A year since the death of Ismael

It has been one year since Ismael, a young Ethiopian, died in Calais and still there is not a single answer for his friends or family about what happened. Found dead at the bottom of a bridge in the Centre of Calais in the very early morning three days before Christmas last year, the police claim – and quickly closed the case – as suicide. No-one who knew him believes he jumped to his death voluntarily. (Calais : death of Ismael http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/12/490534.html?c=on).

On Christmas day last year friends gathered around the blood stained street where he died. And again this year, friends met to pay their respects.

In this last year of 2012, we have have lost two more friends. Nourreddin from Darfur, in very similar suspicious circumstances, was found dead in a river in Calais in the early hours one morning last June. The police immediately refused again a post-mortem, any investigation, and closed the case within days as suicide, despite legal challenges from the family and ongoing protests.  No-one who knew Noureddin believes he killed himself. (Another friend killed in Calais : http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2012/07/497790.html ; https://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/?s=noureddin)

And another good friend, Zenebe, was killed in a fight in April 2012. For nothing.

There can never be justice or redress for these deaths. We may not have the truth about what happened, but we know these borders kill.

These three people were known well to people staying a long time in Calais – but there are of course countless more who are constantly dying at the hands of racist immigration controls and the situations they create; in Calais and and across all border regimes and fortresses that violently protect a privileged minority, at the expense of the rest.

These people will never be forgotten. And in defiance people will always resist and continue the daily fight for a better situation.

Mafi mushtahil tetta shems – “nothing is impossible under the sun”.