Author: Sue

Dear all

Calais Film finished !    Extract on Channel 4 news at 7.45pm tonight!

Some imminent screenings for Refugee week see below.

Planning big thank your screening for all donors in 2 weeks, then its going to be doing campaign and festival screenings, then another Channel 4 item !!!! So thrilled to get it twice on national news    !!!!!!!  

In haste- haven’t stopped editing for 11 days and nights , then C4 rang to sat that wanted item as court case starts today, , came in to C4 to drop off the film   and stayed and cut it with them- 7 hrs, 10 min to go 😳😳😳😳

Still looking for last funds to buy phones and phone cards for all kids so they know I’m not giving up in them but will stay in touch and continue to repay their trust 

THANKS AGAIN SO MUCH ALL DONORS!  If your didn’t donate, do  think about donating

You can donate at  www.calais.gebnet.co.uk

Sue xxxxxx
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Here’s the link to the channel 4 item- so glad we go it out in time to impact the court case!  Was a struggle but we did it!  Thanks all donors!!!

https://www.channel4.com/news/home-office-accused-of-breaking-law-over-child-refugees
Loads of screenings in London this week .  And had four offers of human rights festival screenings already. 
Still looking for last funds to buy phones and phone cards for all kids so they know I’m not giving up in them but will stay in touch and continue to repay their trust 
THANKS AGAIN SO MUCH ALL DONORS!  If your didn’t donate, do  think about donating
You can donate at  www.calais.gebnet.co.uk
Sue xxxxxx

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I’m writing to everyone who contributed to the film Calais Children: A Case to Answer

This is to say that we are in the last two weeks of the film’s edit – and I want to thank you so much for getting it this far.

We have locked off picture and are now doing the sound edit , the music, and all the final stages.

I have rushed it to the finish line because the first of the big High Court cases is being heard at the end of June and one of the Barrister Chambers in the Inns of Court is to hold a screening with Lord Dubs present, to consider what evidence the film presents in the light of the legal challenges. As soon as that’s done I am hoping TV will buy it or at the very least show extracts, and then when that is resolved, will be able to plan its theatric and campaign life after… So be assured I will commit to get it out there the best I can, in the best ways.

On the last two shoots, I met more girls- they are trying every night to get onto the road and are extremely vulnerable. As we know, in the Calais area the police have cracked down very heavily and they are constantly being arrested and held, plus many have encountered danger – one girl Sara, Eritrean, told me that she was hiding in a refrigerated truck (they do this to lower their body temperature to avoid heat-sensor detection) and got to the point where she couldn’t breathe because of the severe cold. Another girl died, aged 17, hit by a truck. Ive also filmed in Calais Nord graveyard where there are rows of graves of refugees who died, many of them lone minors. The graves are marked just with a wooden stick and a number. No name. Whenever it was hard doing this film, that drove me on the extra mile. The thought of kids dying un-named and unknown, so far from home, and so young.

The very last kids we filmed were living in the dunes a the back of where the Jungle used to be, so near the sea their tent got wet on the high tides. It was the only place left for them – hemmed in on all sides by CRS, the fenced road, the port and the sea. (Us too- we got stopped and hassled by the CRS in the night when filming there- kids safely hid, we couldn’t! ) They were pointing to UK in the dark and saying, thats our future. Both they and the girls, should have been here under either Dubs or Dublin 3 Regulation.

There aren’t enough lawyers to take them all on, but we hope our test cases will win and we hope the film will give power to lawyers and others to take this fight on. The possible rescinding of the Human Rights Act will make such situations commonplace- unnecessary hardship and suffering caused to young victims of war.

Ther have been updates on the Calais Children webpage www.calais.gebnet.co.uk. Latest news is we got a small grant from the Bertha Foundation which has helped get us near the end. We remain about £4000 short to cover archive rights, final sound edit and sound mix, and I would like to get a decent phone and/or phone credit, to the 20 or so kids I’ve worked with the most, so that we stay in proper contact in the future. So if you are prepared to pass this on to others to donate I’d be so grateful. ! I thought originally this would be filmed over a week or two in October, and we’ve kept going for 8 months and uniquely seen the whole story through. Now we must wrap to present it to the Government and the courts.

Thanks again, do forward the web address www.calais.gebnet.co.uk to your networks and check it for what happens next with the finished film!

All my sincerest thanks and best wishes for making this possible !
Sue xxxx

Dear all

Thanks for reading and supporting to date!

You’ll be pleased to know the end of the film is in sight- we want to release it for Refugee Week (June 19-25th) and before the results if UK High Court cases being brought against the Home Office on Dubs, and Dublin 3 , and I am on it day and night as ever. Also pursuing a shorter  TV version. And continue to be in touch with countless of the young people and supporting them with phones, phone credit, clothes, referral and advice on their cases and just being someone they can call or text at any time when things get tough, which sadly is a lot..

Things have become unbelievably bad for the ex-Calais kids. As you all know, very few were taken by the UK the week after the Jungle came down, then the UK claimed that they were all in ‘appropriate accommodation” in France over the winter (they weren’t ) and brought a small number more.

Since then the Home Office have completely redefined the Dubs Amendment twice (in November 2016 and February 2017 ) both times cynically to reduce the number they night have to be responsible for form a respectable and do-able flow to a pathetic trickle – then they tried to vote it out via the Commons altogether.

Meanwhile the young people have either left completely- and are living precarious lives with no protection at all, right outside any system- or they have gone back to Calais and facing massive police crackdown and being effectively criminalised. There have been more deaths of refugees- and I found this particularly hard to deal with as I’m sure any of us would, seeing a memorial at Norrent for a young man “beaten to death by traffickers” and in Calais graveyard, a whole row of thirty refugee graves without even names, just marked by numbers. At least nine of these were children and young people.  To die without a name, and lie alone in that rainy cold Calais graveyard with no-one to come and mourn your passing or your sorrow, is a n unbearable thing.

We have filmed more in the area beyond the old Jungle- which young people we’re working with, have to cross- we hike with them over a strip of scrub and sand dunes, all the way trapped on the wrong side of the border fence, under the faint glare of the security lights and the regularly flashing lights of the CRS and gendarmes. It’s scary for us, but this is what these kids do every night to get to where they sleep.  Leaving them and heading back the two miles, we’re inevitably picked up by heavily armed CRS (paid for with your tax dollar, dear UK citizens) and have to scramble out of that situation.

We have filmed where children are living rough, and not able to be fed since the Calais Mayor banned anyone from being able to get fed in the Calais industrial zone. We have
also been to film in another refuge a distance away from Calais where girls and boys are surviving, though still sleeping rough at night.

We’re living in an age when its ok for upward of 600 minors to be back in Calais enduring a life many of us would not provide to a dog, with that considered okay because its part of some idiotic ‘punitive’ measure by our government, to not be a ‘pull factor for others’ …
When in the name of God did we start we deny children a bed and food, or any kind of medical care “in case it encourages others.” We don’t say this to UK citizens in need.  Social services or hospitals  don’t turn away people “in case it encourages others.”  When is it okay that they sleep on the dirt floor or am empty house, wth rat droppings, no heating, no light and no bed and no food? And regularly arrested by police and held for 4 days for no reason? When is it okay they’re trafficked and abused, and live in unstable and threatened communities in the woods, controlled often by people who mistreat them ?  Please somebody tell me when that’s ever okay.

Do please as ever pass this on if you can bear it and know that the end is in sight. Ive interviewed Lord Dubs now and the key players in the UK. I’m editing all the time, and  working towards commentary, sound edit , sound mix, fact check, grade and all the other delivery elements which sadly cost money.

This cost more time and money than I thought but it is beginning of the end phase now and I can never ever thank those of you who have supported the film. Whenever it seems too much or I’m too tired or the situation feels to dangerous, I think of all of you and feel a big responsibility  and also a warmth and support that keeps me on it. !

And we have got some kids to UK- and others in at least some kind of contact network and protection, they know theyre not entirely alone.

Future hope- 3 High Court cases- ours wth Duncan Lewis (37 individual child cases that should have been accepted as Dubs)  Safe Passage (faster and more efficient processes needed for Dublin 3 kids)  and Help Refugees  (Home Office unlawfully limited the terms of Dubs)

Plus us seems Macron may re-negotiate the le Touquet agreement that allows us to have out border at Calais, and demand better UK provision for the minors.

If you can support me in this very last lap, great.

As ever its www.calais.gebnet.co.uk please forward.

Also please those of you who funded me, let me know if you DON’T want your name on the credits, I’ll be getting to that stage soon!!! Total so far 8 months – thought it would be a couple of weeks only  couple of weeks! of weeks. But it matters, as this is the real, lived, hard edge physical and visceral suffering caused by ‘policy’ and ‘’pull factor’ and ‘Brexit’ and ‘walls’ and it say something absolutely shameful about a western society- a society that will use children and youths’ health and safety as bargain counters in their nationalistic border game.  The kids are cornered as thoroughly as I was when I went to their coastal tents.. What possible options do they now have?
Except if we fight for them-  and, oddly, for ourselves.
Sue xx

Dear all

A quick update on the film for those who are interested.

As you know, over the winter the French authorities kept the minors in accommodation all over France- some great, some appalling- and the agreement was that UK Home Office would go to all of these centres and do proper assessments of the young people and their claims (all of which could have been done up to year before in the Jungle…)

However we have evidence that most of the interviews lasted for 5 minutes or less, and were conducted without interpreters present.(This is someone’s whole life, and there are few alternatives for them..)

While a few were brought to UK in the winter period, many with a strong Dublin 3 claim (close family in the UK ) were overlooked. Those without family, who ought to have qualified under the Dubs Amendment, were entirely  ignored -the Home Office having drastically (and, we argue, unlawfully) limited the scope of Dubs in November last year, precisely to avoid having to take many children.

(There are 85,000 unaccompanied minors in Europe- Dubs would have at least provided safety to 3000 and taken the pressure off other EU states).

In Feb 2017 the French gave up on the UK pathetic effort, and closed the centres they’d made available all winter, leaving 1200 kids and young people in limbo (And some, in the mountains  in extreme cold and distress). The latest situation is that over 600 of them have made their way back to Calais, as the only place that’s familiar to them.They all feel that promises made to them by the British in the last days of the Jungle were not kept.

And Calais is now a very different place- almost like a militarised  zone. More info below,which I wrote up as a skeleton for the last part of the film. See also May Bulman’s piece in the Independent for which I supplied info and images: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/child-refugees-france-uk-new-market-smugglers-traffickers-a7622656.html

I have committed to get the film finished by early June, for reasons below. Please do help support us in the last lap-we are busy trying to get over 40 hours of material in 6 other languages translated; buying in key archive footage; editing and sound-editing – as well as keeping in regular touch with up to 50 young people in France and Belgium, getting them phone credit, getting them basics they need to survive,  getting them lawyers where we can. One boy, E, had both his legs broken on the road , and I have been supporting him in hospital in Lille. Others are living in rat-infested woods and squats in Calais, and have been  getting them clothes and sleeping bags- thanks Amir Amirani! !And trying to keep in touch.  Plus as ever working with the lawyers.

We have to get this abuse of asylum law through the courts and we won’t stop.

Many of you have contributed very generously, but please do consider sharing this among your contacts -as we need to raise the last £5000 or so.   ( I began expecting to film for a month and make a short, now been doing it for 6 months, the film will be 60 minutes! but the end is in sight- the inquiry and the court case, is the right time to bring the film out to influence the outcome. Also I am staring to get the film sold to UK and European TV . (If I do,we will put any revenues after all costs paid, back into the campaign.)

The address for the film donations is www.calais.gebnet.co.uk and the Facebook page is Calais Children.

All very best and thanks again for making the film, happen. I feel privileged to have been able to stay on it for 6 months, its a story that needed telling in depth It highlights issues much broader-UK after Brexit-human rights law- basic humanitarian principles that should not be lost.

Sue xx

UPFDATE INFO ON CALAIS:

Calais has changed beyond recognition. The Mayor of Calais has long opposed the British failure to deal with the its own border issues, and enforces zero tolerance for returnees. The Jungle site is a flat empty field, with heavy police presence. Riot Police and CRS patrol the streets, cafes and stations. It’s like an occupied town.

Any returning refugee, even children, are arrested for simply being there.

On March 2^nd, it’s made a ‘crime of solidarity’ for Calais citizens or aid workers to give food or shelter to a refugee, even a child. Children are sleeping out in the woods, often tear gassed while asleep. We follow Utopia 56, a charity that dives out after midnight to feed children in the woods, in defiance of the Police ban.

J runs a Catholic ‘safe house’- though even it gets raided. He says of the 600 lone children now back in Calais, less than 40 have a bed at night. R, 12, Eritrean, who I met in Le Havre, has made it to the safe house. He has an aunt in the UK and should be with her, but like others has been overlooked as a Dublin 3 case. He shivers with fear if he steps outside the house. What future has he now?

In March 2017, the Home Secretary Amber Rudd sneaked an announcement into a Parliament focussed on the Brexit debate, announcing the final number of acceptees   the Dubs Amendment.  From Dubs’ initial proposal that 3000 minors without family should be brought to the UK  from France, Rudd stepped down to only 200 from Calais- those already taken in Autumn 2016, and no more.

There was no recognition of the tortuous process the young people had been put through due to failed UK promises.- incarcerated in  the containers, sent into a winter of exile and starvation to wait for assessments that never happened, excluded from Dubs when the government narrowed its terms to discriminate  by race.  Rudd also sought a motion to scrap the Dubs Amendment entirely as ‘the crisis was over.”  Protests were held and a vote in Parliament saved the Amendment, but as long as it is applied by the Home Office in such a vastly limited and cynical way, it is a hollow victory indeed.

Meanwhile in Calais  the children have no option but the deadly cat-and-mouse game with police and CRS, while every night making ever more desperate attempts to reach the truck-stops and the port. Y, 16, from Syria  talks about freezer trucks being the best option- police cannot detect body heat thought of course risks are high. Access is now more than ever controlled by traffickers and gangs. JL, Afghan,says they try to leave Calais every night  “but north of the port there are Iraqis with knives, asking us for money. South there are Romanians with guns.” There have been stabbings, and E from Eritrea, with whom I’ve filmed a lot, had both his legs smashed when run over by vehicle – he may not walk again.

Others have left, disappeared, gone forever. A, Sudanese, is now in Belgium, sleeping with drunks and addicts on the street. He says “I am 14 and my life is over.” Others are in city ghettos, living rough, prey to traffickers and abusers.

This film began by my exploring whether the children of Calais have  legal case to be in the UK. My findings were that a great many die, either under the Dublin 3 Regulation because they had family members in the UK, or under Dubs as particularly vulnerable young people alone in Europe. Over 6 months we have seen their Dublin 3 claims ignored and thrown aside, and we have seen a cynical  dismantling of the Dubs Amendment to limit the scope and spirit of what it was designed to protect some of the most vulnerable young people in Europe.

In June 2017, both our court case ZS and Others, and two other major challenges go to the High Court to dispute the shoddy outcome that has left children suffering and stranded. A cross-party Parliamentary inquiry is going to be conducted to see what went wrong.

This film will be prime evidence for both.

You have all been very generous-  as this story has taken a further (and hopefully soon, final! ) twist,

We’re winning. Slowly .Dublin 3 kids now have a chance- but Dubs still needs more fighting.
http://www.independent.co.uk/…/home-office-uk-government-du…

If you want to help please contribute
thanks! Sue xx

Another update to follow later today

UPDATE: 9th February 2017

Heartened that so many people and so much media has cme out and trashed Amber Rudd and the Home Office for their vicious and cynical announcement to limit Dubs kids into UK. WE have material on Channel 4 News tonight, https://www.channel4.com/…/child-refugee-row-350-children-h… and I’m shooting with ITV news tomorrow, for tomorrow night.

URGENT ALERT 5th February 2017: Please donate now!

Between 12th and 20th Feb the French will close the Centres where they temporarily housed the Calais kids. Many have already left in panic, and are back in and around Calais where they are living rough, freezing, in the mud and in backstreets, constantly hounded by CRS and poiice.

The Home Office have failed to take hundreds of kids who have a legal case to be in the UK. The Duncan Lewis case which Im most closely involved in, went to the UK High Court on Friday, to get an urgent answer on our lead case ZS who has now made 4 suicide attempts and has been in and out of hospital. We got granted a response from the Home Secretary within 4 weeks. By then he will be homeless and may not make it. Our larger case, ZS and Others, brings 37 Children that i was able to identify in the Jungle, and who ought to qualify for Dubs Amendment relief, is stayed behind the second case below, which is being heard next Friday.

This second case, brought by Help Refugees which goes to the High Court this coming Friday 17th, begins the process of disputing the lawfulness of the Home Office’s narrowed definition of the Dubs Amendment (restricting it to 2 nationalities and under 12s- totally against the spirit and letter of the amendment.) They are bringing the principle. If they win, we have a strong chance then to bring our 37 actual cases, straight after.

Meanwhile I have been filming in Norrent, an unoffical camp where someone has died, Calais where kids are living in filth and squalor, now hunted by cops and in and out of detention, and Brussels where many have gone and are sleeping rough- – also desperate.

I am in touch with more and more kids and am struggling to get lawyers to take on more , especially some of the girls and some of the really young kids that Home Office has missed. I have a list of 14 who have relatives in the UK and should have been allowed here under the Dublin 3 Convention. With both Dubs and Dublin 3, bring able to bring a substantive number of cases as we’re doing, means they will hopefully set precedents, for the more to benefit.

After 4 and a half months I am getting pretty run down but I am determinednot to stop. But I have now totally run out of funding. have gone into considerable debt to keep filming.

I wanted to stop but just hard that Yemane, one of our youngest, is alone in Calais and is living rough, and I need to see him. And m really worried about the girls too.

I am still reflecting om the very sad death of Samir, a 15 year old Sudanese boy, last month. It was hard to see, and to film at a respectful distance, the other boys carrying his coffin in minus degrees at Chalon in Eastern France, His mum back in Darfur will never be able visit his grave, and never see him again. That was tragic day.

But what bolstered my spirits was, that of the 13 Calais kids we got to UK via Duncan Lewis in early November, I have just been told that one of them, a 12 year old, “H”, lke Samir had a heart condition. But H was given as all children are, a thorough medical check when he was brought to UK and his the condition was identified. He has now had surgery, and thankfully is now in restored health.

All donors, you have made this possible. All this is big stuff we’re on the verge of, if we can SUPORT THE LEGAL RIGHTS OF THE REST. A legal right means nothing if you’re starving, cold and being harassed like criminal. It needs us to bring it to peoples’ attention and to the courts.

Please please contribute for this vital last lap of the film, and pass it to your friends and contacts to do the same.

The court cases go on over next 2-3 months. The film I would like to be completed by May as there is a Parliamentary committee being formed to assess what went wrong over the Calais issue and this will be vital evidence.

All very best everyone and thanks again. Here are some press updates:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/child-refugees-crisis-france-accomodation-centres-uk-home-office-rejections-middle-east-syria-iraq-a7517141.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/19/samir-reach-uk-children-france-registered-home-office

Sue

Please contribute here at calais.gebnet.co.uk and see https://www.facebook.com/calaischildren/

Dear all, sorry for the long silence, this doesnt mean nothing happening, rather the opposite- havent rested since last post!!

Firstly the Solicitors Duncan Lewis whom i invited to come to the Jungle to see how many young people had the legal right to be in UK, have brought a class action against the Home Office, see https://www.theguardian.com/…/calais-child-asylum-seekers-l…

Second, the conditions under which children are being kept in France are highly variable. Almost all are being looked after by volunteers not the “specialist staff” that Home Secretary Amber Rudd promised on the record. Some of these are doing a good job but in other places conditions are dire and there are on-record reports of children having been physically abused by the ‘carers.” They have in these places been fed noting but bread and the daily allowance to keep them is 5 Euros. Many are still in the same clothes they were, when they left the Jungle- sandals and t shirts.This is a freezing winter- in eg Luchon where many Sudanese boys are, its up to minus 12.
With support from your generous crowd funding I have been able to go to eight centres all over France- as far as Pyrenees, Atlantic coast, all Eastern and S Eastern France, and continue to visit others. As well as filming I’m takng aid and stuff, backed by Social Workers Without Borders who accompanied DL solictors on their Calais mission.