It has been over a week since the Telegram application has deleted the public channel @nobordercalais (“No Border infos – Calais & more”) without any warning. The admins only realised at the end of August that the channel no longer appears and that an admin account has been restricted (without being notified) because of user reports for posting “illegal content”.

Nothing more specific has been communicated to the admins, who suspect the account was deleted as a result of a flooding of reports by fascists. Last month the channel related a call for counter-mobilisation against a planned far-right “attack on the beaches” which never materialised. The Telegram team has been contacted to contest this decision but has not answered yet.

With the indictment of its boss a few weeks ago, Telegram is in the sights of the French authorities who consider it too lax on, among other things, the dissemination of terrorist and child pornography content. The far right is also proliferating on the platform with complete impunity. On the other hand, it appears that only a few reports on a channel reporting on struggles and solidarity are enough for censorship without communication.

“Great vision of freedom of expression, Telegram!”, said an announcement on the Calais migrant solidarity blog. “In any case, fuck (all) social medias. Let’s remain vigilant to ensure that our struggles depend as little as possible on them”, they announced.

In addition to he CMS blog, information on Calais and the France-UK border crisis can also be found on the “Passeuses d’hospitalité” blog and Lille Indymedia—as well as this English-language pdf, published on the Telegram channel just before it was censored.

~ Scott Harris