The EU has finally struck a deal with the Turkish government at 29.10.2015 in which 3 bilion Euros per yer, visa liberalizations and unfrozen EU membership negotiations, negotiations that the EU froze with Turkey in 2005 under pretense of R. Erdoğans government style as authoritative, will be exchanged for the Turkish role as an external Schengen border ‘guardian’. With this EU again proved that its interests have to be protected at all costs, quickly ignoring previous comments regarding the current Turkish president R. Erdoğan, as well as his increased surpression of Kurdish people, media critics and activists in the recent years. Political Machiavellism labels and continue to label Western politics throughout the history and it doesn’t leave out other political actors around the globe.
This video was taken in Dobova (Slovenia) a few days ago. This is not just a sole example of the mistreatment of the incoming people. The situations in camps change through days – sometimes they are empty and next day filled with new people arriving from Croatia.
The situation at Šentilj/Spielfeld (Slovenian-Austrian border) is different, as people often get trapped in ‘no-mans land’ between Slovenian and Austrian borders, while waiting for the permission to cross the border. ‘Officially’ people have the possibility to stay in camps, but due to the lack of information, it is often though that waiting at the ‘no-mans land’ will result in the quicker crossing of the border. This often develops in the long hour waiting in the cold weather.
These days it is getting obvious that the European Union, a supranational entity supposedly built on the values of freedom and peace, is putting a stamp on it’s mostly non-existant immigration and asylum system. That the European leaders selectively apply such values only for the economic and political elites is nothing new. New and surprising aren’t even the new changes for the immigration and asylum laws that are being developedunder the privileged position by the technocratic elites in Berlin and Brussels. We must never forget how many people continue to die while trying to cross Mediterranean every year, because of the already existing legal framework. Continue reading →
Yesterday, 15.10.2015, late at night an Afgan refugee has been shot by the Bulgarian border control police, after 50 refugees tried to cross the border Sredets to Bulgaria from Turkey. Bulgarian Ministry of Internal Affairs is using an excuse that the refugees didn’t obey the orders to stop and even though they were not armed the Bulgarian police was compelled to use such force (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/16/afghan-refugee-shot-dead-police-turkey-enter-bulgaria).
This is of course nothing new and surprising for how the EU’s member states deal with the influx of people trying to come within its borders. Let us just remember the rubber bullet shootings by the Spanish border police in February 2014, when an unknown number of people trying to reach “Spanish” side of Ceuta drowned. This is the reality of the European Union’s immigration and asylum system which rather spends money to enforce its borders than help the people who are fleeing desperation from their settings, which is a direct product of Western Europe’s colonialism and decades of interventions by the world superpowers in the 20th century.
If we read the Frontex budget report for the years 2014 and 2015, we see an increased budget injections in external border controls. Citing Statewarch and EU’s budget expenditures to Frontex:
‘The 2015 budget of EU border agency Frontex has been increased by 17.5%, from €97 million to €114 million, with the largest share of the extra funding going towards Joint Operations at Sea Borders.’
The EU leaders are currently discussing of giving Turkey 3 billion financial resources and other political-social benefits for its citizens (e.g. better VISA-FREE travel). The idea is to keep (at least) 2 million refugeeswithin Turkey’s borders and ask for its help with enforcing EU’s external borders (source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/15/big-decisions-unlikely-migration-summit-eu-leaders).
Turkey is suppose to be a so called safe county, but we all know that is on the verge of a small civil war (mostly with Kurdish people or people with different political orientation), if we just look at the events that happened few days ago in Ankara, where more than 100 people were killed by most likely state sponsored suicide bombing. Citing The Guardian newspaper:
‘Turkey is currently the main source of the 700,000 people who have entered the EU this year. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is to travel to Istanbul on Sunday for talks with the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, only two weeks before a crucial general election in Turkey, leaving her open to charges that she is boosting the victory chances of his governing Justice and Development party.’
But the borders are not just on the edges of the Fortress Europe, but also inside it. They are the borders that separate people, who are illegalized by the fascist European Union’s immigration and asylum system, from European citizens. The good example and a symptom of such system is LaGeSo which dehumanizes people to non-beings, who are supposedly claiming benefits from the German state. But let us not forget that Germany is benefiting from such system and has historical and recent responsibilities towards countries that people flee from.
This is why making the so called “refugee” crisis, named by the EU’s institutions and mainstream media, a political issue that must directly adress the EU’s fascist immigration and asylum system, its neo-colonial practices and capitalist-neoliberal development in the recent years. No, there is no “refugee crisis”, but only European xenophobia towards human beings!
Next post will focus on the recent happening at the Balkan route borders and camps.
Until then: Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here!!
Hypocritical policies have been made over the image of the Kurdish child – -photographed like lying on the beach. He died trying to escape the war and massacre in Kobane. The governments, who caused people to flee the countries where they had lived, have started a competition over how humanist they are by crying over him. Germany, the leader of the EU countries, was on the front line as the leading actor of this “humanitarian theatre.”
GENEVA (30 October 2014) – Allowing people to die at Europe’s borders just because of their administrative status is a complete disregard for the value of human life, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, François Crépeau, said today urging the British authorities to reconsider its decision not support search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
The United Kingdom Government announced earlier this week they will not support any future search and rescue operations to prevent migrants and refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, stating that such operations can encourage more people to attempt the dangerous sea crossing to enter Europe.
“Governments that do not support the search and rescue efforts have reduced themselves to the same level as the smugglers,” the human rights expert stressed. “They are preying on the precariousness of the migrants and asylum seekers, robbing them of their dignity and playing with their lives.”
“Migrants are human beings and just like the rest of us they too have rights. They too have the right to live and thrive,” Mr. Crépeau said. “To bank on the rise in the number of dead migrants to act as deterrence for future migrants and asylum seekers is appalling. It’s like saying, let them die because this is a good deterrence.”Continue reading →
18.12. has been the third Global Action Day against racism and for the Rights of Migrants, Refugees and displaced People. Get Inforamtion about this transnational Refugee Uprise: http://globalmigrantsaction.org/
In the morning of 18th the Refugees Activists and Friends from Oranienplatz Protest Camp in Berlin gave an suprising press conference in the eu-house at Brandenburger Tor. At the same time the Brandenburger Tor was blocked for one hour to make everyone listen the demands:
Stopp killing Refugees at the european Borders! Stopp Deportations! Freedom of Movement for everyone!
The Brandenburger Tor in the very center of the city is the symbol of reunification of germany and the former border of east and west germany. Now the germans and tourists and all other privileged citizens can move freely through this and many other borders but refugees are being criminalized and isolated from society when they practice their human right for freedom of movement!
In the evening people met again at Alexanderplatz at Rotes Rathaus (City hall) to demonstrate towards the european house once more.
This day was the opening of the campain of a transnational network of Refugee Movements towards the european parliament elections may 2014 and the european migrations summit june 2014, both in bruxelles.
See you at the european wide Protest March to bruxelles! Freedom not frontex!
Meeting on the 14th of December in New York Bethanien at 3pm
Solidarity with migrants – against exclusion and oppression!
The Oranienplatz Refugee Strike together with an international network of sans-papiers and refugees initiated since 2 months a European network to build a great march to Brussels in may 2014.
Today, we are calling for solidarity to organize the resistance: all Groups who feel politically concerned by the abolishment of the minimum score in the EU parliament that will let extreme right parties enter the EU assembly, by Frontex and Dublin II, by the racist and excluding policy of the EU and the rise of fascist forces throughout Europe! Continue reading →
We are asylum seekers, refugees, undocumented migrants, Europeans with a «migration background», we are all those who have no full citizenship. We are those who wear the label «not from here». Our real or supposed origin is an argument to deprive us of many rights. Yet our life is here, and like everyone else we just want to build a decent life for us and our families. Continue reading →
“Lampedusa in Berlin – Wir bleiben hier!” Mittwoch, 23. Oktober 2013 um 13 Uhr Oranienplatz
Wir fordern:
– Sofortige aufenthaltsrechtliche Anerkennung der Gruppe“Lampedusa in Berlin” !
– Bedingungsloser Zugang für illegalisierte Geflüchtete zum Winternotprogramm der Stadt Berlin !
– auf den Winter folgende Finanzierung von Aufenthalt und Unterkunft !
Die Demo soll zu Czaja, Henkel und Wowereit gehen und die Forderungen nach “Bleiberecht für alle” bzw “Haus für den O-Platz” unterstützen. Für beide Forderungen werden Donnerstag Anträge ins Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin eingebracht, Mittwoch abend wird es eine unterstützende Resolution im Bezirksparlament von Kreuzberg geben. Continue reading →
News of Berlin Refugee Movement – from inside 