Kompass-Newsletter No 57 – March 2017 (pdf)
+++ 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. Fo-rum about the ‘Right to Choose your City’… Workshop about City Solidarity +++ 8./9.4.: Preparatory Conference against G20 +++ 14.-17.4.: Action Days at Franco-Italian border +++ 22.4.: Happy Birthday to City Plaza Athens +++ Central Mediterra-nean: 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 Il-legal; 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 on 20.2. against the exclusion policy of the Brexit government.
In the days before, several cities in the US experienced migrant strikes and demon-strations 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 was 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 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.
All the best,
the Kompass Crew