+++ New Newspaper from Afrique-Europe-Interact +++ December 18th in Calais and Tunis +++ Chronology of manifold protests in November and December +++ View on 2014 +++ Campaign against the intensification of asylum laws +++ Refugee hunger strikes in Greece +++ Alarm Phone: first progress report +++ Outlook on 2015: 7.1. in Dessau, 6.2. in Berlin, 18.3. in Frankfurt, End of March to WSF in Tunis … +++

Dear Friends!

If our Newsletter had appeared at the beginning of the month, as usual, we would only just have been able to announce the many actions of these last days, but not been able to mobilize them. That is why we decided forthwith and very exceptionally to appear a few days later and to present a broader retrospective of the last weeks and the past months. The end of the year is an obvious occasion for taking stock and for assessment, also in order to sketch the challenges and possible perspectives for 2015. Accordingly our introduction is more elaborate this time, all the more because we wish to add a few lines on our own behalf.

Yet, let us start at the beginning:
*  Hardly a day passes without protest and resistance against the prevailing border regime. The last weeks have again been characterized by an awesome chain of antiracist activities that are often followed by headlines in the mass media. The scope reaches from the artist action of the first fall of a European wall in Berlin to the hunger strike of the Non-Citizens in Munich, from the demonstration against the Conference of Ministers of the Interior in Cologne to the persevering protest camp of the Sudanese refugees in Hannover, from the last-minute start of the campaign against the sharpening up of asylum laws to the successful church asylum of Lampedusa in Hanau. Symbolic protest and everyday resistance attack the prevailing refugee and migration policies at different levels and not only in Germany. We added an international meeting of sans papiers and migrants in Rome, hunger strikes in Greece and an interim report of the transnational project of the alarm phones as examples in the long list of brief messages and links below.

*  It was an eventful and moving year. The large number of activities in November and December reflect what has characterized the entire year 2014: the internal and external borders of the EU are more controversial than ever, the social and political struggles of the migration movements have intensified enormously. The balance is nevertheless contradictory, the overall picture is more than complex. On the one hand far more refugees and migrants than in previous years managed to get to Europe, in defiance of all the Frontex-coordinated armament. At least in Germany, the processes of self- organisation of the refugees have continued to develop in many cities and the support has grown, from radical activists to circles of civil supporters. There are noticeable successes: countless Dublin deportations were stopped by court decisions, church asylums, blockades and protests or at the last minute in the airplane. And maybe the most unambiguous proof: no more than around 30 asylum seekers were kept in deportation detention in all of Germany by mid-November. In previous years there were thousands of them, never before their numbers were so low and the weapon of determent and extortion detainment as inadequate as today. The increasingly critical public opinion has contributed to this; since October 2013 the prevailing refugee policy is again and again fundamentally questioned even in the mass media. Most recent examples: even the criminalisation of the support to refugees was criticized in a special Panorama report and „Die Anstalt“ broke, after a brilliant presentation of lethal Frontex screening, at the end of the programme with the cabaret format and allowed a choir of Syrian refugees to sing.
On the other hand: The brutal state power at the external borders, particularly in the Aegean and at the fences of Ceuta and Melilla, has in no way been curbed, the number of deceased in the central Mediterranean was never before as high. In Germany the powers that be make mischief by increasing the number of ‘secure countries of origin’ with the Balkan states and by the state discourse of poverty migration, the division between justified ‘good’ and unjustified ‘bad’ refugees. And the recent cabinet decision of the big coalition intends to increase deportation detention and to create a strict ban on re-entrance in order to re-increase determent. The growing mobilisation of the right should be added to this. The election successes of the AfD stand for the spreading Sarrazynismus, and with Hogesa (‘Hooligans against Salafists’) and Pegida (“Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident’) the mob is taking to the streets again.

For months the polarisation of society can be felt more and more clearly: whereas far more people seek to change their abstract sympathy into concrete support, we see on the right the formation of a mixture of xenophobia and the hate against what is different. This polarisation appears as a challenge as well as a chance, because the necessary forcing back of the racist Monday demonstrations would remain reactive and defensive, if there would not be a simultaneous cornering and – if not stopping at least mitigating – of the aforementioned planned repressive set of laws in the forthcoming weeks. The critical public opinion can be counted on, the potential strength of the movement as well. Yet the activist spectrum of antiracist groups seems until now unable to achieve concerted coordination or even focussing. Efforts to that extent, be it at ‘Noborder last forever’ in Frankfurt in February, during the march to Brussels in June, or on the occasion of the 20th birthday of The Voice in Jena in October, have not been fruitful (yet). How the diversity is to be translated into more effective enforcement strategies thus remains one of the central challenges for 2015. The second challenge lies in the association with and broadening into further social and societal issues. Here too there are good initiatives. Whether from afrique-europe-interact as to the question of the looting of land, or in current solidarity demonstrations concerning Rojava, or concerning the crisis, precarity jobs and social strike with Blockupy – there are numerous lines of communication that ought to be mutually strengthened, in order to further develop an overall emancipatory perspective in and with the struggles for freedom of movement and equal rights.

*  Finally a few lines on our own behalf: soon our Newsletter has been appearing for three years, always at the start of the month, and since the last couple of editions also in English and French. The translations mostly arrive a few days later, but we consider the appearance in three languages a requirement for refugees and migrants to get more involved with this exchange and overview project. Though the question of a broader involvement has to be put forward more fundamentally. We do receive some approval and many consider the idea of a regular umbrella Newsletter good and important. But until now we, as production team, have remained a small circle and we mostly have had to check up on the reports and announcements. Instead, we do need active people from all spectrums, who will send us texts and references by themselves, who participate in the translations or the layout. It would be the best present to our third birthday in March, if we could find a few more people who would continually support the Kompass Newsletter Project.

All the best,
the Kompass Team
Kompass-Newsletter Nr. 34 (english, pdf)