Kompass-newsletter No. 121 - 02/2024
Mass protests in Germany against right-wing extremist fantasies of expulsion +++ 6 February: CommemorActions to mark 10 years of the Tarajal massacre +++ 17 February in Hanau: germanwide memorial demonstration to mark the fourth anniversary of the racist terrorist attack +++ Pro Asyl: payment card as an instrument of discrimination +++ Borders in Motion - Echoes No. 10 +++ Refugees in Libya: campaign for evacuation launched in Bologna +++ France: protests against new migration law +++ Review: Transnational Social Strike Meeting and European assembly of women and migrants +++ Outlook: 26-28 April in Frankfurt: We`ll Come United conference in preparation...
Dear friends.
Who could have imagined at the end of last year or the beginning of this year in Germany, that hundreds of thousands would suddenly take to the streets against the AfD and the shift to the right? Obviously, the Correctiv collective's investigation about the Potsdam secret meeting on 10 January 2024 unleashed a dynamic that had been building up for many months. However, the huge protest rallies in so many cities against the racist expulsion fantasies of the extreme right and against AfD-fascist coup plans have impressively demonstrated in recent weeks that hundreds of thousands are not in the mood for Nazis and their racist political ideas.
At the same time - and this has so far only played a minor role in the protests - the coalition government parties are stepping up the real policy of deportation and exclusion and the CDU is even planning - in line with its party friends in the UK - to outsource all asylum procedures to Rwanda and other third countries. This makes it all the more important that anti-racist groups and self-organised initiatives get involved with and in the current mass-protests, intervene and make it clear that resistance must be directed equally against the current brutalisation, e.g. against so-called "repatriation improvements" or against the establishment of (CEAS) detention camps at the EU's external borders.
The germanwide network We'll Come United (WCU) decided at a coordination meeting in Darmstadt in mid-January with delegates from 20 cities to organise an anti-racist conference in Frankfurt at the end of April 2024. Initial priorities for the program have already been set: the fight against deportations and camps, the campaign against immigration authorities, the construction and extension of solidarity structures at the external borders and along the refugee routes. A many-voiced and transnational space is to be created over two days in panels and working groups: for exchange and mutual empowerment in everyday struggles, for strategic discussions and not least for concrete planning of practical mobilisations in the further course of 2024. WCU can and wants to refer to the strong refugee and migration movements, whose sustained assertiveness is reflected in the high arrival figures for 2023.
Last but not least: "Refugees in Libya", the self-organisation of refugees that emerged from the historic 2021 protest cycle in Tripoli, organised an impressive kick-off event for an evacuation campaign for "Human Rights Defenders" in Bologna at the end of January. At the same time, this translocal network, the „Alliance with Refugees in Libya", is setting up a new hotline to support migrants and refugees in Libya on a daily basis and to document human rights violations. Over the next few months, the project plans to tour various European cities with an exhibition and deserves all the support it can get.
With best regards in solidarity,
The Kompass crew