Government in breach of UN Rules over Dale Farm Eviction
The UK is in continuing breach of international human rights law a meeting at Essex University on the aftermath of the brutal police-led assault on Dale Farm was told last week. Five UN agencies raised their concern and opposition to the unprecedented use of force employed to level fifty homes and expel 80 families from their own land on the Dale Farm estate on 19 October last year.
Students and graduates heard that a police report confirmed that seven riot police were armed with and, in most cases, used Taser weapons on defenders in the first stages of the assault. More than 45 arrests were subsequently made. However, two dozen cases have been dropped and a district judge has advised Basildon Borough Council against pursuing private prosecutions, on the grounds that a further waste of public money is unjustified. The clearance operation and legal action has so far cost in excess of £8 million.
Half those moved from the upper portion of the housing estate have lived for six months on a private access road. Others have taken refuge on some 40 legal plots. A lack of proper sanitation and toxidity released from cess-tanks left broken by contractors is believed to have contributed to the several hundred instances of illness among children and adults, confirmed by a Red Cross report.
Complaints to the Environmental Agency have prompted an ongoing investigation into claims that Basildon, prior to its purchase by the present owners, used Dale Farm as a landfil site. If substantiated, the council could be compelled to restore the land to its pre-landfill condition.
“Dale Farm represents a serious breach of human rights law,” Leticia Osorio, former director of Essex University Human Rights Clinic, stated. “The rules say those evicted should be provided immediate relief and restitution. This has not happened.”
But she conceded that while the UK is simply ignoring its obligations under international conventions, it was through domestic courts and the planning process that
relief might have to be found. Shamefully, families were suffering while established authority did not more than delay.
A team at the University is working to complete an updated report for the UN Commission on Human Rights, UN Habit and other bodies and agencies, including
EU instituitions responsible for Roma and Traveller integration programmes.
Dale Farm residents, suppported by the Traveller Solidarity Network, plan to mark the anniversary of the eviction with protest action. They have always maintained that policy towards the community is based on racial prejudice and a determination to carry out ethnic-cleansing behind a smokescreen of planning law and alleged “even-handed fair play.”
The UN declared that forced evictions are unnecessary and cruel.All member states are urged to avoid them both at local and national level.The victims should be offered suitable accomodation and they should be compensated for the trauma of losing their homes.
In Essex they are not treated fairly and have been hounded by the athorities with numerous threats of further actions,including litigation.The police action was designed to provide a swift alternative to the removal plot by plot suggested by a judge who also forbade the Bailiffs from damaging certain walls,fences and structures which had legitimacy.Since the police did the breaking and entering and in fact performed the eviction they seemed to feel no compunction to follow the court’s instructions and the Bailiffs trotted in behind them.
The object then was to make the site uninhabitable.Obviously by the effect of the court order no dwellings are permitted thereon but the land still belongs to the residents.In fairness the council should now clean up the mess it had created and the owners allowed to use it for other purposes: a commemorative garden? an allotment ? a sculpture park ? a children’s recreation ground ?