideline.

Some of the deportees we spoke to stayed in hotel accommodation for several weeks before being moved into normal “asylum dispersal” accommodation – shared houses in the cheapest parts of cities far from London. Others were picked up for deportation directly from the hotels.

In both cases, the usual procedure is a morning raid: Immigration Enforcement squads grab people from their beds around dawn. As people are in collaborating hotels or assigned houses, they are easy to find and arrest when next on the list for deportation.

After arrest, people were taken to the main detention centres near Heathrow (Colnbrook and Harmondsworth) or Gatwick (particularly Brook House). Some stopped first at a police station or Short Term Holding Facility for some hours or days.

All the people we spoke to eventually ended up in Brook House, one of the two Gatwick centres.

“they came with the shields”

“One night in Brook House, after someone cut himself, they locked everyone in. One man panicked and started shouting asking the guards please open the door. But he didn’t speak much English, he was shouting in Arabic. He said – ‘if you don’t open the door I will boil water in my kettle and throw it on my face.’ But they didn’t understand him, they thought he was threatening them, saying he would throw it at them. So they came with the shields, took him out of his room and put him into a solitary cell. When they put him in there they kicked him and beat him, they said ‘don’t threaten us again’.” Testimony of a deported person.

Brook House guards in riot gear getting ready to extract someone from their cell. (BBC Panorama, 2018)

Brook House

Brook House remains notorious, after exposure by a whistleblower of routine brutality and humiliation by guards then working for G4S. The contract has since been taken over by Mitie’s prison division – branded as “Care and Custody, a Mitie company”. Presumably, many of the same guards simply transferred over.

In any case, according to what we heard from the deported people, nothing much has changed in Brook House – viciousness and violence from guards remains the norm. The stories included here give just a few examples. See recent detainee testimonies on the Detained Voices blog for much more.

“they only care that you don’t die in front of them”

“I was in my room in Brook House on my own for 12 days, I couldn’t eat or drink, just kept thinking, thinking about my situation. I called for the doctors maybe ten times. They did come a couple of times, they took my blood, but they didn’t do anything else. They don’t care about your health or your mental health. They are just scared you will die there. They don’t care what happens to you just so long as you don’t die in front of their eyes. It doesn’t matter if you die somewhere else.” Testimony of a deported person.

Preparing the flights

The Home Office issues papers called “Removal Directions” (RDs) to those they intend to deport. These specify the destination and day of the flight. People already in detention should be given at least 72 hours notice, including two working days, which allows them to make final appeals.

See the Right to Remain toolkit for detailed information on notice periods and appeal procedures.

All UK deportation flights, both tickets on normal scheduled flights and chartered planes, are booked by a private contractor called Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT). The main airline used by the Home Office for charter flights is a charter company called Titan Airways.

See this 2018 Corporate Watch report for detailed information on charter flight procedures and the companies involved. And this 2020 update on deportations overall.

On the 12 August flight, legal challenges managed to get 19 people with Removal Directions off the plane. However, the Home Office then substituted 14 different people who were on a “reserve list”. Lawyers suspect that these 14 people did not have sufficient access to legal representation before their flight which is why they were able to be removed.

Of the 19 people whose lawyers successfully challenged their attempted deportation, 12 would be deported on the next charter flight on 26 August. 6 were flown to Dusseldorf in Germany, and 6 to Clermont-Ferrand in France.

Another flight was scheduled for the 27 August to Spain. However, lawyers managed to get everyone taken off, and the Home Office cancelled the flight. A Whitehall source was quoted as saying “there was 100% legal attrition rate on the flight due to unprecedented and organised casework barriers sprung on the government by three law firms.” It is suspected that the Home Office will continue their efforts to deport these people on future charter flights.

The Home Office’s “Charter Flight Information Booklet”. The only portion underlined notifies deportees whose hands will be shackled to their waist that they are liable to receive a fine if they remove their face coverings.

Who was deported?

All the people on the flights were refugees who had claimed asylum in the UK immediately on arrival at Dover. While the tabloids paint deportation flights as carrying “dangerous criminals”, none of these people had any criminal charges.

They come from countries including Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Kuwait. (Ten further Yemenis were due to be on the failed flight to Spain. In June, the UK government said it will resume arms sales to Saudi Arabia to use in the bombardment of the country that has cost tens of thousands of lives).

All have well-founded fears of persecution in their countries of origin, where there have been extensive and well-documented human rights abuses. At least some of the deportees are survivors of torture – and have been documented as such in the Home Office’s own assessments.

One was a minor under 18 who was age assessed by the Home Office as 25 – despite them being in possession of his passport proving his real age. Unaccompanied minors should not legally be processed under the Dublin III regulation, let alone held in detention and deported.

Many, if not all, have friends and families in the UK.

No one had their asylum case assessed – all were removed under the Dublin III procedure (see Legal Framework section below).

Timeline of the flight on 26 August

Night of 25 August: Eight people due to be on the flight self-harm or attempt suicide. Others have been on hunger strike for more than a week already. Three are taken to hospital where they are hastily treated before being discharged so they can still be placed on the flight. Another five are simply bandaged up in Brook House’s healthcare facility. (See testimony above.)

26 August, 4am onwards: Guards come to take deportees from their rooms in Brook House. There are numerous testimonies of violence: three or four guards enter rooms with shields, helmets, and riot gear and beat up prisoners if they show any resistance.

4am onwards: The injured prisoners are taken by guards to be inspected by a doctor, in a corridor in front of officials, and are certified as “fit to fly”.

5am onwards: Prisoners are taken one by one to waiting vans. Each is placed in a separate van with four guards. Vans are labelled with the Mitie “Care and Custody” logo. Prisoners are then kept sitting in the vans until everyone is loaded, which takes one to two hours.

6am onwards: Vans drive from Brook House (near Gatwick Airport) to Stansted Airport. They enter straight into the airport charter flight area. Deportees are taken one by one from the vans and onto Titan’s waiting plane. It is an anonymous looking white Airbus A321-211 without the company’s livery, with the registration G-POWU. They are escorted up the steps with a guard on each side.

On the plane there are four guards to each person: one seated on each side, one in the seat in front and one behind. Deportees are secured with restraint belts around their waists, so that their arms are handcuffed to the belts on each side. Besides the 12 deportees and 48 guards there are Home Office officials, Mitie managers, and two paramedics on the plane.

7.48AM (BST): The Titan Airways plane (using flight number ZT311) departs Stansted airport.

9.44AM (CEST): The flight lands in Dusseldorf. Six people are taken off the plane and are handed over to the German authorities.

10.46AM (CEST): Titan’s Airbus takes off from Dusseldorf bound for Clermont-Ferrand, France with the remaining deportees.

11.59AM (CEST): The Titan Airways plane (now with flight number ZT312) touches down at Clermont-Ferrand Auvergne airport and the remaining six deportees are disembarked from the plane and taken into the custody of the Police Aux Frontières (PAF, French border police).

12:46PM (CEST): The plane leaves Clermont-Ferrand to return to the UK. It first lands in Gatwick, probably so the escorts and other officials get off, before continuing on to Stansted where the pilots finish their day.

Titan Airways’ Airbus A321-211 G-POWU on the tarmac in Clermont-Ferrand before returning to the UK after deporting people to Germany and France on 26 August, 2020

Dumped on arrival: Germany

What happened to most of the deportees in Germany is not known, although it appears there was no comprehensive intake procedure by the German police. One deportee told us German police on arrival in Dusseldorf gave him a train ticket and told him to go to the asylum office in Berlin. When he arrived there, he was told to go back to his country. He told them he could not and that he had no money to stay in Berlin or travel to another country. The asylum office told him he could sleep on the streets of Berlin.

Only one man appears to have been arrested on arrival. This was the person who had attempted suicide the night before, cutting his head and neck with razors, and had been bleeding throughout the flight.

Dumped on arrival: France

The deportees were taken to Clermont-Ferrand, a city in the middle of France, hundreds of kilometres away from metropolitan centres. Upon arrival they were subjected to a COVID nose swab test and then held by the PAF while French authorities decided their fate.

Two were released around an hour and a half later with appointments to claim asylum in around one week’s time – in regional Prefectures far from Clermont-Ferrand. They were not offered any accommodation, further legal information, or means to travel to their appointments.

The next person was released about another hour and a half after them. He was not given an appointment to claim asylum, but just provided with a hotel room for four nights.

Throughout the rest of the day the three other detainees were taken from the airport to the police station to be fingerprinted. Beginning at 6PM these three began to be freed. The last one was released seven hours after the deportation flight landed. The police had been waiting for the Prefecture to decide whether or not to transfer them to the detention centre (Centre de Rétention Administrative – CRA). We don’t know if a factor in this was that the nearest detention centre, at Lyon, was full up.

However, these people were not simply set free. They were given expulsion papers ordering them to leave France (OQTF: Obligation de quitter le territoire français), and banning them from returning (IRTF: Interdiction de retour sur le territoire français). These papers allowed them only 48 hours to appeal. The British government has said that people deported on flights to France have the opportunity to claim asylum in France. This is clearly not true.

In a further bureaucratic contradiction, alongside expulsion papers people were also given orders that they must report to the Clermont-Ferrand police station every day at 10:00AM for the next 45 days (potentially to be arrested and detained at any point). They were told that if they failed to report, the police would consider them on the run.

The Prefecture also reserved a place in a hotel many kilometres away from the airport for them for four nights, but not any further information or ways to receive food. They were also not provided any way to get to this hotel, and the police would not help them – stating that their duty finished once they gave the deportees their papers.

“After giving me the expulsion papers the French policeman said ‘Now you can go to England.’” (Testimony of deported person)

The PAF showed a general disregard for the health and well-being of the deportees who were in the custody throughout the day. One of the deportees had been in a wheel-chair throughout the day and was unable to walk due to the deep lacerations on his feet from self-harming. He was never taken to the hospital, despite the doctor’s recommendation, neither during the custody period nor after his release. In fact, the only reason for the doctor’s visit in the first place was to assess whether he was fit to be detained should the Prefecture decide that. The police kept him in his bloody clothes all day, and when they released him he did not have shoes and could barely walk. No crutches were given, nor did the police offer to help him get to the hotel. He was put out on the street having to carry all of his possessions in a Home Office issue plastic bag.

“the hardest night of my life”

“It was the hardest night of my life. My heart break was so great that I seriously thought of suicide. I put the razor in my mouth to swallow it; I saw my whole life pass quickly until the first hours of dawn. The treatment in detention was very bad, humiliating and degrading. I despised myself and felt that my life was destroyed, but it was too precious to lose it easily. I took the razor out from my mouth before I was taken out of the room, where four large-bodied people, wearing armour similar to riot police and carrying protective shields, violently took me to the large hall at the ground floor of the detention centre. I was exhausted, as I had been on hunger strike for several days. In a room next to me, one of the deportees tried to resist and was beaten so severely that blood dripping from his nose. In the big hall, they searched me carefully and took me to a car like a dangerous criminal, two people on my right and left, they drove for about two hours to the airport, there was a big passenger plane on the runway. […] That moment, I saw my dreams, my hopes, shattered in front of me when I entered the plane.”

Testimony of deported person (from Detained Voices).

Van with new Mitie Care and Custody logo similar to that used to transfer deportees from Brook House to Standsted Airport.

The Legal Framework: Dublin III

These deportations are taking place under the Dublin III regulation. This is EU law that determines which European country is responsible for assessing a refugee’s asylum claim. The decision involves a number of criteria, the primary ones being ‘family unity’ and the best interests of children. Another criterion, in the case of people crossing borders without papers, is which country they first entered ‘irregularly’. In the law, this is supposed to be less important than family ties – but it is the most commonly used ground by governments seeking to pass on asylum applicants to other states. All the people we know of on these flights were “Dublined” because the UK claimed they had previously been in France, Germany or Spain.

(See: House of Commons intro briefing; Right to Remain toolkit section.)

By invoking the Dublin regulation, the UK evades actually assessing people’s asylum cases. These people were not deported because their asylum claims failed – their cases were simply never considered. The decision to apply Dublin III is made after the initial screening interview (now taking place in Yarl’s Wood). As we saw above, very few people are able to access any legal advice before these interviews are conducted and sometimes they are carried out by telephone or without adequate translation.

Under Dublin III the UK must make a formal request to the other government it believes is responsible for considering the asylum claim to take the person back, and present evidence as to why that government should accept responsibility. Typically, the evidence provided is the record of the person’s fingerprints registered by another country on the Europe-wide EURODAC database.

However, in the recent deportation cases the Home Office has not always provided fingerprints but instead relied on weak circumstantial evidence. Some countries have refused this evidence, but others have accepted – notably France.

There seems to be a pattern in the cases so far where France is accepting Dublin III returns even when other countries have refused. The suspicion is that the French government may have been incentivised to accept ‘take-back’ requests based on very flimsy evidence as part of the recent Franco-British Channel crossing negotiations (France reportedly requested £30m to help Britain make the route ‘unviable’).

In theory, accepting a Dublin III request means that France (or another country) has taken responsibility to process someone’s asylum claim. In practice, most of the people who arrived at Clermont-Ferrand on 26 August were not given any opportunity to claim asylum – instead they were issued with expulsion papers ordering them to leave France and Europe. They were also only given 48 hours to appeal these expulsions orders without any further legal information; a near impossibility for someone who has just endured a forceful expulsion and may require urgent medical treatment.

Due to Brexit, the United Kingdom will no longer participate in Dublin III from 31 December 2020. While there are non-EU signatories to the agreement like Switzerland and Norway, it is unclear what arrangements the UK will have after that (as with basically everything else about Brexit). If there is no overall deal, the UK will have to negotiate numerous bilateral agreements with European countries. This pattern of expedited expulsion without a proper screening process established with France could be a taste of things to come.

Conclusion: rushed – and illegal?

Charter flight deportations are one of the most obviously brutal tools used by the UK Border Regime. They involve the use of soul-crushing violence by the Home Office and its contractors (Mitie, Titan Airways, Britannia Hotels, and all) against people who have already lived through histories of trauma.

For these recent deportations of Channel crossers the process seems particularly rushed. People who have risked their lives in the Channel are scooped into a machine designed to deny their asylum rights and expel them ASAP – for the sake of a quick reaction to the latest media panic. New procedures appear to have been introduced off the cuff by Home Office officials and in under-the-table deals with French counterparts.

As a result of this rush-job, there seem to be numerous irregularities in the process. Some have been already flagged up in the successful legal challenges to the Spanish flight on 27 August. The detention and deportation of boat-crossers may well be largely illegal, and is open to being challenged further on both sides of the Channel.

Here we recap a few particular issues:

• The highly politicised nature of the expulsion process for small boat crossers means they are being denied access to a fair asylum procedure by the Home Office.
• The deportees include people who are victims of torture and of trafficking, as well as under-aged minors.
• People are being detained, rushed through screening interviews, and “Dublined” without access to legal advice and necessary information.
• In order to avoid considering asylum requests, Britain is applying Dublin III often just using flimsy circumstantial evidence – and France is accepting these requests, perhaps as a result of recent negotiations and financial arrangements.
• Many deportees have family ties in the UK – but the primary Dublin III criterion of ‘family unity’ is ignored.
• In accepting Dublin III requests France is taking legal responsibility for people’s asylum claims. But in fact it has denied people the chance to claim asylum, instead immediately issuing expulsion papers.
• These expulsion papers (‘Order to quit France’ and ‘Ban from returning to France’ or ‘OQTF’ and ‘IRTF’) are issued with only 48 hour appeal windows. This is completely inadequate to ensure a fair procedure – even more so for traumatised people who have just endured detention and deportation, then been dumped in the middle of nowhere in a country where they have no contacts and do not speak the language.
• This completely invalidates the Home Office’s argument that the people it deports will be able to access a fair asylum procedure in France.

This article only shares the tip-of-the-iceberg of migrant experiences during the coronavirus pandemic and we know there are many other untold stories. If you would like to share your news or experiences, please contact us.

Content warning: This article contains some graphic references to state violence, such as police beatings.

From No Name Kitchen featured in the Border Violence Monitoring Project special report about COVID-19 and border violence along the Balkan route

Mass Containment Camps

As the world descended into lockdowns in an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus, tens of thousands of people have been confined in camps in the Western Balkans and Greece, as well as smaller accommodation centres across Europe. New and existing camps were also essentially locked down and the movement of people in and out of camps began to be heavily controlled by police and/or the military.

The Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) has been trying to track what is happening across the Balkans. They write that in Bosnia-Herzegovina, “more than 5,000 people were detained in existing temporary refugee reception centres. They include about 500 unaccompanied minors and several hundred children with families. Persons in need of special care, patients, victims of torture, members of the LGBTQ population, persons diagnosed with mental disorders, and victims of domestic violence have also been locked down into ‘EU-funded’ camps.” Police officers guard the centres and emergency legislation enables them the right to ‘physically force persons trying to leave the centres to return.’

120,000 people are locked down in containment camps across Greece and the Greek Islands. Disturbing accounts of refugee camps are ever-present but the pandemic has worsened already unbearable conditions. 17,000 refugees live at Moira Refugee Camp where there are 210 people per toilet and 630 people per shower. Coronavirus, uncertainty over suspended asylum applications and the terrible living conditions are all contributing to escalating violence.

In detention centres in Drama and Athens in Greece, the BVMN report that, “Respondents describe a lack of basic amenities such as running water, showers, or soap. Cramped and overcrowded conditions, with up to 13 inmates housed in one caravan with one, usually non-functioning, toilet. Requests for better services are met with violence at the hands of officers and riot police. On top of this, there have been complaints that no special precautions for COVID-19 are being taken, residents inside told BVMN reporters that sick individuals are not isolated, and are dismissed as having ‘the flu’.”

While movement restrictions were lifted for Greek residents on 4th May, lockdown is still extended for all camps and centres across Greece and the Islands. This decision triggered thousands of people to protest in Athens. Emergency legislation adopted at the start of March in Greece effectively suspended the registration of asylum applications and implied immediate deportation for those entering the Greek territory, without registration, to their countries of origin or to Turkey.

Moira Refugee Camp. Picture from Lydia Emmanouilidou/The World – https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-03-16/life-goes-greek-refugee-camp-amid-diplomatic-tensions-and-pandemic

Detention and the deportation regime

While major country-wide lockdowns are an unusual form of restriction of movement, for decades European states have been locking people seeking safety in detention centres. Immigration Removal Centres are essentially prisons for migrants in which people are locked up without trial or time-limit. In the UK the detention system is mostly run for profit by private companies, as detailed in our UK Border Regime book.

Despite preparing for a pandemic scenario in January 2020, it took public pressure and legal action before the British government released nearly 1000 people from detention centres. As of the end of May, 368 people were still locked up in the profit-making detention centres and many more are living in ‘accommodation centres’ where they have been unable to access coronavirus testing.

During the pandemic, people have been revolting in several detention centres across France and Belgium. Residents at a refugee centre in Saxony-Anhalt in Germany went on a hunger strike in April to protest against a lack of disinfectant. Hunger strikes have also taken place at detention centres in Tunisia, Cyprus and France.

Women in a police holding centre for migrants in Greece went on hunger strike in June. In a statement, they wrote: “We will continue the hunger strike until we are free from this captivity. They will either set us free or we shall die”.

People staged a rooftop protest at a detention centre in Madrid at the start of the outbreak. This was before all the detention centres in Spain were, for the first time in their history, completely emptied. To put this into context, Spain had 6,473 detainees in 2019. Legal challenges have been leveraging the EU Returns Directive which allows detention pending deportation for up to 18 months, but stipulates that if “a reasonable prospect of removal no longer exists…detention ceases to be justified and the person concerned shall be released immediately”.

With a worldwide reduction in flights, deportations became unfeasible, however, many are afraid that the deportation machine will restart as things “return to normal”.

Picture from Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

Worsening life in the ‘jungle’

People living in squats and other improvised accommodation have also faced sweeping operations, with people being rounded up and taken to containment camps.

For those that remained on the street, pandemic restrictions took their toll. In Greece, movement amidst the pandemic was permitted via letters and text messages. For people who did not have the right paperwork, they were fined 150 euros, sometimes multiple times.

Similarly, in the French city of Calais, people who did not have the right paperwork were commonly denied access to shops and supermarkets, where they may have previously used the bathrooms or bought food to cook. With many volunteer groups unable to operate due to movement restrictions, the availability of food dramatically reduced overnight. Access to services such as showers, phone charging and healthcare also rapidly reduced.

People in Calais also faced a rise in evictions: 45 evictions were recorded in the first two weeks of lockdown. These expulsions have continued throughout the pandemic. On Friday 10th July 2020, a major police raid in Calais forced more than 500 people onto buses to be taken to ‘reception centres’ across the region.

In Amsterdam in the Netherlands, some migrants were forced to live in night shelters and made to leave during the daytime – facing constant risks of contracting COVID-19 and police harassment in the city. They protested “I would stay at home if I had one”.

Many migrant solidarity groups working on the ground lost huge numbers of volunteers due to travel restrictions and health concerns. Access to material donations such as tents, which are commonly collected at the end of festivals, also reduced. A constant supply of these resources is needed because the police routinely take the migrants’ tents away.

Encampments in Calais – image from Herbalists without Borders UK

Militarisation of borders

The pandemic has seen an increase in military forces at borders and camps, persistent police violence and the suspension of ‘rights’ or legal processes. Using ‘State of Emergency’ legislation, the health crisis has been effectively weaponised.

In March at the beginning of the pandemic in Europe, FRONTEX, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency deployed an additional 100 guards at the Greek Land Border. This is in addition to the agency’s core of 10,000 officers working around Europe.

In their 2020 Risk Analysis Report, FRONTEX wrote that “the closing of internal borders is binding border guard personnel, which some border authorities have long stopped planning for”. This illuminates a key complexity in border control. For years, Europe has shifted to policing the wider borders of the Schengen Area. As the virus spread between countries within that area, however, states have tried to shut down their own borders.

Police forces and militaries have become increasingly mobilised to “protect these national borders”. In Slovenia, this meant the military was granted authority to ‘process civilians’ at the border through the government’s activation of Article 37a of the Defence Act. While in Serbia, the army was deployed around border camps to ensure mass containment. 400 new border guards were also dispatched to the Evros land border between Greece and Turkey in addition to an increase in fencing and surveillance technologies.

Escalating Police Violence

Although migrants are no strangers to police brutality, national states of emergency have enabled an escalation in police violence. In mid-April an open letter was published by the Eritrean community of the Calais jungle reporting escalating police brutality. It describes the actions of the CRS police (Compagnies républicaines de sécurité); the general guard of the French police, infamous for riot control and repression:

“They don’t see us as human beings. They insult us with names such as monkey, bitch etc. And for the past few weeks, they have started to threaten our lives by beating us as soon as the opportunity arises. When for example they found a group of two or three people walking towards the food distribution, or in our tents, when we were sleeping. They accelerate in their vehicles while driving in our direction, as if they wanted to crush us. They also took people with them to places far from Calais, and beat them until they lost consciousness.”

The statement continues with a chronological list of events whereby people were beaten up, hit, gassed, had their arms broken, and were struck on the head so hard they lost consciousness and were taken to hospital by ambulance.

With fewer people on the streets during the pandemic, police evictions that were not previously possible due to street-level resistance became successful. This was evidenced in the eviction of the Gini occupation at the Polytechnic University in Exarchia, Greece, a location that the police have not dared enter for decades. Dozens of migrant families were rounded up and taken to a detention centre.

Violent pushbacks across borders

There has also been an increase in illegal and violent pushbacks. Pushbacks are the informal expulsion (without due process) of individuals or groups to another country. This commonly involves the violent removal of people across a border.

For example, on April 22nd in North Macedonia, a group of people from Palestine, Morocco and Egypt were pushed back into Greece. Two men were approached by officers in army uniforms and forced onto a bus where officers began to beat them with batons and guns. So much force was used that one man’s arm was fractured. The other members of the small group were later found and abruptly woken by officers. One man was stamped on and kicked across his body and head. Their shoes were removed and they were told to walk the 2km back to the border where they were met with the other group that had been taken there.

Photograph of fractured arm after being treated by a medical volunteer in Thessaloniki. Picture from – https://www.borderviolence.eu/violence-reports/april-22-2020-0200-gevgelia/

A group of 16 people in Serbia (including one minor) were told they were being taken to a new camp for COVID prevention. They were then forced into a van and driven for nine hours with no stops, toilet or water. They were released at a remote area of hills and told to leave and cross the border to North Macedonia by the officers with guns. When found attempting to cross again days later they were told by police officers, “Don’t come again, we will kill you”.

In Croatia, police have also started tagging people that they have pushed back with orange spray paint.

There are also reports that Greek authorities are pushing people back to Turkey. According to the Border Violence Monitoring Network, many people shared experiences of being beaten, robbed and detained before being driven to the border area where military personnel used boats to return them to Turkey across the Evros river. In mid April in Greece, approximately 50 people were taken from Diavata camp in the morning and removed to a nearby police station where they were ordered to lie on the ground – “Sleep here, don’t move”. They were then beaten with batons. Some were also attacked with electric tasers. They were held overnight in a detention space near the border, and beaten further by Greek military officers. The next day they were boated across the river to Turkey by authorities with military uniforms. Another group were taken to the river in the dark and ordered to strip to their underwear.

As pushbacks continue, people are forced to take even more dangerous routes. In Romania in mid-April, a group were found drowning in the Danube River after their boat capsized. One person was found dead and eight are still missing, while the survivors suffered from hypothermia.

Bruising from a beating by police during a pushback from Greece to Turkey. Image from – https://www.borderviolence.eu/violence-reports/june-21-2020-2100-ipsala-edirne-turkey/

Danger at Sea

During the pandemic, increasing numbers of disturbing accounts have been shared by migrants experiencing violence at sea. Between mid March and mid May, Alarm Phone (a hotline for boat people in distress) received 28 emergency calls from the Aegean Sea.

On the 29th April, a boat carrying 48 refugees from Afghanistan, Congo and Iran, including 18 children, tried to reach Lesvos Island in the early hours of the day. They were pushed back to Turkish waters:

“We were very scared. We tried to continue towards Lesvos Island. It was only 20 minutes more driving to reach the Greek coast. The big boat let a highspeed boat down, which hunted us down. There were six masked men in black clothes. They stopped us and made many waves. With a long stick they took away our petrol and they broke our engine. They had guns and knives. Then they threw a rope to us and ordered us to fix it on our boat. Then they started pulling us back towards Turkey. After a while they stopped and cut the rope. They returned to the big boat and took distance from us. It was around 6am.

Then two other boats of the Greek coastguard arrived which were white and grey and drove very fast towards us, starting to make circles around our boat. They created big waves which were pushing us in the direction of Turkish waters. Our boat was taking in water and the kids were screaming. Our boat started breaking from the bottom. We were taking out the water with our boots. We threw all our belongings in the sea to make our boat lighter. Many of us had no life vests. A pregnant lady fainted. The Greeks continued making waves for a long period. A Turkish coastguard boat arrived and stood aside watching and taking photos and videos for more than six hours. Only after 13:30 o’clock the Turkish coastguard boat finally saved us. We were brought to Çanakalle police station and detained for five days.”

During two months of lockdown, civil monitoring ships (volunteers who monitor the Aegean sea for migrants arriving via boat) were not permitted. In Italy, ports were closed to rescue ships, with many feared lost at sea as a result. Allegations have also emerged that Greece has been using inflatable rafts to deport asylum seekers. These are rafts without motors or propellers that cannot be steered.

The Maltese Army also hit the headlines after turning away a boat of migrants by gunpoint and giving them the GPS coordinates for Italy. This is after recent reports of sabotaging migrant vessels, and pushing back migrant boats to Libya resulting in 12 people dying. The Maltese government recently signed a deal with the Libyan government to “to coordinate operations against illegal migration”. This includes training the Libyan coastguards and funding for “reception camps”.

The threat of the virus and worsening conditions have also contributed to a record number of attempts to cross the Channel. The courage and commitment to overcome borders is inspiring, and more successful crossings have taken place during the pandemic. Between March 23rd (when the UK coronavirus lockdown began) and May 11th at least 853 migrants managed to cross the Channel in dinghies and small boats.

Image from https://alarmphone.org of the Maltese coastguard antagonising people in need of rescue at sea in May 2020

State Scapegoating and the empowerment of the far right

Far-right politicians and fascist activists have used the pandemic as an opportunity to push for closed borders.

The election of a new Far Right government in Slovenia in March brought with it the scapegoating of refugees as coronavirus vectors. News conglomerate, NOVA24, heavily publicised a fake news story that the first COVID-19 patient in Italy was a Pakistani person who came via the Balkan route.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s Government led by Vicktor Orbán moved to deport resident Iranians after claiming they were responsible for the country’s first coronavirus outbreak.

In Italy, Matteo Salvini, the populist leader of the opposition Lega party tried to blame the movement of migrants from Africa across the Mediterranean as a “major infection threat” shortly before the country was overwhelmed with the pandemic and its rising death toll.

The racist scapegoating ignores data that proves that initially the virus was transmited predominatnly by tourists’ and business people’s globe-trotting in the service of global capitalism and the fact that those whose movement is restricted, controlled and perilous, who do not have the power and wealth, are the most likely to suffer from the worst effects of both the virus itself and the shut downs.

Photo by Radek Homola on Unsplash

The Aftermath of Asylum suspension

Access to asylum has drastically shifted across Europe with the suspension of many face-to-face application processing centres and appeal hearings. This ‘legal limbo’ is having a severe impact on people’s lives.

Many people remain housed in temporary accommodation like hotels while they wait for their claim to be processed. This accommodation is often overcrowded and social-distancing guidelines are impossible to follow there. One asylum seeker in South London even shared to The Guardian how two strangers were made to share his double bed for a week in one room. One of the people was later taken to hospital with coronavirus.

Closed-conditions at Skellig Accomodation Centre, a former hotel in Cahersiveen, Co. Kerry, Ireland enabled the rapid spread of the virus between the 100 people living there. Misha, an asylum seeker confined there, said she watched in horror as people started falling sick around her.

“We were sharing bedrooms with strangers. We were sharing the dining room. We were sharing the salt shakers. We were sharing the lobby. We were sharing everything. And if you looked at the whole situation, you cannot really say that it was fit for purpose.”

People were ordered to stay inside, and meanwhile coronavirus testing was delayed. Protests took place inside and locals demonstrated in solidarity outside.

Asylum seekers in Glasgow have been protesting their accommodation conditions provided by the Mears Group, who Corporate Watch profiled in 2019. Mears Group won a £1.15 billion contract to run the refugee accommodation system in Scotland, Northern Ireland and much of the north of England. Their profiteering, slum landlord conditions and involvement in mass evictions have been met with anger and resistance. The pandemic has only worsened the experiences of people forced to live in Mears’ accommodation through terrible sanitation and medical neglect. Read our 2020 update on the Mears Group here.

In the UK, the Home Office put a hold on evictions of asylum seekers during lockdown. The Red Cross stated this spared 50,000 people from the threat of losing their accommodation. Campaigners and tenants fear what will happen post-corona and how many people will face destitution when the ban on evictions lifts this August.

In addition, a face-to-face screening interview is still needed for new asylum claims. This creates an awful choice for asylum seekers between shielding from the virus (and facing destitution) or going to the interviews in order to access emergency asylum support and begin the formal process. While meagre, the £37.75 per week is essential for survival. One of the reasons the Home Office make face-to-face applications compulsory is because of biometric data harvesting e.g. taking fingerprints of asylum seekers. One asylum seeker with serious health problems has had to make three journeys from Glasgow to Liverpool in the midst of the pandemic to submit paperwork.

Access to food and other support is also very difficult as many centres and support services are closed.

Demonstration in Cahersiveen in solidarity with people contained in Skellig Accomodation Centre. Photograph by Alan Landers from https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/16/europe/ireland-asylum-direct-provision-coronavirus-intl/index.html

Barriers to Healthcare

It is widely recognised that systemic racism has led to the disproportionate deaths of Black, Asian and minority ethnic people throughout the pandemic. Research has shown Black people are four times more likely to die than white people, and Bangladeshi or Pakistani groups are three times more likely. Many people from these communities are migrants, and many work in the National Health Service and social care sector.

Research by Patients not Passports, Medact, Migrants Organise and the New Economics Foundation has shown that many migrants are avoiding seeking healthcare. 57% of respondents in their research report that they have avoided seeking healthcare because of fears of being charged for NHS care, data sharing and other migration enforcement concerns. Most people are unaware that treatment for coronavirus is exempt from charging. They also often experience additional barriers including the absence of translation and interpretation services, digital exclusions, housing and long distances from care services.

Undocumented migrants are incredibly precarious. A project worker interviewed for the Patients not Passports Report shared that:

“One client lived in a care home where she does live-in care and she has been exposed to Corona but has stated that she will not seek treatment and would rather die there than be detained.”

Elvis, an undocumented migrant from the Philippines, died at home with suspected coronavirus because he was so scared by the hostility of Government policies that he did not seek any help from the NHS.

For those that do try to access healthcare, issues such as not having enough phone credit or mobile data, not having wifi or laptops for video appointments, and simply not being able to navigate automated telephone and online systems because of language barriers and non-existent or poor translation, are having a very real impact on people’s ability to receive support. Fears of poor treatment because of people’s past experiences of discrimination and racism even if they access the services is another barrier.

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

Exploiting Migrant Labour

The exploitation of migrant labour has always been essential to sustaining capitalist economies. The pandemic generated contradictory responses from politicians and capitalists alike. Germany’s agricultural sector lobbied hard for opening the border after they were closed, leading the country to lift its ban and let in over 80,000 seasonal workers from Eastern Europe. Yet dilapidated living conditions and overcrowding are sparking new COVID-19 outbreaks, such as the 200 workers that contracted the virus at a slaughterhouse in western Germany.

In mid May, the Italian government passed a law regularising undocumented migrants, whereby undocumented workers have been encouraged to apply for six-month legal residency permits. There are believed to be about 600,000 undocumented workers in Italy but only people doing ‘essential’ work during the pandemic can apply, mostly in the agricultural sector. Thousands of people live in makeshift encampments near fruit and vegetable farms with no access to running water or electricity.

Working conditions carry risks of violence. On 18 May, five days after Italy’s regularisation law passed, a 33-year old Indian migrant working in a field outside of Rome was fired after asking his employer for a face mask for protection while at work. When the worker requested his daily wage, he was beaten up and thrown in a nearby canal.

Image from a new documentary about migrant labour struggles in Italy from – https://www.theafricareport.com/32086/the-invisibles-unseen-footage-of-italys-migrant-labourers-at-peak-of-covid-19/

Conclusion

The coronavirus crisis has exposed and intensified the brutality required to sustain capitalism – from systemic racism, to violent border controls, to slave labour for industrial agriculture, the list goes on. Despite extremely difficult conditions, undocumented migrants have formed strong movements of solidarity and collective struggle in many European countries. From revolts in detention centres to legal actions to empty them, people are continually resisting the border regime. As people reject a ‘return to normal’ post pandemic, the fall of the border regime must be part of a vision for freedom and liberation in a world beyond capitalism.

To download a free copy or order a hard copy of our book The UK Border Regime click here.

For the last five years, Herbalists without Borders UK has maintained a presence in Northern France supporting refugees and migrants risking their lives to cross the British Border. This winter we have helped more than a thousand people with upper respiratory conditions.

We now collectively face our biggest challenge yet – a global pandemic. Refugees in the region have no option to self isolate with most living in tents in squalid conditions with poor sanitation and exposure to the elements. As well as experiencing relentless chronic stress from police violence and other challenges of living “in the jungle”.

We believe we can make an effective intervention if we act quickly and deliver a blanket flu pack distribution to all refugees in the area.

We have launched this urgent fundraiser to increase our production of herbal medicines and self care resources to distribute in the region.

We aim to produce and distribute 1500:

• Hand sanitisers
• Cough syrup
• Chest rubs

Donations will go towards the cost of packaging, creating and distributing these 4500 medicines in stand alone packs with translated instructions.

Circumstances are moving quickly. It may be that refugees will be housed in shelters or ‘containment centres’. We may not be able to access them, or even travel to France.

However, we have made the decision to commit to this course of action and if situations change and we are unable to undertake this work directly in the field, then all medicines made will be either used at a later date in the region, or will be redistributed to other projects and people in need.

Medicine makers are also needed in these critical times. If you would like to join the group of people making this medicine please email info@herbalistswithoutborders.co.uk. People are needed to make vital ingredients such as infused oils that we will use in mass production. Donations of medicine from herbalists are also extremely welcome. We will be producing a guide of what people can do and how to get involved.

Right now, please donate whatever you can afford to extend your solidarity to refugees living in Calais and Dunkirk to help them survive this pandemic.