Kompass-Newsletter No. 77 - April 2019

 

Mare Jonio enforces open port in Lampedusa! +++ 108 refugees assert disembarkation in Malta!! +++ WTM Alarm Phone meeting in Tunis +++ From 1.4. in Berlin, Oldenburg, Munich: The right to a humane livelihood applies to all people - against organized refusal of social services by German authorities! +++ 6. to 16.4. in nine cities: Event tour with Aboubakari Razakou, association of deported people in Togo (ATE) +++ On 27/28 April in Dresden: We`ll Come United +++ From 2 May exhibition in Berlin: Yallah - About the Balkan route +++ 10-12 May in many cities: Action days against 100 years deportation detention +++ 17.-19.5. in Hamburg: Solidarity City meets the right to city forum +++ Alarm Phone Sahara: Website goes online +++ Review: Ellwangen: Continuing to fight for basic and human rights for all +++ Outlook: 9-14 July near Nantes/France: Transborder Summer Camp; 24 August: big demonstration in Saxony; 31 August in Büren: big demonstration against 100 years of deportation detention

DEAR FRIENDS!

Mare Jonio, the ship of the Italian rescue organisation Mediterranea Saving Humans, which was only founded last summer, has recently impressively demonstrated how the rights of refugees and migrants at sea can be enforced even in times of supposedly closed ports. On 18 March 2019, Mare Jonio rescued 49 people from the "death zone", just before the Libyan militias, which were equipped with EU funds, were able to intercept the boat. Shortly thereafter Mediterranea not only managed to force the disembarkation in Lampedusa against a foaming Salvini, but is already preparing for the next mission. The ship, which was confiscated at first, had to be released again after a court decision on 27 March 2019.

Two days later, on 29 March, a group of 108 refugees spectacularly managed their rescue and landing in Malta. On the instructions of EU air surveillance, the shipwrecked had been taken in by the oil tanker "Elhiblu1" and were to be sent back to Libya in an already practiced and illegal manner. But those affected resisted and were able to avert the impending push back to the hell of the camps. "In other words: The 108 refugees, among them 31 women and children, successfully and legitimately resisted the abduction by the EU states back to Libya" (FFM). Nevertheless, several young people, two of them still minors, are now to be tried for taking hostages and even "terrorism", and this "scandal in scandal" requires broad solidarity with the accused.

49 rescued in Lampedusa, 108 in Malta: two encouraging current examples of solidarity and self-organisation from the central Mediterranean, which has otherwise become the main stage of the deadly EU exclusion policy. Last act: The Eunavfor Med Operation withdraws its ships in order to avoid the embarrassment of rescue. Instead, it will switch completely to air surveillance, whose data will then go to the Libyan militias for more effective interception operations. The externalisation of the border regime should be perfected using Libya as an example, and it is suspected that this will not be done despite but because of the systematic human rights violations there. Racist deterrence at all costs, which is simultaneously reflected in a gigantic armament of Frontex, in the ongoing charter deportations to Afghanistan or in the "ordered return" legal delusion of the German Interior Ministry.

But Mare Jonio and "Elhiblu1" show how even the central Mediterranean route remains contested. And this applies all the more to the Aegean and the passage from Morocco to Spain, where it is even more open whether and what new dynamics the persistence of migration can unfold there in the coming months. The solidarity movements "from the Sea to the Cities" remain an important factor in these contested areas, and they extend into campaigns for equal rights, against deportation terror and for solidarity-based cities. "Against the exclusion and criminalisation of EU citizens social services to ensure the livelihood of all those who live here" calls the Network Europe in Movement with first actions at the beginning of April. "100 years deportation detention - 100 years innocently in detention" is the title of the germanwide campaign, with decentralised protests in front of all deportation prisons in May. And in other cities initiatives for citizens' asylum are being launched in order to concretely and practically stand up against deportations. Join the Anti-Deportation Industry!

With solidarity and anti-racist greetings,

the compass crew

P.S.: With spring we start with a new fresh layout. We thank a friend from Hamburg for the idea and conception.