Let‘s march for our freedom! 18.May - 28.June 2014
Interconnected Refugee & Migrant Movements – Protest March against Fortress Europe!
From Strasbourg to Brussels, May and June 2014
The European council and the European ministers of foreign affairs make racist and prohibitive policies against refugees and migrants on a very high level. In reaction to the recent admitted mass drowning in the Mediterranean, they only concluded to arm the forces that control and aggressively prevent people’s movement, such as frontex. They will hold their next summit at the 26th and 27th of June in Brussels.
Different groups of refugee and Migrant movements in Europe plan a protest march from Strasbourg to Brussels. This will begin shortly before the European parliament elections at the end of May. The marching refugee and supporting activists will walk about 450 km within one month. In an action week before the council’s summit, we will raise our protest against the policies of fortress Europe!
*17.5.2014*
Demonstration with Blockupy and School and University Strike at
Oranienplatz (Berlin), then Protest March leaves Berlin
Demonstration mit Blockupy und dem Schul- und Unistreik startet am
Oranienplatz, dann verlässt der Protestmarsch Berlin
Manifestation avec Blockupy et la grève écolière et étudiante à
Oranienplatz (Berlin), puis le groupe de la marche quitte Berlin
*18.5.2014*
Crossing “Bridge of Europe” from Kehl to Straßbourg
Überqueren der “Europa Brücke” von Kehl nach Strasbourg
Traversée du “pont de l’Europe” de Kehl à Strasbourg
*19.5.2014*
Actions at European institutions in Strasbourg, gathering for
the departure of the Protest March
Aktionen bei europäischen Institutionen in Strasbourg, Zusammenkommen für
den Beginn des Protestmarschs
Actions aux institutions européennes à Strasbourg, rassemblement pour le
départ de la marche
*20.5.2014*
Protest March leaves direction Saarbrücken
Der Protestmarsch startet in Richtung Saarbrücken
La marche part en direction de Saarbrücken
Actions in Saarbrücken
Actions in Schengen
*21.6. – 27.6.2014*
Action week in Brussels
Aktions-Woche in Brüssel
Semaine d’actions à Bruxelles
More info: http://freedomnotfrontex.noblogs.org/
WE HAVE A DREAM...
We are asylum seekers, refugees, undocumented migrants, migrants from many European countries, we are Europeans with a “migration background”, we are all those who have no full privilege of citizenship, but also citizens who share a common anger against the racist EU migration policy.
We decided to organize a European caravan which will go from the largest number of European countries towards Brussels (Belgium), where the European institutions are settled. Showing that we don’t respect the borders they impose us, holding us prisoners of the states borders and in the lagers, we will exercise our basic right of freedom of movement and address our demands directly where the decisions come from.
We have a dream:
- Freedom of movement and of residence for all asylum seekers,
- Stop the Dublin trap and the obligatory residence in Lagers throughout Europe
- Permanent documents without criteria (not depending on working contracts or individual state prosecution)
- Stop the imprisonment and deportation of migrants
- Same working conditions for all
- Same political, social and cultural rights for all: right to study and to work
- Stop the European imperialist policies: no more free trade treaties and NATO wars
- Abolish Frontex, Eurosur and other anti-migration policies and measures Join us !
Starting on 18th May 2014 with the EU Parliament elections, the transnational march will end in Brussels with massive protests at the EU-summit on migration policy, the 26th and 27th of June 2014.
The arrival will be one week before the summit, on 20th June, we will have a week of actions in the city of Brussels to make them aware of our anger.
http://freedomnotfrontex.noblogs.org/files/2014/04/English1.pdf
Kompass – AntiRa – Newsletter Nr. 27 – May 2014 in english!
+++ Come to Kehl-Strasbourg on 18 May: Start of the March of Refugees and Sans Papiers to Brussels +++ Struggles against Dublin II/III – e.g. on 8 May in Frankfurt +++ Movements of Migration at the external borders +++ From 15 May: International Days of Action of Blockupy +++ End of May, BuKo 36 in Leipzig +++ Review April: O-Platz Berlin and Lampedusa in Hamburg +++ Preview June: Residency Right Demonstration of Youth without Borders to the Interior Ministers Conference in Bonn, Refugee Women Conference in Frankfurt, Week of Action Brussels …
http://kompass.antira.info/files/2014/05/27Kompass_Newsletter_Mai2014_en...
Dear Friends!
All of you for whom it is possible, should come to Kehl on Sunday, 18 May, to support the start of the March of Refugees and Sans Papiers at the first border crossing to Strasbourg. The march to Brussels will take more than five weeks and it is desired that people should also participate in stages of the march, e.g. during the weekend of 1 June, when the march will stop at the highly symbolic town of Schengen.
Since 1995 the Schengen Agreement stands for the freedom of movement for EU citizens, whereas so-called third-country citizens have been confronted with even sharper border checks and visa restrictions. Schengen symbolizes the distress and the thousand-fold death at the external borders of the EU, which will be made a public issue there.
Further places of action will be, among others, Saarbrücken, Luxembourg and three other borders (see below), before the march will be welcomed in Brussels with a first welcome demonstration on 20 June.
For the subsequent week of action, many protests against those responsible for and benefitting from the EU border regime have been planned. On Thursday 26 June, on the occasion of the first day of the Summit Meeting of EU Interior Ministers, a big rally and central demonstration will be organized and the next day a counter-summit on the perspectives of the struggles of migration.
In the last newsletter we said: “The march and the days of action have not by accident been planned in an early summer which, with regard to the ‘Movements of Migration’, the social and political struggles of refugees and migrants, could get a downright ‘historical’ meaning. Because there is a new dimension to what has been happening in the past weeks at the external borders of the EU.”
These past weeks the dynamics have been uninterrupted: in the Aegean the highest figures of arriving boat people since the record years of 2009/2010; in Morocco unremittingly –e.g. again on 1 May– the well-organised attacks on the border fences of the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta; and nearly every day reports of rescue operations in the Strait of Sicily, with figures ten times as high as last year. Whether or not and how the Italian navy operation ‘Mare Nostrum’ will continue is not only in Italy controversial (see http://ffm-online.org/2014/04/24/lampedusa-28-000-boat-people-nutzten-ma...).
Despite all the militarisation and armament with Frontex and Eurosur, the ‘border guards’ are currently everywhere in the Mediterranean with their backs against the wall. The speedy development in Southern Italy, the ‘collapse of the reception capacities’ (topical quote by the Chief of the Italian Border Police), could soon also have direct consequences for the Dublin regime. For the authorities and the courts it will anyway become more difficult to hide the homelessness and non-existent care of asylum seekers who are pushed back from all European countries to Italy because of Dublin II/III. And when – after Greece from early 2011 – Italy also fails as a place of refoulement, the Dublin system can be chucked straight in the bin.
It is therefore important that the struggles against the Dublin Regulation are intensified, that those involved organise themselves in order to increasingly prevent push backs even inside airplanes, that with Kirchenasyl safe houses are opened and that, even in case of a subsequent push back to Italy, they are not forgotten but supported upon their return to Germany.
In Frankfurt the protests against Dublin continue with a demonstration at the airport on 8 May (see below); on 1 May an old school was squatted in Hamburg to create a welcome centre (see below). In April Berlin went through a concentration around the O-Platz, which was initially caused by the successful discord spread among the refugees (see below the short chronology).
Self-organised groups from Berlin are simultaneously the driving force behind the transnational march; they will set off to Kehl-Strasbourg on 17 May, after a common action with the imminent crisis protests in Berlin.
For on 15 May the Days of Action that are organized all over Europe by http://mayofsolidarity.org/ are beginning. On 17 May regional demonstrations from Blockupy Coordination are taking place (see below); not only in Berlin, but also in Hamburg, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf, the struggles of refugees will play a prominent role. Moreover initiatives from several countries have published their own calls, which –as to their content– link up the struggles against the crisis regime with the struggles against the border regime and –from a practical point of view– connect all these Blockupy mobilisations with the march that starts one day later. In this sense we hope that ‘Solidarity beyond Borders’ will really produce an effect in May and June, all the same we are in for two extremely eventful months …
All the best,
the Kompass crew
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