7 January in Dessau – Oury Jalloh Demonstration +++ 20 January in Munich – Action Day concerning NSU Process – “Keupstrasse is everywhere” +++ 31 January in Hamburg – “Never mind the papers” Demonstration +++ 4 to 8 February in Berlin – Transnational Action Days opposing the War against Migrants +++ Continuation of the Campaign against the sharpening up of Asylum Laws +++ Campaign against the Asylum Seekers’ Social Benefits Act +++ Hard times and right-wing mobilisations in Berlin +++ Perspectives: 18 March in Frankfurt for Blockupy, as of 24 March in Tunis for the World Social Forum …
Dear Friends!
Not only factually – as it had been last year – but also as far as the mass media were concerned, the theme of the turn of the year was the arrival and reception of refugees. No news broadcast went without this theme and this in the area of tension between new boat tragedies and (reactions against) Pegida. We already formulated some assessments on the subject in the December newsletter and combined a stock-taking review of 2014 with a first perspective on the chances and challenges for 2015.
A few additional remarks on the start of the year: According to the Italian Ministry of the Interior “167,462 refugees reached Italy by sea from 1 January up to 17 December 2014. This is an average of 477 a day.” This remains unparalleled for the central Mediterranean and until half-December the Italian authorities provided rescue operations up to far into the Libyan territorial waters . Thereupon “one of the top managers of Frontex, Klaus Rösler, demanded on 9 December 2014, from the international community and in particular from the Italian government, no longer to rescue boat people outside the Italian 30-mile coastal area when they broadcast Mayday calls. He referred rhetorically to the responsibility of the Libyan coast guard who – as is well-known – has not existed for months due to new military conflicts. In other words: on 9 December 2014 Klaus Rösler, from the highest position of an EU Agency, made an appeal to leave people to die massively”, see
http://ffm-online.org/2014/12/15/ertrinkenlassen-der-aufhaltsame-aufstieg-von-frontex-roesler/
Against this background an updated Frontex Campaign, to denunciate and force back the lethal policy of deterrence which is expedited by the German Frontex chief, would seem urgently required and, in view of the prevailing critical public opinion, also possible. It is an absolute mockery when in early January 2015 Frontex, of all organisations, blames the professional refugee helpers for a “new degree of cruelty”, because on several bigger refugee boats the crew left the ship in order to avoid their own criminalisation. Even though without a doubt unscrupulous business men are at work in the expensive migration trade across the Mediterranean, yet we will continue to put it clearly: the thousand-fold death at sea is a product of the EU border regime. This “European disgrace”, including the entire trade with risky sea crossings, could be history by tomorrow, if refugees and migrants were allowed to buy ordinary boat and plane tickets and thus to travel as safely and cheaply as tourists. The barbaric visa and border regime should and could be abolished immediately!
2014 in the area of Aegaen over 11.000 Boatpeople landed on Lesbos, another record number. In the Maroccan enclaves Ceuta and Melilla the year 2014 finished like it has started: more mass runs on the fences, see herefor the chronic at the end of the report:
https://beatingborders.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/as-2014-ends-more-migrants-overcome-the-obstacles-to-arrive-in-europe/
The external border of the EU was and will be hard-fighted especially in the southern part. The transnational action days from 4 to 8 February 2015 in Berlin (see below) are a first chance to take up this struggles from here and continue together. The inner German and transnational potential of antiracist movements looks more diverse and stronger than before but it there is still a lack of obliging higher level structures, which are able to develop a concrete strategy to push through. This is something we really need within the next month to kindle new dynamics for the struggle against the outer and also the inner borders. To give an example of the last one: the campaign against the tightening of asylum laws (see report below), which suggest more resistance against the widen of the custody pending deportation regime. It was written in the newsletter of December that it was a big effort of the movement in 2014 to stop the practice of custody pending deportation as an instrument for criminalization and blackmailing of refugees. This big step within the struggle of the inner borders we can’t give up again. The danger exists that the hardliners from the Departments of the Interior will walk so to speak in lee of the Pegida-debate and say yes to the cabinets draft containing the tightening. The motive could be a mixture of a putative delimination and so called “quitening down” of the right mob. There are less month to cross this plannings, with the help of the ongoing critical public and the potential of our movement we have a good chance. Let’s take it!
In this sense we wish a happy new year.
P.S.: With post script comes the link to a worth reading “Christmas greeting of the 1989s” – 25 years after wall fall – PEGIDA – Nie wieda! (“Pegida – never again”) Look http://www.taz.de/!151748/
All the best,
the Kompass-Crew