الكاتب: kafej

By a road in Calais, a group of people sit and watch the traffic roll past. Their trousers are splattered with mud and water.

The rain is tumbling down in the grey of an early morning. It is cold and unwelcoming. Beyond the beach at Sangatte, the sea rolls ominously.

The group are all wearing coats against the weather, but most look ferociously tired. One young woman huddles beneath an unfurled sleeping bag.

In most seaside towns, they would look discordant and unlikely but here, on the northern French coast, everyone knows what’s going on. Another group who have tried to cross the Channel, and failed.

This time, it is a tale of a journey that never happened – the group were spotted by the police, intercepted and their boat slashed, rendering it useless.

“I will try again,” one man tells us.

“When?” I ask.

He shrugs slightly. “Maybe tonight.”

Among this group – Turks, Iraqis, Iranians and Kurds. All tell tales of fleeing in the face of persecution. There is, remarkably, an acclaimed filmmaker here, celebrating his birthday. Three days ago, he discovered he had won an award at an international festival. Now, he has just failed to get on a boat across the Channel.

There are tales of people who attempted previous crossings – once, twice, five, even seven times before. A man who was shot by ISIS in Mosul.

Most affecting, perhaps, twins from Iran – 25 years old and desperate to leave their country.

They had joined protests against the ruling regime and saw the violence that came as punishment. Hundreds left at least partially blinded by pellets fired by police. Friends who had been imprisoned, raped and even murdered as an act of revenge.

“I need to get away from Iran,” says Asrin, as her twin brother sleeps alongside her, sitting by the road. “Even life in the camp here is better than being at home – being persecuted, tortured and raped.”

And when you visit the camp in question, on the edge of Dunkirk, you realise what a significant thing that is to say. I’ve been there many times over the past few years, and it is a sorry place at the best of times.

But now, lashed with rain and dotted with puddles in which empty drink cans float around, it is utterly miserable. A place where nobody wants to be; a shanty town united by the single aspiration of getting to Britain.

“Yes, I live surrounded by rubbish, but that is what I have to do,” says Kamal, who left Kurdistan. “Some Europeans don’t understand – can’t understand – the suffering that we have gone through. If you understood that, then you would know why I’m here.” He looks about him at the squalor all around.

It is this determination that runs like a seam in these camps, and it’s why the Rwanda policy has never seemed to permeate here. We found plenty of people who’d heard of it, but nobody who said it had had any effect at all on their decision to try to reach Britain.

Take Sina, an Iranian who had fled those same protests. He was imprisoned at 18 and, at the age of 22, wounded in the neck by shrapnel. Another millimetre to the side, he was told, and he would probably have been dead.

Now, aged 23, he’s fleeing. If he were to return home, he’s sure he would be killed.

He asks me about the Rwanda plan, and I tell him about the decision of the Supreme Court – it’s the first time he’s heard.

“It’s the best news I’ve had today. It’s about human rights. It was a stupid thing to do and it never should have been done. I’m very very happy to hear that,” he said.

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Sina is hardly an unbiased observer – he would, after all, be at risk of being sent to Rwanda if the policy were ever to be enacted. But he does reflect an opinion that was unanimous among the people I spoke to.

Kamal, for instance: “Migrants are looking for safety – they’re searching for security,” he said. “The people in Rwanda are the ones who need help so why would you send migrants to a country where the people are already short of support and security?”

It is a disconnect, and a familiar one at that.

Talk to people in these camps, and they will tell you that they want to come to Britain to feel safe, to work, to see friends and family, to become educated and to escape fear. What they rarely seem to understand is just how politically toxic the debate is that encircles them.

The weather is dreadful. There are warnings of more flooding in the Calais region and one local I spoke to summed it up as simply “horrible – again”.

They are the sort of conditions where you want to be tucked up inside. But as you read this, a group of people will probably be preparing to try to cross the Channel in a small, unsuitable boat, powered by a lousy engine, captained by a novice.

For all the political rhetoric, the wave of migrants arriving in northern France rolls on.

A group of Tory MPs plan to write a letter to Rishi Sunak demanding his “emergency legislation” to revive the Rwanda deportation scheme overrides human rights laws.

Sky News understands the New Conservatives group – a cohort of predominantly red wall MPs on the right of the party – will demand the legislation be “over-engineered” so it can see off potential further legal challenges.

The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the flagship immigration policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful.

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The prime minister has rejected calls to scrap the plan, saying a new treaty with Rwanda would be signed and “emergency legislation” would be passed in order to declare the east African country safe and address the judges’ concerns.

However, some Tory MPs are sceptical about the timings and fear the new bill could still be challenged.

The New Conservative group will make three requests to stop this from happening, including that the new legislation disapplies the UK Human Rights Act.

They will say it should also include “notwithstanding” clauses in order to override any international treaties or laws that could block the plan.

And they also want to give ministers powers to disregard so-called “pyjama injunctions” – which are last-minute orders from judges that could stop planes from taking off.

The group of MPs wants the legislation to be drawn up immediately, so it can be in place before the next general election.

The letter piles fresh pressure on Mr Sunak, who has staked his premiership on a promise to “stop the boats”.

But with an election due by January 2025 at the latest, time is running out to pass new legislation, which can take months.

Earlier, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said he could not guarantee flights will go to Rwanda next year – apparently contradicting Mr Sunak’s position on Wednesday that the scheme will be up and running by spring, despite the Supreme Court ruling.

The UK’s highest court said the scheme was not lawful because there was a risk that people sent to Rwanda could be deported to the countries they are fleeing from (a term known as refoulement).

The judges said this fell foul not only of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which many Tory MPs want to leave, but also other international treaties and the UK’s own domestic legislation.

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The yet-to-be-published treaty with Rwanda is expected to attempt to address the Supreme Court’s concerns around refoulement.

However, it is not clear how the government thinks it can bypass human rights laws and international conventions, or when the new legislation will be brought before parliament.

Members of the House of Lords have warned the proposed emergency legislation bill is likely to face opposition and could very well be blocked by the upper chamber.

Former supreme court judge Jonathan Sumption told the BBC the plan to use a law to declare Rwanda as safe is “constitutionally really quite extraordinary” and would “effectively overrule” a decision by the UK’s highest court.

Israeli forces have dropped leaflets warning Palestinians to leave southern Gaza, residents in the besieged city of Khan Younis have said.

It is feared the leaflets could signal Israel is planning to broaden its offensive to the south – where hundreds of thousands fled to escape its bombardment and ground assault.

Israel-Gaza live updates

They warned civilians to evacuate and said anyone in the vicinity of military positions is “putting his life in danger”.

Two reporters working for the Associated Press news agency who live east of Khan Younis confirmed they had seen the leaflets.

The Israeli military declined to comment – but defence minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday that the ground offensive will eventually “include both the north and the south”, vowing to “strike Hamas wherever it is”.

Similar leaflets were dropped in northern Gaza ahead of Israel’s ground invasion, warning people to travel south.

Expanding operations to the south, where there are already daily air raids, threatens to deepen the severe humanitarian crisis in the war-torn territory.

More than 1.5 million people have been displaced in Gaza, with most travelling to the south, where food, water and supplies continue to dwindle.

The area was cut off from the outside world for the fourth time when communication services went down due to a lack of power, according to the Palestinian telecoms provider.

Gaza has experienced three previous mass communication outages since the ground invasion began.

Tanks and troops crossed the border with northern Gaza on 26 October in what was described at the time as the “biggest incursion” of the conflict so far, almost three weeks after the 7 October Hamas attack.

More than 1,200 people were killed in the massacre with 240 taken hostage, Israel has said.

Hospital in northern Gaza under siege

Israeli soldiers continued searching underground levels of al Shifa Hospital in the north – the largest hospital in Gaza – on Thursday, following a raid that began early on Wednesday.

Technicians responsible for running the hospital equipment were detained, the health ministry in Gaza said in a statement.

The military released footage from inside the hospital showing three duffle bags allegedly found hidden around an MRI lab – each containing an assault riffle, grenades and Hamas uniforms.

The unverified video also showed a closet containing a number of assault rifles without ammunition clips, the military claimed.

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However, Israel has yet to produce any evidence of the central Hamas command centre that it claims is concealed under the complex.

After encircling the hospital for days, Israel is now under pressure to prove Hamas has used patients, staff and civilians sheltering there to provide cover for fighters.

The allegation – which the US says it has intelligence to support – is part of Israel’s broader claim that Hamas is using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

Hamas and officials at the Hamas-run health ministry deny fighters operate in the hospital, which employs around 1,500 people and has more than 500 beds – with Palestinians and human rights groups accusing Israel of recklessly endangering civilians.

Troops ransacked the basement and other buildings, before questioning and scanning the faces of patients, staff and people sheltering in al Shifa during the raid, according to Munir al Boursh, a senior official with Gaza’s health ministry inside the hospital.

The Israeli military said soldiers were accompanied by medical teams bringing incubators and other supplies to the hospital – where the health ministry says 40 patients including three babies have died since al Shifa’s emergency generator ran out of fuel on Saturday.

Another 36 babies were at risk of death, the ministry said.

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More than 11,200 Palestinians have been killed during the conflict, two thirds of whom are women and children, according to Gaza’s health authorities.

Another 2,700 have been reported missing, with most believed to be buried under rubble.

A Russian artist and musician who swapped price tags in a St Petersburg supermarket with anti-war messages criticising Russia’s actions in Ukraine has been sentenced to seven years in a penal colony.

Sasha Skochilenko, 33, was arrested and jailed in April last year after the incident at the branch of supermarket chain Perekrestok.

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She was sentenced on Thursday for supposedly discrediting Russia‘s armed forces.

Given the 19 months she has already spent in pre-trial detention, the sentence will be reduced by more than two years.

The prosecution claimed she was acting out of political hatred.

However, Skochilenko says she was neither a political activist nor an extremist, but was acting from pacifist conviction.

She told the judge in her final statement that the case was “bizarre and ludicrous”, and that even employees at her detention centre were astonished at the charges.

She also pointed out that the prosecution of her case and the substantial media coverage it had received had spread the message far wider than might otherwise have been achieved by placing five pieces of paper in a supermarket.

“Had I not been arrested,” she told the court, “it would have been known only to one granny, a cashier and a security guard at the Perekrestok store.

“So why aren’t my investigators and prosecutors facing charges under Article 207.3 (of the Russian Criminal Code, which penalises public dissemination of deliberate false information about the use of Russian Armed Forces), only me?”

Dressed in a tie-dye T-shirt with a huge red heart on the front, Skochilenko made heart signs from inside the glass cage as her supporters chanted “disgrace” and “freedom” after the verdict was read out.

She cut a fragile figure surrounded by burly, balaclava-clad police guards, some of whom had ‘Z’ on their helmets, the symbol of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine.

Her supporters are concerned that her prison term could become a death sentence, given her several severe health conditions.

Skochilenko has written in the past about her struggles with mental health including bipolar disorder. She also has a congenital heart defect and is coeliac.

Her lawyers and supporters are concerned she will not be provided with the food or medical support she needs when she is transferred to a prison colony.

Since the Kremlin introduced the legislation last March criminalising any supposed discrediting of the armed forces, nearly 750 people have faced criminal charges, according to the human rights group OVD-info, which documents political persecution.

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Skochilenko’s case is one of the most high profile, alongside prominent political activists like Ilya Yashin, who received an eight-and-a-half-year term last December under similar charges.

The artist was originally reported to the police by one of the supermarket’s customers.

According to local St Petersburg media outlet, Bumaga, which managed to track that customer down, they themselves were surprised at the verdict, telling journalists “for bits of paper, it should of course have been less”.

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Residents of Khan Younis have received leaflets telling them to move farther south, but few safe options exist.

Palestinians in some areas of Khan Younis say they have received evacuation orders from the Israeli military amid fears that Israel could intensify its assault on southern Gaza.

Residents in Khuzaa, Abassan, Bani Suhaila and Al Qarara in eastern Khan Younis, the biggest city in southern Gaza, were showered with thousands of leaflets dropped by Israeli aircraft overnight and early on Thursday, warning them to leave.

The towns, collectively home to more than 100,000 people in peacetime, are now sheltering tens of thousands more who have fled other areas after Israel ordered residents of northern Gaza to evacuate to the south.

“For your safety, you need to evacuate your places of residence immediately and head to known shelters,” the leaflets said. “Anyone near terrorists or their facilities puts their life at risk, and every house used by terrorists will be targeted.”

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the leaflets.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the besieged territory of 2.3 million people have fled south as Israel intensified its ground invasion in northern Gaza.

It was not clear where residents in eastern Khan Younis were expected to flee as Israel continues its bombardment in areas in the south where Palestinians were previously ordered to relocate for their safety.

“We have been absolutely clear that at the current moment, we do not consider any part of Gaza to be safe,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said on Thursday.

As Israeli forces continue their ground assault in the northern part of Gaza, aid organisations have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in the densely packed south as Israel’s bombardment and siege severely restricts supplies of food, water, fuel and electricity.

Turk said the conditions make outbreaks of infectious disease and extreme hunger nearly inevitable.

Many of those who have been displaced by the fighting – about 70 percent of Gaza’s population, according to the UN – worry that they will not be allowed to return home.

Israel has said that it is working to eliminate the armed Palestinian group Hamas, which launched deadly attacks on southern Israel on October 7, which killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 240 captive, according to Israeli authorities,

Israel has responded with an assault on Gaza that has killed at least 11,470 people, more than one third of them children, according to Palestinian authorities.

The dropping of the leaflets on Khan Younis came as Israeli forces raided the al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza.

The situation at the hospital has raised alarm around the world with hundreds of patients and thousands of displaced civilians trapped inside without fuel, oxygen or basic supplies.

Medics said dozens of patients had died in recent says as a result of Israel’s siege, including three newborns in incubators that lost power.

Israel has said the hospital sits atop a large Hamas command centre, but it has yet to share evidence to validate its assertion after conducting raids inside the hospital that were met with alarm from medical organisations and political leaders.

On Thursday, the human rights group Human Rights Watch said Israel has yet to provide sufficient evidence to justify revoking the hospital’s protected status under the international laws of war.

“Hospitals only lose those protections if it can be shown that harmful acts have been carried out from the premises,” Human Rights Watch UN Director Louis Charbonneau told the Reuters news agency.

“The Israeli government hasn’t provided any evidence of that.”