Some 4,000 undocumented workers ("sans papiers") are striking in the Parisian region. They come from sub-Saharan Africa but lack the official papers that entitle them to the benefits that French workers enjoy.
Telling the story of a band of child soldiers, this French made drama looks like a documentary. It throws the viewer into the horror of a civil war in Africa.
There’s been a punk sensibility to all of Rachid Taha’s music. I asked him where that attitude comes from. "I think it’s the same for all desperate people," he told me. "The first punks were people like Oscar Wilde, John Lennon or Ian Dury. What they had in common was their openness to other influences."
The French Resistance is often presented as a national liberation struggle. Both Communists and the followers of right wing General de Gaulle saw it as a nationalist movement against German occupation. It is only relatively recently that historians have written about the non-French fighters.
On the morning of 22 September French riot police razed a makeshift camp in Calais where mostly Afghan refugees were living as they waited to cross over to Britain.
The victims of the West’s wars have become beggars on our doorstep. Desperate people trying to escape persecution on the other side of the globe saw their temporary shelters destroyed by the CRS French riot police last week.
