Eviction of refugees in Calais: the Jungle is capitalism
On 23 September, in Calais, a whole phalanx of journalists and cameramen took part in a major media carnival organised by the French government: the evacuation of the ‘Jungle' a refuge for thousands of migrants living in abject misery in tents or under trees, barely surviving thanks to a few benevolent souls.
We were treated to the sight of the forceful eviction of human beings who had been tracked down like animals, and contemptuously described as ‘illegals' as though they were criminals. And what was their crime? To have fled from poverty and war in their country of origin (many come from Afghanistan), risking their lives to end up in this pit. All were following the same dream: to get to Britain where they hoped to find work. To do this they were ready to be smuggled through border controls in lorries despite the detailed searches. These are the people who have been made into a scoop by the journalists - an unworthy spectacle not unlike the one we saw recently when the Stalinist trade union, the CGT, forcefully evicted migrants, women and children included, who had taken refuge in union locals.
After the media circus, most of these destitute migrants were parked in detention centres awaiting deportation. Those who evaded capture are hiding in the sand dunes or are starving to death on the streets of Calais.
As ever, the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie knows no limits. Thus we had Eric Besson, formerly of the ‘Socialist' Party, and now immigration minister, telling us that the aim of this operation was to fight not against the migrants, but against those who engage in people trafficking. Get out your handkerchiefs!
Sending in 500 CRS riot police against 300 people, more than half of them minors, is no doubt a heavy blow against those who traffic in human lives, despite the fact that the organisers of this traffic are often protected by the mafia who work inside the public authorities, and who frequently have their hands steeped in the sale of young people into prostitution all over Europe.
What's really behind this hypocrisy? The bulldozing of the Jungle, like the closing of Sangatte in 2004, won't halt the flow of disinherited people towards the borders, because they have nowhere else to go.
In fact, this spectacular, militarised operation is a warning from the French bourgeoisie that it is unwilling to permit increasing immigration into its territory. It is telling us that its policy of repression and deportation is going to be rigorously applied. With the massive development of unemployment and poverty, the French bourgeoisie will do everything it can to rid itself of such totally undesirable people. The message is clear: ‘Go and die somewhere else'. What's more, this policy of firmness is going to be put into practice in all areas to do with national security. And it will be echoed by the rest of Europe's governments who are rushing to point out that they have already been too generous and couldn't possibly take in yet another batch of illegal immigrants. The British bourgeoisie is particularly keen on pointing out how everyone wants to go to the UK, which is only a small island after all.
This whole disgusting scenario reveals the inhumanity of all governments and all those who zealously serve the capitalist system.
Tino 25/9/09
Comments
Practicality
It's nice to condemn the inhumanity of the "bourgeoisie" but consider the issue from a practical standpoint. There are a billion people in extreme poverty--and more billions in lesser degrees of poverty. If one nation were to let all those people in, then the carrying capacity would be overwhelmed. It might endure, however--if everyone agreed that the new migrants maintain a Third World lifestyle rather than a resource-intensive First World lifestyle. Which is why even Lenin planned to machine-gun excess immigrants to his Communist paradise--a wave of immigration that oddly enough never came!
Citation please
Do you care to provide any evidence that Lenin "planned to machine-gun excess immigrants"?
No?
Didn't think so.
Re: Citation
On the website of Irish computer scientist Mark Humphrys, we learn that: "The Gulag Archipelago details, among other material, the following:
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* The Tsars in 1820-1906 killed about 1000 people (Chapters 8 and 11). [The Black Book of Communism] roughly agrees, saying that in 1825-1905, the Tsars executed about 200 people, and in the revolutionary period of 1906-10 the Tsars executed about 3700 people.
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* The glorious 1917 Bolshevik revolution liberated the Russian people from the appalling tyranny of the Tsars. The Bolsheviks in 1917-24 killed 4 million people and then in 1929-53 killed 40 million more.
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* The classic, 19th century period of the Tsars was a golden age of tolerance, freedom and civilization compared to the tyranny that followed it.
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* The Soviet government caused the Volga famine, and then confiscated church charity collected for it (Chapter 9). Men, women and children starving to death was of no concern to them.
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* As a sort of black comic relief, Chapter 10 shows that Lenin devised plans to execute the hordes expected trying to get into the glorious Soviet workers' paradise. But no such people ever came."
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I imagine that the most efficient way to execute illegal immigrants would be to machine-gun them as they cross the border! Thus my point stands that Lenin planned to machine-gun excess immigrants.
So your comment came from
So your comment came from your imagination. At least you admit it.
What?
Read Gulag Archipelago! And yes, if Lenin planned to kill people by striking their heads with hammers, that's no better than machine-gunning them. So stick the point--Lenin's plan to kill people who fled into his glorious Soviet paradise!
It's quite to the point: you
It's quite to the point: you made an inference from a source rather than sticking to what the source had to say. On this point alone you are being intellectually dishonest for the sake of a pithy phrase. The larger point is that you are essentially fishing for ways to make the Bolsheviks look bad. Why, I'm not really sure. The ICC is not the Bolshevik party, and doesn't advocate its programme.
Doesn't the ICC see Lenin
as a champion of the proletariat?
If you bothered to check the
If you bothered to check the source Humphrys very disingenuously cited, you'd see that Solzhenitsyn was lampooning a law that supposedly allowed for the execution of those guilty of "unauthorized return from abroad." This is arguably a barbaric measure for sure (even though it was clearly directed towards white emigres and not "excess immigrants"), but a far cry from a plan to "machine gun excess immigrants to his Communist paradise."
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Indeed, after Solzhenitsyn introduces the article of the criminal code that apparently permitted for the punishment of unauthorized returns, he makes fun of Lenin's belief that exile would be a harsh measure to take against dissenters: "And there was one punishment that was the equivalent of execution by shooting: exile abroad. Vladimir Ilyich foresaw a time not far distant when there would be a constant rush of people to the Soviet Union from Europe, and it would be impossible to get anyone voluntarily to leave the Soviet Union for the West."
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Thus, even in Solzhenitsyn's view, the worst Lenin planned for disagreeable "immigrants to the communist paradise" was ... exiling them. Which implies that they'd be allowed in in the first place.
Also
I suppose it's worth pointing out that the only comment in chapter 10 that can be possibly construed as an insidious plot by Lenin to massacre immigrants is in this little paragraph:
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"But where were those mobs insanely storming the barbed-wire barricades on our western borders whom we were going to shoot, under Article 71 of the Criminal Code, for unauthorized return to the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic? Contrary to scientific prediction, there were no such crowds, and that article of the Code dictated by Lenin to Kursky remained useless. The only Russian crazy enough to do it was Savinkov, and they had ducked applying that article even to him."
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It turns out that Savinkov actually met an unfortunate end after returning to Russia, but this was in 1924, after Lenin had died.