Solidarity from Melbourne to Calais: Welcome Refugees

When: 12pm Sunday 6th March

Where: Flinders Street Station, Melbourne

Please bring your homemade signs and banners! The Refugee Action Collective has called this event to provide some very visual solidarity with asylum seekers inside the unofficial refugee camp in Calais, “The Jungle”. Despite a recent court ruling, French riot police have brutally attacked the camp as they have been bulldozing it. Tear gas, fires and rubber bullets have accompanied the destruction of property, including sleeping shelters, a school and a mosque. Many precious and important personal items have also been destroyed. The French government is forcibly displacing people all over again and leaving them with nowhere to go.

Media coverage has been appallingly inaccurate. The BBC, which many international news outlets get their material from, seems content to peddle cheap and untrue stories about residents setting fire to huts and ‘outside activists’ encouraging protest. As a consequence many people feel lied about and abandoned.

We will be meeting at the clocks at Flinders Street Station, to make use of a recogniseable landmark. And, given that despite the repression there is a lot of colour and artistry in the camp (for example, check out this group:facebook.com/Jungleye-1685383875041393), if people were up for it we could go on a ‘solidarity walk’ and perhaps take some photos in front of the ‘Let’s Fully Welcome Refugees’ banner at the Cathedral across the road, and then finish up by going into one of our little Melbourne graffiti’d laneways for some photos too.

For more infor please call Amanda 0423 013 245 or Sophia 0458 488 253

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1022728517794589/