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Eighteen members of the Sans-Papiers Committee (CSP 59) at Lille in northern France have been on indefinite hunger strike since 17 November 17, 1997. [Sans-papiers means without immigration papers.] They are holding out with courage and determination for the 'regularisation' of their right to stay in France.
This hunger strike is the fourth since CSP 59 and was started after a wait of several months, during which some sans-papiers received their ninth appointment for an interview with the authorities, without any clear indication of the government's decision on their fate.
In this way, after a series intimidations and prevarications against a background of repression, the local immigration authorities, who are already renowned for their contempt for the cause of the paperless immigrants mobilised by the Sans-Papiers, are now playing with the lives of the hunger strikers and attempting to force them into capitulation by attrition and divisive manoeuvres.
Do we really have to wait for a person to die before we find a solution to the legitimate demand for the global regularisation of the hunger strikers and their comrades?
Already, three hunger strikers have had to be hospitalised as an emergency measure because they were vomiting blood. According to the association of fourteen local doctors set up to monitor the hunger strike, the situation is becoming 'genuinely perilous' for all the others.
The National Coordination of Sans-Papiers in Struggle vigorously denounces the cynicism and obstinacy of the local immigration authority (Prefecture du Nord) which is deliberately allowing the situation to deteriorate in contempt for the life of paperless foreigners whose only crime, in most cases, is to be unmarried (because married immigrants have a much higher chance of obtaining a legal residence permit). The Coordination also denounces the inconsistencies and dead-ends of the Circular of June 24th 1997 and of the proposed laws contained in the Chevenement and Guigou Bills, which represent a continuity of suspicion, criminalisation and discrimination, while maintaining the Sans-Papiers in particular, and all foreigners in general, in a situation of social and economic precariousness and exclusion.
This state of affairs is unacceptable.
It is therefore urgent to send letters and faxes of protest to the Interior Minister/Home Secretary:
Monsieur le Ministre de l'Interieur Place Beauveau, 75008 PARIS France Fax: (+33) 1 43 59 89 50
fax a copy of your message to the hunger strikers :
(++33) 3 20 86 15 56
For further information, please contact: Coordination Nationale de Sans-Papiers 22 rue Pajol 75018 PARIS Tel/Fax: (+33) 1 46 07 16 19
Bank a/c: CMDP No. 80187841