Kompass-newsletter No. 148 - Oktober 2026

12 years of Alarm Phone +++ 24 October: Coordinated demonstrations against deportations at airports in Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne/Bonn, Hanover, Leipzig, Berlin… +++ Pro Asyl on 100 days of the GEAS +++ 5 years of Refugees in Libya and the Mitiga campaign with a view to 4 May 2027 in The Hague +++ migration-control.info on Haftar’s interception regime in eastern Libya and on racist mobilisation in western Libya +++ Border Forensics: New investigation into the deadly pushback regime at the Polish-Belarusian border +++ medico: articles and information on racist violence in South Africa +++ Review: action in Hamburg against Rheinmetall; 40 years of Pro Asyl: a retrospective +++ Outlook: 26 to 28 November: ‘We’ll Come United’ conference in Leipzig

Dear friends.

In the last issue of Kompass, we had already congratulated Refugees in Libya on their fifth anniversary. At a successful and well-attended event last Saturday (3 October 2026) in Berlin, the selforganisation demonstrated once again that it has developed into a key voice for the rights of ‘People on the Move’. Furthermore, the ‘Mitiga Campaign’ – currently in preparation and named after the detention centre in Libya that will be at the centre of the trial against the torturer El Hishri in The Hague, due to begin on 4 May 2027 – has the potential to spark a transnational mobilisation to expose the ongoing EU pushback policy, see https://www.refugeesinlibya.org/mitiga-campaign.

This coming weekend, another transnational project will have its 12th anniversary: the Alarm Phone. To mark the occasion, a four-page newspaper will be published on 10 October 2026 in the German newspaper *Taz* as a supplement. Quote from the introduction: “12 years. 24/7 working in shifts. For 4,380 days and nights, always on standby and constantly in action. We launched our project on 11 October 2014. We have succeeded in establishing a continuous structure of solidarity along the migration routes. During this time, 11,000 boats in distress from all the seas off the EU’s external borders have contacted our hotline. From the Aegean and from the central and western Mediterranean. From the Atlantic as well as from the English Channel. Over the years, our telephone number has spread throughout many migrant communities and across many regions…”, see the newspaper (in German) here: https://alarmphone.org/de/campaigns/12-jahre-alarm-phone.

Various groups and networks are calling for simultaneous protests on Saturday 24 October at several deportation airports: in Munich and Frankfurt, in Cologne/Bonn and Hanover, in Leipzig and Berlin. This joint mobilisation offers the chance to build a stronger, germanwide coordinated resistance movement against “the brutalisation of deportation practices, the expansion of pre-deportation detention and the unbelievable plans for mass deportations through the construction of new deportation terminals”, see https://www.welcome-united.org/articles/2dmGEzgVa6S15qXyk780oT. 

When the We’ll Come United network meets for a joint conference in Leipzig at the end of November, the fight against deportations will certainly be a key focus.

In this spirit and with solidarity greetings, 

the Kompass Crew