Paris: occupation of FRAM (french chartered flights)

press release by the groups involved in the occupation

20.Mar.03 - The travel agency called FRAM is the main commercial user (more than 80%) of the company EURALAIR-HORIZONS, airline company which provided the Minister of the Interior (Home Office) the deportation charter (termed "grouped flight") for the 54 nationals from Senegal and Ivory Coast accompanied by 89 French policemen and 4 German officials, on Monday 3 March 2003 departing from Roissy.
The European Convention of Human Rights states (art.4): "Collective deportations of foreigners are prohibited" They are because prohibited because they recall other infamous acts of deportation, the term deportation being the official name of expulsions in air transportation language.

And what a trip! People handcuffed to their seats, insulted and threatened throughout their journey, submitted to anesthetic injections….

The FRAM CEOs must explain why, under these conditions, they signed the "Travel Charter", under the care of the Ministry of Tourism, (with the "Tourism and Ethics" label!). In this "Charter", one can read that this travel agency pledges to only charter "air transport companies respecting European and international conventions". Is this the case for EURALAIR-HORIZONS, owner of the plane? And why isn’t FRAM obliged to comply with the advertised conventions or enforce compliance with it’s main commercial partner?

Sarkozy hasn’t hidden his intentions to generalize the use of chartered flights. He explains this not only as a solution for all the foreigners blocked in the airport waiting zones, but also for all those without valid papers. If his plans succeed to have the term of detention for foreigners go from 12 days to 30 days, this will be a way of building a huge reservoir of collective deportations. This is the creation of a new deportation machine with its stock (deportable foreigners) and its flow (the transport planes).

This afternoon 100 sans-papiers (undocumented) and support groups, with Albert Jacquard and Bishop Jacques Gaillot, have occupied the offices of FRAM in Paris.

This evening, FRAM’s CEO (the headquarters are in Toulouse) has agreed, in exchange of our peaceful evacuation of the Paris offices, to meet a delegation of 7, including sans-papiers, trade union and support group delegates, tomorrow at 4 pm.

We demand that FRAM applies the ethical charter it has signed by ending all commercial partnership with air transport companies (starting with EURALAIR-HORIZONS) collaborating with this policy of mass deportation.