It was approaching 7pm and some among the crowd at the entrance to “the Jungle” in Calais were growing tired of the spectacle.
For three hours riot police had fired tear gas down onto them from a motorway bridge to keep them inside Europe’s most notorious migrant camp on the north coast of France. Stones whizzed back in response.
For once, the residents of what Doctors Without Borders calls this “shameful ... squalid, state-sanctioned shanty town” were grateful for the fierce wind whipping in from the English Channel.
Time to go to the theater.
A small group of Afghans peels off to walk arm-in-arm back through the second-hand clothes market at the crossroads between “Afghanistan” and the Sudanese section, past “Eritrea,” with its large plywood Orthodox church, to the big white domed tent rising from the mud of this former rubbish dump.
Their beacon in the darkness is the Good Chance Theatre, set up in September by two young British playwrights known as “Joe and Joe.”
There is some kind of performance every night, and Wednesday’s was a two-hour variety show. A cheeky version of Clandestino, Manu Chao’s song about illegal immigrants in the US — “Africano clandestino, Afghani clandestino, Pakistani clandestino” — was met with cheers and howls of laughter.
Every night the migrants wait for the traffic to slow as it backs up from the ferry terminal before trying to clamber into moving trucks.
A young Kurdish man nurses a wound on his hand where he claims a lorry driver slashed him with a knife as he clung onto his cab earlier in the day.
“He was afraid. I was afraid, he wanted to kill me,” he said.
Others walk the 15km to try their luck at the heavily guarded entrance to the Channel Tunnel.
After two hours of non-stop singing, the night’s show ends with a frenzied Pashtun drummer who gets most of the 200 or so people inside up dancing.
Baraa, a 31-year-old English teacher from the Syrian city of Hama, has spent the day photographing the camp and the clashes with police to make “postcards” of life at the site.
“I will try to get to England tonight,” he said. “You cannot hold back humanity with a fence.”
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
EUROPEAN FUTURE? Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama says only he could secure EU membership, but challenges remain in dealing with corruption and a brain drain Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama seeks to win an unprecedented fourth term, pledging to finally take the country into the EU and turn it into a hot tourist destination with some help from the Trump family. The artist-turned-politician has been pitching Albania as a trendy coastal destination, which has helped to drive up tourism arrivals to a record 11 million last year. US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also joined in the rush, pledging to invest US$1.4 billion to turn a largely deserted island into a luxurious getaway. Rama is expected to win another term after yesterday’s vote. The vote would
CANCER: Jose Mujica earned the moniker ‘world’s poorest president’ for giving away much of his salary and living a simple life on his farm, with his wife and dog Tributes poured in on Tuesday from across Latin America following the death of former Uruguayan president Jose “Pepe” Mujica, an ex-guerrilla fighter revered by the left for his humility and progressive politics. He was 89. Mujica, who spent a dozen years behind bars for revolutionary activity, lost his battle against cancer after announcing in January that the disease had spread and he would stop treatment. “With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our comrade Pepe Mujica. President, activist, guide and leader. We will miss you greatly, old friend,” Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi wrote on X. “Pepe, eternal,” a cyclist shouted out minutes later,
Myanmar’s junta chief met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the first time since seizing power, state media reported yesterday, the highest-level meeting with a key ally for the internationally sanctioned military leader. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing led a military coup in 2021, overthrowing Myanmar’s brief experiment with democracy and plunging the nation into civil war. In the four years since, his armed forces have battled dozens of ethnic armed groups and rebel militias — some with close links to China — opposed to its rule. The conflict has seen Min Aung Hlaing draw condemnation from rights groups and pursued by the
RSS