At around 2.30pm a bailiff arrived at a squat near the theatre accompanied with around 25+ Police Nationale and PAF, supposedly – the bailiff said – just to serve court papers on the squat. Instead of posting the court papers through the letterbox, they smashed the bottom half of the front door from the outside. Again breaking an entry without a court order. Most of the cops entered the building, taking pictures and asking all non-european people their name and nationality. Racist profiling once more. There was about 40 people in the house… many from Sudan, Syria, Eqypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc. After around one hour, the cops left the building.
The deputy mayor, Philippe Mignoet, was also present and continues to take every opportunity to show up to personally oversee police operations against migrants…
Along with this person, a plain clothed, also lurking around often with camera around evictions and demos…
The building is run down and has clearly been empty for a long time. It is owned by the Municipality – who have been complicit in systematic illegal evictions for years.
Despite the breaking-in part, this is a rare occasion where the authorities seem to be acknowledging that there is a court process in which they need to go through before entering or evicting a person’s home.
The bailiff said the court date is not yet set, but she believed it would be in about two weeks.
She did not seem to agree that showing up with 25+ cops and the deputy mayor, smashing in the door, just to give us the court papers was berserk.
Over the last two months residents in another two squats, one of which was also Municipality owned, attempted to push the authorities to go through the legal process – like they are meant to – before entering or evicting. Both of these attempts were completely ignored and evicted without a court order.
See : http://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/eviction-of-new-legal-squat/
& http://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/another-illegal-squat-eviction/
Also this morning there was a big fire in the Pashtu jungle, sweeping across the dunes. No-one was hurt and no tents damaged.
Source : http://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com
