Kompass-newsletter No. 127 - 09/2024
Brief report from the We`ll Come United summer camp +++ After Solingen... +++ 13 to 15 September in Chemnitz: Symposium „Erinnern Versammeln“ +++ AKKA campaign - First Aid Argumentation Kit Health insurance for all! +++ Medico campaign against the criminalisation of migration +++ Resistance to payment cards in Hamburg and Munich +++ Echoes No. 13; Hold tight! +++ Around 6 October: Decentralised week of action against Frontex +++ 11 October: 10 years of Alarm Phone and new reports on the Central and Eastern Mediterranean +++ 18/19 October: From Tripoli to Berlin - Event with Refugees in Libya +++ Statistics on Dublin deportations from Germany in 2023 +++ Review: Pro Asyl award ceremony +++ Outlook: Transborder Summer Camp III in 2025...
Dear friends,
First the terrible attack in Solingen and its blatant instrumentalisation in the entire mainstream, then the elections in Thuringia and Saxony with the - unfortunately expected - additional shift to the right: both are now followed by the next outbidding competition regarding discrimination against refugees, for deportations and border closures. Fear-mongering and racism are escalating to a new level.
What can we do? ‘Giving up is not an alternative’ was already a slogan last year that has not lost its validity with the further increase in hate speech and externalization discourse. It appears to be the last line of defence for all those who have this choice or can afford it. Around 30% of the population in Germany would potentially be affected by the rampant fantasies of exclusion. At the same time, the recruitment programmes for needed workers are continuing and it should be clear to anyone with a shred of common sense left in them that the economy would quickly collapse without ‘migrant labour’. In this respect, the media agitation and absurd ‘emergency’ scenarios could also be read as calculated ‘strategies of tension’. Racism and ethnic divisions, inequalities and hierarchies, deprivation of rights and criminalisation as means of maintaining an exploitative system in a multiple crisis?
So what to do? We continue with solidarity on the routes and we fight for every boat. We continue to struggle for the right to stay and we fight against every deportation. Freedom of movement and equal rights for all remain our compass. We oppose the brutalisation of the border regime, the normalisation of failure to provide assistance at sea and the push and pullback practices on land and at sea with transnationally networked support structures that follow the autonomies of the refugee and migration movements. Basta!
The Welcome to Europe network has been in existence for 15 years in September 2024. The Alarm Phone will be ten years old in October 2024, as will civil sea rescue next year and, as an impressive updated graphic shows, it has certainly not become weaker. All of these support structures are working with the aim of making themselves superfluous if there were safe passages and no more visa regime. ‘Ferries not Frontex’! We are perhaps further away from this demand than ever before, but history shows that there are always surprising positive breaks and unexpected dynamics of struggles.
In this newsletter, we have included statistics on Dublin deportations in 2023, which vividly demonstrate how this intra-European deportation system was cut, first and foremost through the resistance of those affected. Even if ‘Dublin’ has hit the headlines again after Solingen and new discrimination is now being planned from all possible directions, there are not only good reasons but also many good experiences to throw sand in the gears and intervene to block these deportations again and again.
We end the intro with an impressive scene from Thuringia. The Welcome United summer camp took place in the small town of Waltershausen a week before the elections. Around 150 people took part, including refugees from various camps in Thuringia. At the beginning of the closing plenary session, several Syrian activists took the floor to talk about their successful protests, with which they had managed to close the inhumane Hermsdorf reception centre in June 2024. And how - also inspired by the workshops and discussions at the summer camp - they want to drive forward their networking, self-organisation and resistance against deportations and exclusion in the coming months. It was a decisive and courageous statement, which also seems to us to be the best response to the election results in Thuringia.
With best regards and solidarity,
The Kompass team