Kompass-newsletter No. 133 - 04/2025

Drastic outbreak of racist violence against Black people in Libya +++ O-Platz-Camp and new edition of Daily Resistance +++ 2-4 May in Berlin: We`ll Come United Meeting +++ Frag den Staat: Leaked document on coalition negotiations regarding migration +++ Poland decides to suspend asylum law - Pro Asyl: ‘Announced pushbacks’ +++ Pro Asyl: Groundbreaking ruling from Greece - End of the EU-Turkey deal? +++ El Hiblu 3 - Searching for Justice, Six Years On +++ Migration Control: Re-Constructing the Colour Line +++ Review: 15-16 March in Rome: transnational network meeting against detentions +++ Outlook: 5-10 August 2025 - Transborder Summer Camp III; September 2025: transnational chain of actions

Dear friends,

Last Sunday (30 March 2014) afternoon, the solidarity group ‘Community for All’ once again organised a ‘prison tremor’ in front of the deportation prison in Darmstadt-Eberstadt. There was no major mobilisation, but about 50 people gathered in front of the wall, with a music and loudspeaker system that was used in the beginning to greet the detainees and announce a telephone number. The response from inside came immediately, with loud shouts from the window cracks, which, despite being barred, are built in such a way that they cannot really be opened. But the internees have their mobile phones, so they can call the number given and then turn it up loud. This results in a remarkably clear and lively communication between the inside and the outside: the background and problems of detention are described, contacts for further counselling are exchanged, music requests are transmitted, which are then immediately played. At some point, small notes with demands and a thank you are stuck in many of the window slits...

The example from Darmstadt is perhaps symbolic of the times. The prison with the wall and the high fences symbolises the migration policy that is currently being discussed in Berlin by the coalition government, which is made up of the conservative party and the social democrats. The policy is set to further tighten the country's immigration laws. ‘[...] In coordination with our European neighbours, we will also carry out rejections at the common borders for asylum applications [...],’ the leaked document of the negotiations between CDU/CSU and SPD states quite unabashedly. Suspension of family reunification, starving asylum seekers in Dublin procedures, Tunisia on the list of safe countries of origin, options for withdrawing German citizenship...: the walls are getting higher and higher, the barbed wire sharper and sharper. The protest action against this seems weak, at least on the defensive, and yet its existence and persistence makes a difference: those unjustly imprisoned are not forgotten, and no legal means will be left untried to stop the planned deportations. An unspectacular Sunday afternoon with the nevertheless significant common message: „We will not give up fighting for our rights. We remain in solidarity. The deportation prison should be demolished…"

And this could be applied to almost all regions of Europe and their externalized borders. In Poland, the complete suspension of the right of asylum is intended to legalise push-backs, while people on the move repeatedly make their way through the forests with the help of solidarity groups. In Libya, a pogrom atmosphere prevails against all black people – fuelled by the so-called government and militias – while the self-organisation of refugees in Libya and supporters tirelessly bring the voices and demands of those affected to the public and document the human rights violations with a hotline, offering at least consolation. Or in Crete, which is increasingly becoming a point of arrival for people who set out for Europe from eastern Libya, who are left there without adequate care by the institutions, while civil groups are trying to provide a welcome and information for onward travel.           

From Darmstadt to Crete – it is and remains this everyday resistance that has become entrenched or even multiplied on the routes and in the places of arrival. Or that is constantly being revived against repression, against powerlessness and despair. This resistance forms the underground for more offensive actions, as they are slowly taking shape in a transnational chain of protests for September 2025. And it keeps the collective memory alive for times when the border regime can be undermined or overrun again on a larger scale. The corresponding slogan remains: No border is forever.

In this spirit, the Kompass Crew