„…We experience each and every day how much suffering and death the prevailing exclusion politics produce, how many wounds are opened up by the increasingly higher walls. We also know that the conditions as well as the forms of struggle will remain dissimilar. Yet, the more important it seems to us to retrace again and again the connecting lines and to reinforce the shared struggles for freedom of movement and for equal rights. From local to transnational, from the external borders to the inner cities, in everyday life and during campaigns: a tenacity and a continuity of structures and mobilizations have developed, which will certainly make new dynamics possible. As said before, times of struggle.“
From the Kompass AntiRa Newsletter for March/April 2017 with a lot of transnational information - find the full text attached and a layouted version with impressive pictures in the following link:
The german version:
The French version will follow next days…
Best regards,
hagen
Kompass – AntiRa – Newsletter no 57, March 2017
Times of Struggle: (No) Libya Deal, Ceuta and Barcelona, Migrant Strikes, Afghanistan Deportations +++ 8.3.: Global Women Strike +++ 18.3. from Athens to Hamburg, Frankfurt and Berlin: Transnational Action Day against Border and Crisis Regime +++ 25./26.3. in Berlin: Get-Together 2017 +++ 30.3. - 2.4. in Frankfurt: 3. Forum „Right to the City“ … Workshop about City Solidarity +++ 8./9.4.: Preparatory Conference against G20 +++ 14.-17. April: Action Days at French-Italian border +++ 22.4.: Happy Birthday to City Plaza Athens +++ Central Mediterranean: Against the Criminalisation Attempts of Frontex +++ Update Röszke 11 +++ First Newsletter Transnational Social Strike & Conflict Corner +++ New Publications: ´Grenzregime III` and ´Globale Bewegungsfreiheit` +++ Reviews: Protest in front of Malian Embassy in Berlin, Expulsion is Torture… +++ Previews: 17.-21. May 2017 in Cologne: NSU Tribunal; 19.-25. June 2017 Documenta Kassel: 20 Years No-one is Illegal; October 2017 in Leipzig: Conference on Migration, Development, Ecological Crisis
Dear Friends,
Let’s start with a short chronology of the last four weeks, which again show through what times of struggle we are living:
Spotlight 1: Central Mediterranean. On 3.2. the heads of state and government of the EU met on Malta and one of the major issues was the attempt to inflate the Libyan phantom government into being a partner in the warding off of refugees. On the same day 1,300 people entered boats on the Libyan coast, followed by 600 people on 4.2. and 900 more on 5.2. Thus the number of arrivals in Italy has again increased in comparison with the same period in the record year 2016. A few days later several heads of government acknowledged that a ‘Libya Deal’ cannot be realized at this moment.
Spotlight 2: in the morning of 17.2. up to 1,000 migrants stormed the fence of the Spanish enclave Ceuta in various places. Approximately 500 of them managed to get across. One day later, 18.2., Barcelona experienced the, to this day, “largest demonstration in Europa for the acceptance of refugees and for open borders. According to police statements 160,000 and according to the organizers approximately 500,000 people flooded the Catalan metropolis on Saturday”. Only two days later, on 20.2., another 300 people scaled the stronghold fence of Ceuta. The shout of triumph ‘boza’ (I did it/ I succeeded) was again resounding in the streets.
Spotlight 3: ‘A day without us !’ With this slogan migrant groups in the UK called out for an action day om 20.2. against the exclusion policy of the Brexit government. In the days before, several cities in the US experienced migrant strikes and demonstrations under the same motto, with tens of thousands taking part in the protests against the racist decrees of the Trump government. The next mobilizations are being prepared for 1.5.
Spotlight 4: while the first German federal states postponed the deportations to Afghanistan for at least three months, the third charter of airline Meridiana started in the meantime for Kabul on 22.2. This time departure was from Munich and instead of the planned 50 persons eventually 18 were deported.
Earlier, on 11.2., twenty-three cities throughout Germany experienced simultaneous protest demonstrations, which in many places were carried by Afghan communities. First calls for a ‘civil asylum for Afghan refugees’ are circulating and also in the media criticism of the deportations into the civil war remains predominant.
On the roads as well as in the cities of arrival, the four spotlights clearly demonstrate the variety and simultaneity of the resistance against the globalized border regime. Yes we have been confronted with racist offensives everywhere. We experience each and every day how much suffering and death the prevailing exclusion politics produce, how many wounds are opened up by the increasingly higher fences. We also know that the conditions as well as the forms of struggle will remain dissimilar. Yet, the more important it seems to us to retrace again and again the connecting lines and to reinforce the shared struggles for freedom of movement and for equal rights. From local to transnational, from the external borders to the inner cities, in everyday life and during campaigns: a tenacity and a continuity of structures and mobilizations have developed, which will certainly make new dynamics possible. As said before, times of struggle.
All the best,
the Kompass Crew
Dates and Information for March and April 2017
Times of struggle …
(No) Libya Deal
“Yesterday the EU Commission dropped the Italian-Maltese plan for a dirty EU Deal with Libya. The plan provided that EU warships would block the Libyan port and the Libyan coast guard would take back to the Libyan mainland all the boat people who were caught. But also in the long term there will be no Libyan coast guard. Instead what we mainly see in the coastal waters are mutually hostile militia’s. Moreover the Libyan criticism of increasing Italian military presence in Libya is on the rise.
Without a Libyan partner the EU does not dare to carry out systematic push back operations in the Central Mediterranean. In the past months another EU plan, which provided that boat people who were caught would be transferred to camps in Tunisia, Egypt or even Algeria or Morocco, has failed as well”. More about this at:
From Ceuta to Barcelona and back
Border fence in Ceuta - 500 times ‘boza’:
This morning 500 migrants managed to enter Ceuta, all together 600 tried to jump the fences. In the German news they talk even about 900 refugees and migrants who stormed the fences at different places at the same time:
Three hundred refugees storm the Spanish exclave
More than 300 refugees stormed the Spanish exclave Ceuta at the border with Morocco in the night of Sunday to Monday 20.2. On the Friday before several hundred refugees had conquered the border fence.
‘No more cop-outs, admission now’ was the motto under which up to 500,000 people demonstrated.
“It may have been the, to this day, largest demonstration in Europe for the ‘acceptance of refugees and for open borders’. Even though the numbers may differ, they remain nevertheless high. According to police statements 160,000 and according to the organizers approximately 500,000 people flooded the Catalan metropolis Barcelona on Saturday. The huge march was organized by the initiative ‘casa nostra, casa vostra’ (our house is your house), which is backed by Catalan youngsters who want to accept refugees. “We want them to feel at home here so they can forget the pain they suffered”, said Meera M. Zaroor, who did flee from Syria to Catalonia herself three years ago, to the crowd…”
Migrant Strikes from UK to US
Afghanistan-Deportations
Overview concerning the action day against deportations on 11.2.2017
Updated assessment, in german:
8.3.: Global Women Strike
„…Throughout Europe and beyond, women are under attack in many ways. Institutional racism and constraints on mobility limit and govern their movements across borders; welfare cuts increase their exploitation both at home and in care and health services. Profits raise, by reducing their wages, increasing precariousness of work and the amount of time they spend providing unpaid care work due to lack of adequate services. Reproductive freedom is limited everywhere and increasingly under attack, so as to push back women into the roles imposed by the sexual division of labor. However, all over the world, women are fighting back against these patriarchal and neoliberal attacks, and have chosen to strike as the way to refuse their oppression and exploitation. …“ More can be found here:
18.3. from Athens to Hamburg, Frankfurt and Berlin: Transnational Action Day against Border- and Crisisregime
Call from Athens and Overview can be found here:
Actions in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin:
Hamburg got space – Let's get 1000 refugees from Greece into our town
Frankfurt: Event and protest inside the airport:
Berlin depotation-free:
Call and Overview at Welcome2Stay: http://welcome2stay.org
25./26.3. in Berlin: Get-together 2017
From the call: “... Together we want to fight the racist rollback and strenghten our visibility in public, Let's overcome the different seperations and get together (…) We invite you to that process of getting together: Cone to the next meeting on 25. and 26. of March 2017 in Berlin to evaluate the action weekend before, plan another action day before the elections in September and talk about the possibility of a big get-together-Conference. Meeting will take place in Mehringhof in Berlin, starts on saturday at 1pm and neds on sunday at 2pm. Who wants to participate, writes an eMail to: carlix@posteo.de
30.3. - 2.4. in Frankfurt: Forum Right to the City!
From the Call: “Right to the City. That means in 2017 to fight against every form of displacement and exclusion – due to the origion of a person or his
Aus dem Aufruf: „Recht auf Stadt. Das heißt im Jahr 2017 sich gegen jede Form von Verdrängung und Ausgrenzung zu stellen - sei es wegen der Herkunft eines Menschen oder seiner socio-economic position. The pressure on cities is raising. Payable living space has become scarce good and massive resistance is a precondition to set limits to another deterioration. Tighter Borderregimes and investor-friendly citiy developments make an emancipatory policy more imprtant than ever. In doing so cities are still and especially nowadays very important reference points for social protests on various levels …. “ The complete call and the programm with a foucs on socialisation of living space and municipalism can be found here:
In this framework there will a workshop on Sunday, 02.04.2017 from 10am to 12am: “From refuge to Sanctuary Cities – In which society do we want to live? The fight against deportations requires more safe spaces and every day structures in which refugees and migrants without papers can survive and live. What initiatives – more than church asylum and temporary hiding – are there to work on the vision “Sanctuary Cities”? What can we learn from a Sanctuary City Movement in USA and Canada? And how do these approaches fit in a macrosocial society? Active people from Open Borders Osnabrück, Freiburger Forum active against exclusion and from kein mensch ist illegal invite for an exchange.”
8./9.4.: Second Action Conference against the G20 in Hamburg, migration aspects ….
Right now in Hamburg and elsewhere there are various meetings for the preparation from actions against the G20 which is planned for 7. and 8. of July in Hamburg.
Most important meeting is the 2nd Action Conference on the 8th and 9th of April in Ballsaal of St. Pauli Stadion. You can find the call here, in different languages:
Also refugees from LampedusaIn Hamburg are involved in the preparations who want to submit their proposals and therefore it will be again a working group concerning migration/flight. More can be found soon on the website.
On Friday, 7.4.2017 there will be a meeting with international participants. This is the short invitation:
Email contact for interested people: international@g20-2017.org
It is already worked on a program for an alternative summit under the title “Summit for global solidarity” on 5./6.7. which will take place on the area of Theater Kampnagel and its surrounding. There will be different workshops and podiums. The migration podium (Title so far: “For an open society: Solidarity against isolation and racism”) is supposed to have its focus in the resistance against the agreements of Germany and EU with, but not only, african countries due to the prevention of migratory flows and taking backs of refugees. Invited are also activists from western africa, Afghanistan, women in exile, Lampedus in Hamburg and maybe activists from Mexico and Roma-Organisations.
The latest newslater from the second Action Conference offers an overview about different activities:
Furthermore the actions against the G20 Summit will be described soon here:
14th-17th April: Action days at the French-Italian border
“On the Easter weekend we call internationally to support migrants and attack the situation of persecution and repression at the French-Italian border. Let´s share our realities and struggles and rally in great numbers!...” The complete call and a preliminary program: https://mars-infos.org/mobilisation-internationale-a-la-2044
22/4: Happy birthday to City Plaza Athens
The Hotel City Plaza, squatted by refugees, Is celebrating its first birthday. It is and will remain the “best hotel in Europe” and requires further donations:
Central Mediterranean – Frontex attempts to criminalize civil rescue vessels
Frontex boss Fabrice Leggeri, in an interview with “Die Welt”, once more attempts to attack the operations of civil rescue ships and to accuse them of complicity with hmuman traffickers:
The reply by MSF/aquote from Aurelie Ponthieu – medecins sans frontiers:
“…Such criticism is shocking given what is implies. Is Leggeri suggesting that we move even further from the area where people are most at risk of drowning just to make smuggling more difficult? Should we just let them die?”
“We do not share Frontex’s mandate, we are not border police or anti-smuggling operatives; we are doctors and nurses and we are at sea purely to save lives. Working as close as possible to the Libyan territorial waters is the only way currently possible to mitigate the high risk of death on the Mediterranean - the less time people spend on an overcrowded boat, the less chance there is that they will die. Rather than continuing with these damaging and unfounded attacks on NGOs, Frontex should ´re-evaluate` their current operation and consider their own role in the horror we see every day on the Mediterranean. Smugglers will always adapt to what is thrown at them and until people have a safe way out of Libya, they will continue to drown.”
On the same topic from Sea Watch:
“Frontex itself is creating the business environment for human trafficking bexause the border protection agency is implementing the EU policy of sealing-off. Frontex is at least partially responsible for the deaths of over 5000 people at Europe´s borders in 2016 alone”, says Axel Graffmanns, CEO at Sea Watch. “That Frontex is trying to blame civil rescue agencies is shabby. A criminalization of those who help where the EU is failing, seems to be the European strategy in the super ecelction year of 2017.”
Update, call for solidarity and crowdfunding for Röszke 11
“Ahmed H. was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in November 2016 on allegations of terrorism. On February 28 there will be another trial against another member of the Röszke 11: Yamen A. was sentenced in the first instance in July and has been in prison since. All other Röszke 11 are not imprisoned any longer and have been able to leave Hungary…”
More on this and further updates here:
Crowdfunding Kampagne:
From the first newsletter of Transnational Social Strike Platform in the middle of February 2017
(…) The Transnational Social Strike (TSS) Platform has taken the decision to start publishing a regular newsletter for two reasons. First, to respond to two upcoming mobilisations for “A day without us” in UK on February 20 and for the Global Women Strike on March 8, and second, in order to continue the consolidation of the transnational structure of TSS. We also want to give anyone a chance to keep up with the new subsection on our website – named Conflict Corner – which has been being updated with weekly texts and articles since January. We intend to publish TSS newsletters roughly every 6 to 8 weeks. (…)
The TSS platform has existed for two years now as a growing open process with more and more groups from various cities and countries. (…) Fundamentally, our platform acts as a transnational political infrastructure, meaning with this at the same time a space of organization to exchange experiences and coordinate, and a site for strategic elaboration of a common political perspective and initiative on the European and transnational scale.
In this frame the idea of the Conflict Corner was developed, as a subsection of our TSS-website and with weekly contributions “dedicated to the communication and circulation of conflicts, practices of organization and strikes in various sectors and regions all over Europe and beyond. We intend to publish texts and reflections to share experiences and to show commonalities among various realities, even though apparently isolated or separated. Each struggle and strike attacking conditions of labor and life that are by now deeply transnational can become part of the strike movement and can contribute to create a common language able to bridge differences and to overcome borders between sectors and countries”.
Weekly Conflict Corner: http://www.transnational-strike.info/category/conflict-corner/
Book suggestion/New publications:
Border regime III – The long summer of migration
„In 2015 those circumstances came to a head which already marked the European border regime before: The cracks of the Dublin and Schengen system, the contradictions between the European walls up attempts, growing nationalism and on the other side the local solidarity practices and the movement of migration. ...”
Content and preface here: http://www.assoziation-a.de/dokumente/Grenzregime%203_Inhalt_Vorwort.pdf
Global Freedom of Movement -
A philosphical plea for open borders:
Book review here:
Reviews:
Protest in front of the Malian embassy in Berlin
On 31.01.2017 over 100 persons came to the Malian embassy in Berlin, despite the icy weather. The protest was invoked by a group of Malian refugees called Djekafo and Afrique-Europe Interact. It was mainly addressed towards the collaborations between the Malian embassy and German deportation authorities. Reports, pictures and the appeal you find here:
Deportations are torture ...
On 07.01.2017 Amadou Ba and Mamdou Drame has been deported from Germany to Mali for 82.000€ - only them two in a Frontex-Mini-Charter (guarded by three police men). Practically it looked like that: they were captivated at the ankles, the knees and the hands – the hands double with handcuffs and cable ties. Additionally the upper arm were fixed at the body with the help of a broad chest belt so their free movement was reduced to practical zero. Report as well as a short Taz article: https://afrique-europe-interact.net/1605-0-Gefesselt-als-Paket-nach-Mali.html
Outlook:
17. - 21. May 2017 - Dissolve NSU complex - Tribunal in Cologne
„We want the whole extent of these machinations get cleared and uncovered, including the involvement of the state and its institutions.”
Appeal, program and more: http://nsu-tribunal.de
19. - 25. June 2017 Documenta Kassel - 20 years no one is illegal;
„Since November 2016 a loose group of people in Kassel is getting in touch to use the coming documenta (10.06. - 17.09.2017) to celebrate the 20th anniversary and to criticize in this context the recent asylum and migration policy as well as to make the real life of illegalized people a subject of public debate. From 19. - 25.06. there will be an action week, which will be filled and designed by already existing working groups (city walk, freedom of movement, manifest) but for which we also invite other groups and activists from all around to participate with own ideas/actions/events. If you are interested just write us an email to noii2017@riseup.net or, if you like, come to our next meeting on 01.04. from 2pm-6pm in Kassel, Villa Locomuna, Kölnische Straße 183.
Oktober 2017 in Leipzig - conference:
Migration – Development – Ecological Crisis
In October 2017 a conference initiated by Afrique-Europe-Interact and climate respectively degrowth activists takes place in Leipzig. The topic are the relations of flight and migration, self-determined development and ecological crisis. The first preparation meeting will be on 4./5.3. (saturday/sunday) in Leipzig. Interested people get in touch with l.lierke@knoe.org or nolagerbremen@yahoo.de. The invitation for the first meeting you can find here: https://afrique-europe-interact.net/1596-0-Erste-Einladung-dt.html