+++ Day X Demonstration – stop the asylum law tightening! +++ 10th of June in Strasbourg +++ 13 June 2015 in Frankfurt and in several cities in Italy +++ 14 June 2015 in Frankfurt: Network Meeting on Ferries not Frontex +++ As of 15 June 2015: International Week of Action against Deportation Jails +++ 19. – 21.6. in Berlin: Conference from Women in Exile +++ 20.6. in Berlin: Big Demonstration Blockupy and more – Making Europe different +++ 24.6. in Mainz: Demonstration against IMK +++ 30.6. in Essen: Demonstration against European Homecare and for freedom of movement +++ Retrospect: Anti Frontex Days in Warshaw, Ohlauer Schule stays, Büren +++ Prospect: Freedom Ferry on the 6. of September from Tunesia, Social Transnational Strike- Conference starting the 2nd until the 4th of October +++

Dear friends!

“On Saturday the 30th of May, through the media and government sources, it emerged that 4243 people were rescued on the 29th of May in the Central Mediterranean Sea, the largest number of rescues in 2015. 22 rescue operations took place and 17 dead bodies were found on three vessels. Various navy and coastguard vessels as well as merchant vessels were involved in these large-scale rescue operations. We, of course, respect the commitment shown by rescue agencies and sailors who have done the utmost to rescue more than 4000 human lives at sea. At the same time we mourn the loss of 17 lives. They could still all be alive if there were secure paths toward Europe.”
These are the final sentences of a recent report by the Watch The Med Alarmphone (have a look http://watchthemed.net/reports/view/135), to which emergency calls from boat people arrive daily. They are not just crossing from Lybia but also in little boats which try to cross the street of Gibraltar – from Morocco to Spain – or starting from Turkey to the Greek islands. Also in Aegean the arrival numbers are on a record high, but also there again and again people are drowning during the risky flight. “Ferries not Frontex” (look Kompass Nr. 39) is the commandment of the hour!

“Safe access not crazy military inventions” has to be the second slogan because – as exposed by wikileaks – the responsible in the EU would accept once more “collateral damages” during their war planning against “trafficer structures” in Lybia. That there are besides many civil ships (Moas, Medicine Sans Frontieres, Sea Watch) also navy ships (from UK, Island, France, Germany… ) involved in rescue operations is first of all to be considered as a success of the persistent migration movement as well as the on-going social protests and critical public.
Facing the lasting sympathy of wider parts of the population big NGOs are able to obtain donations to finance the expensive services. And our Bundesregierung who did not want to know anything about an increase of the rescue capacities shortly after the last tragedies and rejected any own involvement, now there are two navy ships on the ground on rescue duty and explicitly under the control of Rome and not Warshaw refered to the Frontex Operation Triton since the 8th of May.

Das wäre undenkbar ohne den massiven politischen öffentlichen Druck der vergangenen Wochen, von den Reedern mit ihrer sehr eindrücklichen Erklärung über die Statements von Pro Asyl, Sea Watch und Alarmphone (u.a. für Radio Vatikan!) und nicht zuletzt den vielfältigen Protesten auf der Straße. Ob am 10.6. in Strasbourg oder am 20.6. in Berlin (siehe Kalender unten), jetzt geht es darum, diesen Druck aufrecht zu erhalten und dabei insbesondere die geplanten Militär­einsätze gegen potentielle Flüchtlingsboo­te und “Schlepper” als “infame Verlängerung der Schande Europas” zu denunzieren.

That is unimaginably without the massive policital public pressure of the past weeks; the Reedem with their very clear statement about the statements from Pro Asyl, Sea Watch and Alarmphone (also for Radio Vatikan!) and not least the varied protest on the streets.
If the 10th of June in Strasbourg or the 20th of June in Berlin (have a look at the calendar at the bottom), now it is about keeping the pressure and especially denounce the planned military services against potential refugee boats and “smuggler” as a “disgraceful extension of the same of Europe”.

And once more: let’s combine these struggles against the deadly external borders of the EU with the protest against the inner borders! Because right now inside the Bundestag the law concerning the “revision of the right to stay and the termination of residence” is debated. This draft law contains completely unacceptable tightenings concerning the right to stay which results in massive extensions of arrests of persons seeking protection.
It can be considered as a positive sign of procrastination that the passing of this law has been postponed many times but the re-opening of detention centre in Büren marks the forseeable way of this “reform”. Thats why below this text the last-minute-appeal of the Niedersächsischen Flüchtlingsrat asks to join the pressure-making on the representatives.

Finally: In Frankfurt there will a “Project-Shelter-Demonstration” the 13th of June, which puts the homelessness of migrants and refugees as a subject of discussion. Demanded is a self-organized migrant centre and a supply of social living space (see below). The connection which is made up by refering to the general social question of living seems more than necessary to us. Because there are many tries to finance the necessary payments in the refugee sector from above through cuts in other social sectors and to play them off against each other. And this plays Pegida and Co into their hands.
The same applies to the labour market: against the local splitting and a supposed competition for working places the general insecurity and in this topic the special exploitation of migrants must be focused.
For this purpose there was formed in the last years in some cities “MigrAr” (Migration and Work) – contact points which have been expanded in the mean time through full time consultation bureaus by the trade union for south-eastern european migrant workers. Below you find information and links as well as a hint to the transnational approch of “social strike” which has been formed from an international Bloccupy-Network and in which migrant working struggles against the “government of mobility” play a central role.

PS : The start of the actions against the G7-Top in Elmau took place at the moment of our editing deadline; too late for mobilizing once again and too early to take stock of the situation. We did mention the Anti-G7 Infotour in our last Newsletter and will get back to it in our next issue.

With antiracist greetings,
The Kompass Team

Kompass-newsletter Nr. 40 – June 2015 (pdf)

+++ Ferries not Frontex +++ Bus Tour of the Refugees from O-Platz +++ 8 to 10 May in Berlin: Blockupy Perspectives +++ 14 to 17 May in Münster: BUKO 37 +++ From 14 May: Tour for Freedom of Movement, Autonomy and the Good Life +++ 19 to 22 May in Warsaw: Anti-Frontex Days +++ Retrospective of the Resistance against the Tightening of Asylum Laws: Occupations, Demonstrations, Student Strike +++ Prospect: 10 June in Strasbourg: Action Day for Freedom of Movement +++

Dear Friends!

On 19 April “Ferries not Frontex!” was the immediate reaction of the Watch The Med Alarm Phones to the greatest refugee tragedy in the Mediterranean to this day with more than 900 casualties. The transnational hotline project, which has been supporting boat people 24/7 for more than six months, mentions in its press release who is to be held responsible for these massive deaths at sea. A follow-up text explains why even a second Mare Nostrum would be insufficient and that, on the contrary, a ferry service is what is called for if the casualties at sea are really to be put an end to (see below).
Apart from a few more life boats, the EU’s new 10-point plan is a pure repression and displacement program. Yet what will be done and how depends not in the last place on public pressure. Critical public opinion towards the lethal EU exclusion politics reached into broad parts of the mass media these last two weeks, at least critical voices were solicited everywhere. Even a UNHCR official talked about ferries as a better way and in a video clip a Swedish physician called into question the simple yet ultimately very fundamental issue of why boat refugees do not fly cheaply instead of expensively putting their lives at risk. The answer is clear: the EU visa regime is the problem (see the references below).

The right to freedom of movement is and will remain our central point of departure against the lethal inhumane border regime. For the Mediterranean the concrete proposal for a ‘humanitarian civilly-disobedient ferry’ is doing the rounds, while simultaneously and linked to it the resistance against the internal EU borders continues. The Refugee Bus Tour is at the moment on its way through numerous cities of Germany in order mainly to strengthen the self-organized structures of refugees and migrants. In many places actions against the new tightened asylum laws, which had been prepared for quite a while, have been and are still being carried out these days and in turn merge with the current protests against the ‘leaving-to-die-at-sea’ politics.
Within the polarisation of society, which momentarily manifests itself around the ‘refugee issue’, the blend of self-organized and left-wing antiracist groups is in a stronger position then in the years before. Whether and in how far we succeed in getting concrete improvements in migration policy implemented, or in doing so even kindle throughout society dynamics ‘for more justice’ may become apparent in the aggravations to be expected in the next few months. Our chances have been worse, times seldom were so open ….

In this sense and in solidarity,
The Kompass Crew

Kompass _ Newsletter Nr. 39 – May 2015 (pdf)

+++ From 8 April.: International action day of Roma +++ 10 April to 18 April: action week against the planned tightening asylum law +++ 16 April in Wittenberg: Info-Tour of refugee activists from Schwäbisch Gmünd who is threatened by imprisoning +++ From 18 April: Bustour of Refugees vom O-Platz +++ Stop eviction of Gerhart-Hauptmann-Schule +++ Frankfurt, Erfurt, HiIdesheim, Merseburg and again and again Osnabrück: Deportations stops everywhere +++ Retrospect: Struggles against detention centres in UK and Greece, Blockupy 18Zero3 +++ Outlook: Sea Watch at the start; BuKo and G7-Tour in May; Right to global movement: from WSF in Tunis to Action days in June … +++

Dear friends!

“Liberte de Circulation”, the right to global movement, was not by chance the central issue in migration-related workshops of the WSF end of March in Tunis. If and how far the adopted proposal to call from now on to an international action week for movement of freedom in June is to put into practise may be of secondary importance in the first place. It is more important that even in the agenda of big NGOs itself it reflects politically how the situation looks like everyday: an on-going and successful fight against the inner and eternal borders of the EU.
The current arrival number (March 2015) have been increased again, both in the central Mediterranean and in the Aegean. Frontex is with their back to the wall, there lies ahead a truly “hot” summer.
And at the same time there are protest inside the EU against detention, camps and deportations.
Below there are some – also international – reports about new calls and dates which complies within Germany against the planned tightening asylum law.
Like some months ago self-critically mentioned in our newsletter, the campaign against the “harshest and shabbiest one which occurred to a German ministery” (Heribert Prantl in Süddeutsche Zeitung) should have been much more stronger, faced with the diversity of anti-racist initiatives.
But an overlapping coordination was (is) missing and there is a concern that this new concoction of imprisonment and exclusion will be adopted in May from the Bundestag without public and visible resistance.
So here again the invitation to the creative participation during the action days in April.
In an exemplary manner there is developing a resistance against another pillar of the border regime. National wide the praxis of collective deportation stops has been spread.
From Osnabrück viaFrankfurt, Erfurt, Hildesheim to Merseburg: if the police wants to pick up refugees in the early morning in the camps as announced, then there are many people who get in the way of the police and from – literally – a wall of solidarity against the daily injustice of deportation. Go on!

All the best,
the Kompass-AntiRa-Team

Kompass – Newsletter Nr. 38 – April 2015 (pdf)

+++ 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. (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 struggles.
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.

All the best,
your Kompass-Team

Kompass-Newsletter No 37 – February 2015 (pdf)

5. – 8.2. in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Tanger und Ceuta: transnational actions against the war against migrants +++ 14.2.2015 Refugee Protest Camp Hannover goes Berlin +++ From 25.2. on: Start of Push Back Frontex – Campaign +++ Refugee activists imprisoned +++ On the death of Khaled Idris Bahray +++ Greece – If elections could change anything? +++ On 18.3. in Frankfurt: Blockupy against ECB +++ Retrospect on Oury Jalloh- and Hamburg-demonstration +++ Campaign against strengthening of the asylum law +++ New Pro Asyl Stop-Dublin-Campaign +++ Outlook on March: from 24.3. on to the World Social Forum in Tunis…

Dear friends!

On the full table of contents, it can be seen already: quite a lot is going on and there is plenty to report in February. Besides a number of supra-regional meetings and appointments we want to promote in the Annex – initiated by the transnational action days on the anniversary of the Ceuta victims – there are three campaigns running or starting these days. We already broached these issues and the question why the asylum law is strengthening must be fought in the last newsletters: preventing the establishment of further grounds for applying a custody pending deportation remains crucial for the resistance against the local policy of deterrence. This focus furthermore allows us to bridge to the second campaign presented below: the campaign against the Dublin Regulation. It was launched by Pro Asyl in January and works on juridical and practical resistance against deportation to Italy and South East Europe as well as for the further strengthening of Church Asylum and an opposition to the new grounds for detention due to the Dublin Regulation.
Existing and planned asylum injustice – where could it be just better addressed and attacked as on the anti-Pegida protests. As it is – on the one hand – encouraging that except for some few cities in the East of Germany the right wing mob could not gain ground in the streets so that instead the few hundred racists face several thousands of counter-demonstrators from Lübeck to Freiburg.
But as already formulated in the last Kompass: on the other hand, there remains the danger that – while the media and even Merkel dissociate themselves from “xenophobic crowd” – the above mentioned asylum law strengthening are carried in the slipstream of this wide protests. Though, we need to make an issue out of this hypocrisy and to confront all those – especially within the social democrats and green party – who are co-responsible when refugees are supposed to end up behind bars just because they don’t have (correct) papers. We will also mention and we shall not forget that opposing refugees are again and again put in prison because of their protest.
Let’s now briefly talk about the third campaign that is being planned, which is – due to recent events – aimed against the EU Border Managment Agency. Its title is “Push Back Frontex” and we already wrote about this “scandal in the scandal” in the January-Newsletter. It is a German Border Official, Klaus Rösler, who – in the name of Frontex – criticizes the Italian Authorities for their rescue-policy in the central Mediterranean and call more or less publicly to leave them to die. A many-months campaign on this issue shall start on 25 February, when this Frontex official will appear at the Police Congress in Berlin. The concrete experiences of the WatchTheMed Alarmphone are last but not least the background of this initiative as they are regularly documented on http://watchthemed.net/. Our intended aim is to push back from the external borders if not to call for an abolishment of the Border Management.

At the same time exciting things happen at another external border, where Frontex has been covering politically for years the illegal push backs by the local coast guard: in Greece. With the great victory of Syriza, the “coalition of the radical left”, in the early elections in January new spaces of change emerge, not only in the fight against the brutal austerity and crisis policies but also against the inhumane detention and border regime. Although Syriza entered into a coalition with the right nationalists of the so-called “independent Greeks” (Anel) (or had to enter due to a lack of alternatives), at the moment a lot speaks for a break with the previous deterrence and detention policy of the previous Governments (see link below). The coming weeks will show whether elections can sometimes change something.

It is sure though that the power institutions in Brussels, Berlin and Frankfurt will use all their means of blackmail and leverage – with regard to the crisis and migration policies – in order to keep the new Greek government within the EU directives of exploitation and exclusion. Important is therefore what solidarity protests – such as the ones in Spain these last days – are launched in the rest of Europe against the troika and the border regime. In this respect the delayed opening of the new tower of the European Central Bank on 18 March in Frankfurt maybe considered to happen with a nearly perfect timing. The preparations for blockades and a mega demonstration in the Rhein-Main metropolis are proceeding at full speed in order to give a radical sign of Europe-wide, transnational solidarity. Noborder goes Blockupy – the antiracist contribution to the crisis protest – should therefore preferably turn out stronger this time, all according to the slogan for the current mobilisation: Achtzehn-Null-Drei, nimm dir frei! (March 18, take a day off!)

All the best,
the Kompass-Crew

Kompass-Newsletter Nr. 36 – February 2015 (pdf)

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

Kompass-Newsletter Nr. 35 – January 2015 (pdf)

+++ 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)

+++ 4.11.: Solidarity-Actions against Push-Backs in Melilla +++ Boza: Movie about Morocco and March for Freedom +++ 20. – 23.11.: Bloccupy-Festival in Frankfurt +++ Starting the 28.11.: Anti-Isolation-Tour through Baden-Württemberg +++ Campaign against the tightening of the asylum law +++ Information about Oury Jalloh and Choucha +++ Review – Refugee struggles, protests against deportations, Alarm Phone in Hamburg, Berlin, Hannover, Darmstadt, Bremen +++

Dear Friends!

2014 is a year of historical fights for the right of freedom of movement. Once again we can notice this by looking at the recent occasions all over the Mediterranean Sea and especially between Morocco and Spain. The fights at the border in Melilla keep on going on undiminished, despite and against the brutal violence of the Spanish border police.
A current link to a short and impressive video:
http://www.20minutos.tv/videoplayerjw/ipGQZ359/a/

And in this context at the same time there will be protest actions in Rabat and Berlin (see below) on November the 4th. In this newsletter a film worth seeing is presented which is called “Boza” made by a Tunesian activist. In the movie a link from the Moroccan forests to the protest march from Strasbourg to Brussels is drawn.
Along with hints to the Bloccupyfestival, to an Anti-Isolation-Tour, news to Oury Jalloh and Choucha and the starting campaign against the planned tightening of the asylum law we also made a small review of protests and self-organized activities in different cities.

All the best,
the Kompass-Crew

Newsletter Nr. 33 – November 2014 (pdf)

+++ Actions for Commemoration and Protest at Lampedusa Anniversary +++ “Watch The Med Alarm Phone” starts on 10th October +++ Lampedusa In HH: Emancipation Days on 10./11.10 +++ AntiRa-Conference in Stuttgart on 18.10. +++ News from Tanger/Marocco +++ Report on the nationwide meeting on EU-working migration in Munich +++ Blockupy-Festival in November in Frankfurt +++

Dear Friends!

These days shocking news from the Mediterranean Sea intermingle with the commemoration of the maritime disaster on the 3rd October 2013 near Lampedusa: the death at sea does not come to an end. Even if at this case Mafia structures should be held responsible for this mass murder, it was only possible thanks to the background of an EU border and visa-regime forcing refugees and migrants on theses dangerous routes. What we already formulated in our last newsletter now becomes evident in official documents: „Frontex plus“ in the central Mediterranean sea focuses intentionally on less rescue and therefore more letting-die.

In many cities commemoration ceremonies or protest actions against the national and European policies of exclusion and expulsion will take place in the beginning of October (see below). And as presented in our September Newsletter the „Watch-the-Med-Alarm“-Phone starts its services the 10th October. It’s the ambitious try to intervene in real-time in the injustices at sea through a new transnational everyday structure (see more below).
Finally, this newsletter contains a short report on the nationwide meeting on EU-working migration in Munich as well as the first invitation to the Festival in Frankfurt in November.

All the best,
the Kompass-Crew
Contact: kompass-notify@antira.info

Newsletter Nr. 32 – October 2014 (pdf)

+++ From Mare Nostrum to Frontex Plus +++ “Watch The Med Alarm
Phone” in preparation +++ from 1.-5.10. in Jena: 20 Years of
Voice Refugee Forum +++ 12.-14.9. in Hamburg: Europe Of The Arriving
+++ 20./21.9. in Munich: National meeting about EU – labour migration
+++ Blockupy-meeting in Frankfurt (14.9.) and in Brussels (26.9.) +++
Review August: w2eu and JoG on Lesbos +++ Advanced notice for
October: Baden-Württemberg-AntiRa-conference in Stuttgart +++

Dear friends!

By now over 100.000 Boatpeople have landed in Italy coming over the central Mediterranean Sea, mostly intercepted or saved by “Mare Nostrum”. Several times we wrote about this ambivalent sea rescue operation in our newsletter and recently a paper has been published which we strongly recommend again:
http://afrique-europe-interact.net/index.php?article_id=1193&clang=0
“Frontex Plus” is the new magic formula which will replace Mare Nostrum until end of November. The fact that the Border Agency Frontex – accurately related to as “mobile barbed wire” – will take over the control makes clear in which direction the EU-migration policy goes: less rescue and more let-them-die (see below for more information). It makes even more important that public criticism and practical resistance against the deadly border regime do not weaken. Around the 3rd October, the anniversary of the Lampedusa-“tragedy”, various activities are being planned, and the attempt of setting up an alternative alarm system for the Mediterranean seems to be specifically ambitious (see below).

At the same time, from 1st to 5th October, an anniversary conference will take place in Jena: 20 years of “The Voice Refugee Forum”. “The Voice” planted the first tracks of refugee resistance in Germany 20 years ago. Since then it spread the experiences of self organisation – for example since 2000 in showing civil disobedience against the residence requirement -, without it the today’s diversity of refugee struggles wouldn’t even be conceivable (below more information and in particular a donation appeal for the conference).
Furthermore you will find in this newsletter a short review about the impressive “Back-to-the-borders-II”-project on Lesbos as well as advanced notices for several working sessions and festivals. On the furher developments of the protests and struggles in Berlin, Hamburg, Hannover, Rhein-Main … please follow the links in the last newsletters.

All the best,
the Kompass-crew

Kompass-Newsletter September 2014 (pdf)