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calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com...
Callout for donations of small digital video cameras
Over the last week the state has instituted a quota system for the arrest and detainment of 40 – 50 refugees a day. Most of these people are being snatched from the streets of Calais or around the Eurotunnel entrance. Due to the influx of arrests across Calais we are keen to provide people with the tools to document their treatment at the hands of the state. To do this we would like to distribute small digital cameras around Calais to help record the actions of the police and the security services.
We will then collect video footage at our info center in the jungle and publish the results online.
When I tried to video or take photographs, people would walk past shouting 'no' – the result of gossip saying they will never be able to seek asylum if it could be proved they were at the camp.
Tragically, for the women who are stuck in the limbo that is the migrant camp at Calais, such gender-based hardships are still a strong source of fear. Why, as Corty observed, is the increase in women and children at Calais only obvious during the night? It can be hypothesized that this is due to women laying low during the daytime in order to avoid the gender-specific dangers that life at Calais has in store for them (Graham-Harrison, 2015).
For women living in the general camp, there is no security, street lights or female sanitation facilities provided (Graham-Harrison, 2015) which contributes to a pervasive atmosphere of insecurity. Reports have shown that the long and treacherous journeys being made by the migrants
have been fret with violence against women, which has left those at Calais feeling significantly vulnerable and anxious. A 20-year-old Somalian woman named Fedussa told the story of her journey, assisted by smugglers, as part of a group of migrants to Libya and then across the Mediterranean (BBC, 2015). Many of the women, including one of Fedussa’s friends Qani, were subject to being raped by the smugglers, who separated the women from the men for such purposes.
“I refused to go with them but they took away my friend Qani. She said six men raped her which she remembers resisting and fighting, but after the sixth she lost consciousness. Qani left for Europe 15 days before I did. I don’t know where she is but I hope to find her.” (BBC, 2015)
Women at Calais have spoken of feeling frightened and vulnerable at the camp. This is due to the atrocities that they have undergone thus far on their journey; due to being alone without anyone that they know; and due to the atmosphere in which many of the men at the camp are drinking and looking for women (Graham-Harrison, 2015). Furthermore, the journey that these women still have to make, every night walking miles to attempt to sneak on to a vehicles to heading for Britain, is more difficult than it is for many of the men. They are not as fast, not as strong and they are more vulnerable. Moreover, many of them have children to look after along the way (Graham-Harrison, 2015).
So the question arises: what is being done to help the women at Calais?
. . . many of the men at the camp are drinking and looking for women (Graham-Harrison, 2015).
British law British law therefore necessitates illegal entry to the UK for almost all those who want to claim asylum. This forces migrants, most of whom have survived war or human rights violations – and many of whom are very young – to risk their lives making clandestine entries in or under lorries that travel to the UK. Many people have died and countless others have been injured in this process.