OVER the last years, drones have been used more and more often to monitor demonstrations deemed “potentially violent” by the French government. 

Recently, the so-called fight against “illegal immigration” has been the reasoning behind an increase in the French state’s use of drones.

In December 2023, the prefects of two departments (in France a regional territorial unit), Hautes-Alpes, which borders Italy, and Manche, along the Channel in Normandy, authorised the use of drones for a period of three months.

The reason they give is the same: to prevent irregular border crossings by people on the move, whose numbers are considered by the French government to be ever-increasing.

Two months earlier, in September 2023, the prefect of the Somme, Pas-De-Calais and Nord areas, also bordering the Channel and considered to be prime areas for small boat departures, issued an “arrete” (decree) of unprecedented proportions: no fewer than 76 airborne cameras monitor almost 150km of coastline.
 
As associations working to support people on the move throughout France, we cannot stress enough how alarmed we are at this trend, which threatens the freedom of all.

The Interior Security Code supposedly limits the use of such technology to a strict principle of proportionality. Yet, with such vast areas subject to surveillance under these decrees, the drones will film a large number of people in public spaces, who have not consented to those surveillance practices. It should also be noted that no information is given to the public on how the data collected will be processed, or on the companies supplying these technologies to the public authorities.

But even more importantly, we regret the Interior Ministry’s decision to make the routes to and from France even more inaccessible to people on the move.

It is quite ironic that the prefects of the various departments along the northern coast explain that they are setting up these surveillance resources to fight smuggling networks and limit the risks for people attempting to cross the Channel by boat, while the tragic realities of the situation at the border demonstrate that such methods are potentially contributing to more risky passages.

It must be emphasised that increased border surveillance and securitisation, at these French borders and across Europe, is contributing to the increase in deaths in border areas, by making these spaces inhospitable and pushing people to take even more dangerous alternative routes.

We also reject the material support given to the violent methods of French authorities along the borders, that have become the cornerstone of France’s migration policy, and the advent of a society built around globalised surveillance in the absence of any transparency whatsoever.

The joint statement between the French and British governments announced on March 10 2023 the allocation of a sum of £476 million to the French authorities in order “to recruit 500 additional agents in France and set up new infrastructure and surveillance (including more drones, helicopters and planes).”

There can be little doubt that the use of drones described above is the direct result of this funding, sealing the commitment of the two neighbouring powers to make the Channel and North Sea coastline an impregnable fortress. As has always been the case since the turn of the 1990s, this political choice will unfortunately bring its share of human tragedy.

We stand in solidarity with people on the move in France and elsewhere, and call for all European states to cease any kind of measures that impedes freedom of movement and endangers people’s lives.

Signatories:

Vents Contraires 
Cercle de SIlence Hazebrouck 
MdM Nord Littoral 
MdM Caen 
Alternatiba Caen 
UNION PIRATE CAEN 
Human Rights Observers 
MRAP-Dunkerque 
Refugee Women’s Centre 
L’Auberge des Migrants 
Utopia 56 
Tous Migrants 
Terre d’errance Norrent-Fontes