Kompass-Newsletter No. 83 - 11/2019
Events & Appeal for donations for 5 years Alarm Phone +++ Mediterranean-Monologues on Tour +++ Tribunal in Chemnitz and Zwickau +++ EU-Turkey-Deal and Defend Rojava: Appeal of Medico and Press Release of Pro Asyl +++ Free El Hiblu 3 - Campaign in preparation +++ Review: Halle: Remembrance against right-wing terror; strategy conference in Berlin +++ Outlook: We`ll Come United in January 2020 in Rhein-Main; germanwide consultation meeting in Göttingen in February
Dear friends!
„Those who, with each shift, remove a brick from a wall and add it to a bridge..." This simple yet powerful sentence ends the collage of a self-description in the brochure of the WatchTheMed Alarm Phones in reference to their 5th anniversary (see alarmphone.org). Currently, almost every night boats from the Aegean Sea report to the hotline and the emergency calls from the central Mediterranean are particularly challenging. When civilian rescue ships are in the death zone off the coast of Libya and the Alarm Phone transmits the positions of boats to the rescue centers in Rome or Malta, a dramatic race begins. The EU authorities are doing everything they can to ensure that the boats are intercepted by the Libyan coastguard at the last minute. If the Libyan militias arrive too late - as recently happened again on 26 October 2019 when Alan Kurdi was in operation - they will try to disrupt the rescue or even prevent it by threatening to use armed force. A week earlier, on 18 October, the Alarm Phone succeeded in documenting a particularly blatant EU-Libyan push back collaboration. The affected boat with 50 people had already reached the Maltese search and rescue zone on its own. Nevertheless, the authorities in Valetta ordered a ship from Libya to pick up the people and send them back to the hell of the torture camps - a frontal violation of all refugee and human rights.
While at the beginning of November the network of the Alarm Phone with 150 activists from many cities in Europe and North Africa in Marseille discussed possibilities for action at the external borders, the (third) tribunal on "Breaking the NSU Complex" took place in Chemnitz and Zwickau. „We accuse - Defend Solidarity“ was the intention, and more than 400 people from various communities and initiatives came together to commemorate the victims of the NSU, the victims of racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim violence, to name and accuse the perpetrators and structures - and to celebrate the society of the many. And that in Saxony! "The three days were emotionally dense and intense, with many familiar, but above all many new young voices, faces and stories; full of concentration, perceptible empathy, shared grief, anger and extremely moving moments. A clever move, successful in every respect". An important sign in the East, after the elections in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia, and not least to pick up the announcement from the Power Parade block at the demonstration in August in Dresden: MigrAntifa!
We also put the impressive photo of "Migrantifa United" in Chemnitz on the first page of this newsletter because of the background slogan: Solidarity with Rojava! "The invasion of Northern Syria by the Turkish army is not only a sign of Erdoğans War against Rojava. It is the latest expression of the total failure of European migration and foreign policy: a policy that does nothing to solve the worldwide flight problem, but systematically intensifies it... Moria, Idlib, Rojava and the Turkish war to enforce an alleged protection zone, into which one million Syrian refugees are to be forcibly resettled: European migration policy has tied the fates of millions of people together and exchanged them for a dead pledge for a European truce". An appeal initiated by medico international sums up to the point the interconnection between war and the externalization of the border regime, between so-called protection zones and hotspot camps.
In this spirit: Sink the EU-Turkey deal - Defend Rojava!
Your compass team