... is again in the meanwhile available in three languages.
Best greetings,
hagen
English PDF here and below as text:
http://kompass.antira.info/files/2015/03/37kompass_newsletter_Mar15_eng.pdf
French PDF:
http://kompass.antira.info/files/2015/03/37kompass_newsletter_Mar15_frz.pdf
German PDF:
http://kompass.antira.info/files/2015/03/37kompass_newsletter_Mrz15.pdf
Kompass – AntiRa – Newsletter No 37 - March 2015
7.3. in Potsdam: No camps for women! Abolish all camps! +++ 18zero3 – take a day off: Noborder goes Blockupy III in Frankfurt +++ Starts 24.3.: World Social Forum +++ 27.3. in Hamburg: Farewell for Sea-Watch-Project +++ Criminalization regarding resistance against “Residenzpflicht” in Schwäbisch Gmünd +++ Protest against collective deportations in Ba-Wü +++ Network “Europa für Alle” +++ Greece: If elections could change anything? +++ Reviews: transnational action days in Berlin, Tanger; Push Back Frontex against Rösler – Speach +++ Prospect: 10. until 18.4.: Action week against the tightening of asylum laws
Dear friends!
During the days of creating this newsletter: In Dresden there were demonstrating up to 5000 people against racism and for equal rights for everybody the 28.2. (http://www.feb28.net/); “Freie Fahrt am Brenner” is demanded on the first of march by NoBorder activists during an action against racist controls and push backs from Austria to Italy (www.plattform-bleiberecht.at); and on the second of march active refugees gathered in Schwäbisch Gmünd to protest against their criminalization of civil disobediance towards the “Residenzpflicht”.
This information was not known to us in the end of January that is why we could not announce it in the last Kompass. In the short-term or spontaneous there is almost daily actions and mobilizations against the inner and outer borders of the EU. The information for prospect and review in the newsletter we have compiled for you this time is surely incomplete.
Before, two basic notes and the first one comes as a quotation from a recent text of the “Forschungsgesellschaft für Flucht und Migration”:
“Fortress Europe did not arise with crusades or the Reconquista. It is not 500 years old but 20 to 25 years. It serves the maintenance of the social gap at the Mediterranean Sea which became in the last two decades as deep as never before in a thousand of years historical known history of the Mediterranean Sea area. The living conditions between southern Europe and northern Africa are located in proportion 1:13 (…) With respect to the crisis which is experienced by Fortress Europe right now it is time to have a look into the future: One would like to say that Fortress Europe will be only left as a footprint in history – would not be there the thousands of dead people who are produced by the isolation of the EU and the suffering which is created by the process of impoverishment. The let-to-die in the Mediterranean, the change of the sea into a mass grave in our days will be reminded as disgrace of Europe and as a crime to humanity. (look http://ffm-online.org/2015/02/12/die-krise-der-festung-europa/#more-28412).
We consider this method of approach to rip up the historical context in such a manner as important and interesting regarding the intense recent movements and struggles of migration.
The second note: With Blockupy and the organisation “Europa für Alle” we took two points in this newsletter which reflect the social range in which we want to locate the migrant and refugees truggles. Whether in connection between the resistance against crisis and borders or bringing together the struggles against racist and exploitative conditions of the EU – internal (Working-) Migration, both complexes stand for the necessary effort of the social expansion from anti-racist initiatives.
Your Kompass – Team
Events in March 2015
Saturday, 7th March 2015, 14°° Potsdam Central Station
Renewed call of „No Lager for Women! Abolish all Lagers!”
Demonstration and protest action in front of the Landtag (regional parliament) building
As we celebrate the International women’s day 2015 let us look closely on how the state of Brandenburg government as well as the Germany Federal government is treating us: For the last couple of years we have been asking them again and again to give at least women and children the opportunity to move out from the lagers. nevertheless, what we are seeing is money being allocated to local authorities to upgrade existing isolated lagers and more lagers being added to the already existing ones. (...)
Find the whole call and other downloads in different languages on the website of Women in Exile: http://women-in-exile.net/2015/02/11/renewed-call-of-no-lager-for-women-abolish-all-lagers/
On 18 March in Frankfurt/Main
Blockupy: Our time has come to act!
More than 500 activist from Italy announced their coming, a chartered train is traveling from Berlin: The Europe and Germany wide mobilization is in full swing, several thousand people from different political spectra want to demonstrate against the crisis and austerity policies and block the entry to the ECB-tower on the occasion of its inauguration. The aggravated situation in Greece – the blackmailing politics of the Troika against the new left government – gives the protest a new political dimension.
Different calls and mobilization material, film clips and much more can be found on http://blockupy.org
On this subject an anti-racist call have been publishes now, here the following extract: “[...] Symbolic protest and everyday resistance attack the refugee and migrations policies on all levels, never before the outer and inner borders of the EU have been as contested as now. Frontex and thousands of death at sea, deportations on the basis of the Dublin Regulation, controls and detentions – on the daily basis or à la “Mos Mairoum” - as well as the detention in deportation prisons are exemplary for a deadly, inhuman EU-border-regime, however everywhere confronted by the strengthened self-organized struggles for the right of movement. [...]” Find the whole call (in German) here: http://rhein-main.antira.info/2015/02/17/noborder-goes-blockupy/#more-263
Moreover on 19 March a working meeting will take place in Frankfurt, entitled “On the way to a social and transnational strike?”. One of the workshops will deal with migrant work.
Contact: kmii-hanau@antira.info
From 24 March 2015 on in Tunis
World Social Forum in Tunis, Before caravans of refugees and migrants from Paris and Bamako to Tunis...
http://openfsm.net/projects/fsm2015wsf-prepint/project-home
Anti-racist Networks have announced i.a. workshops i.a. On the WatchTheMed-Alarmphone and Frontex
On 27 March in Hamburg: start of the Sea Watch Project
"The situation is clear. Worldwide 46,000,000 people are on the run. Most of them have no chance of survival, or living a dignified life in their country of origin. The way to Central Europe by land is closed off by border security systems costing billions. Hundreds of thousands of people try to reach the safe haven of an EU State by crossing the Mediterranean in extremely unsafe boats. Each year thousands of people - women, men and numerous children - lose their lives in this attempt, often drowning with the safe shore in sight..."
These are the opening words of the presentation of a private initiative, which plans to be permanently present as of May 2015 with a boat in the central Mediterranean between Libya and Lampedusa, in order to intervene against the deaths at sea. The boat is not equipped for rescue operations, but can provide emergency relief and above all create publicity when rescue is delayed or even denied. Close cooperation with the WatchTheMed Alarm Phone is planned. More information concerning this ambitious project, that is to start on 27 March in Hamburg with a public action about the transfer to the Mediterranean, is to be found on the trilingual website: http://sea-watch.org/
Since the end of February in Schwäbisch Gmünd
Refugee activists are in a position of civil disobedience against imprisonment: “Residenzpflicht still means Apartheid" Call for immediate action: solidarity with Leke Aremu, Farook Khan,
Raphael Paul and Frankline Ndam. They have been sentenced to ‘commitment for failure to comply with a judicial order’, in order to blackmail them into paying fines for refusal of the Residenzpflicht. They resist and call for solidarity. Solidarity with the Refugee Resistance!
Refugees Initiative Schwäbisch Gmünd
https://www.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative
http://thevoiceforum.org/node/3866
Protests against collective deportations in Baden-Württemberg
On 20 January 2015 a total of 140 people (56 from Baden-Württemberg) were deported to Serbia and Macedonia from the airport Karlsruhe Baden-Baden. A second collective deportation took place on 24 February. Locally protest actions were held and on the homepage of the ‘Freiburger Forum aktiv gegen Ausgrenzung’ a ‘Live Ticker’ was installed to provide breaking news about the actions against the collective deportations.
http://www.freiburger-forum.net/
New Network "Europe for all"
At the informal meeting ‘Europe for all! Struggles against racist and exploitative relationships of the EU-internal (Labour) Migration’ in Munich (19 to 21 September 2014) people who are active in antiracist groups, housing struggles, unemployment initiatives, labour struggles, critical knowledge production (from Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Göttingen and Munich) exchanged experiences, held discussions and made plans. Concerning this meeting an online documentation was created, with a short report and podcasts of most of the inputs and discussions:
See: http://europafueralle.net/
Greece – if elections could change anything?
In the last newsletter we summarized first estimations about what could be changed in the migration policy with the new government. Although High Representatives of Syriza confirmed after the election that they want to close internment camps and change fundamentally the policy of closure at the national borders and push backs. Until now less imprisoned refugees have been released, as an excuse they refer to the lack of alternative accommodation facilities. The Greek coast guard, up to now infamous because of brutally push-backs, start to show serious rescue willingness if boat people call the emergency. But it's too early to take stock. At least it will depend on the pressure from the street if taken gestures remain or real changes.
Review to February
Transnational action days in Berlin and Tanger around the 6th of February
Around 150 refugee activists and supporters from different countries of the EU joined a memorial demonstration on the 6th of February for the murdered refugees and migrants at the border fence of Ceuta one year ago. The weekend after there was a conference for exchange and planning further activities, look here: https://cispmberlin.wordpress.com/
In the same days also in Tanger an impressing memorial action with survivors of 6 February 2014 has been organized.
Only a few days later a new escalation of raids by Moroccan police in the forests of Nador/Melilla occured: mass arrests, a lot of injured persons, total destruction of the forest camp and the attempt to deport the affected persons into their countries of origin. Detailed reports, documentation and movies on the website of noborder Marocco: https://beatingborders.wordpress.com/
Push Back Frontex in Berlin on 25 February
On 25 February in front of BCC at Alexanderplatz around 60 persons showed protest against the policy of Frontex and their credo to let people die on the sea, which Frontex is doing in the name of the EU. The reason for this protest was a speech by Klaus Rösler, director of the department 'Operations Division' of Frontex, at the international police congress in Berlin. The protest rally was simultaneously the start of the campaign 'Push Back Frontex', for which the network Afrique-Europe-Interact, Borderline Europe, Welcome to Europe and FFM Berlin and many make a call out.
Some pictures:
http://www.umbruch-bildarchiv.de/bildarchiv/ereignis/250215frontex.html
Appeal and more campaign material here:
http://afrique-europe-interact.net/
Preview of April 2015
Against the tightening of the asylum laws and their lecture and consulting in the German Parliament (Bundestag) and Federal Council (Bundesrat) there is a current appeal, which calls up for a week of action between 10 and 18 April, look:
http://stopasyllaw.blogsport.eu/files/2015/02/asylgesetz31.pdf
More infos also here: http://migrationsgesetze.info/
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