30th of November and 1st of December 2009 in Brussels – Transnational Protests in front of the EU – Justice and Home Affairs – Meeting
[noborder.org] Refugee Protection and Migrants Rights instead of a brutal EU-Border-regime! No to the repressive Stockholm program! After Tampere and The Hague, the Stockholm program will constitute the next 5-year-framework for Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) within the EU and its memberstates. The new program claims to build up the ‚area of freedom, justice and security‘. But in fact it will continue to implement an even tighter regime of surveillance and control and will promote a securitisation of social life, undermining all civil rights and privacy despite contrary claims.
Those most affected are refugees and migrants, denounced and criminalized as ‚illegals‘ and hunted by national borderguards and the EU-agency Frontex. With the "road map of Stockholm" the EU and national governments go on to escalate their border regimes to a real war as Frontex‘ role in militarising the borders will be strengthened once again. Many thousand people have died and drowned trying to cross the borders of Europe over the last years, hundreds of thousands have been detained and deported. Refoulement is a daily practice at all hot spots of the EU external border : from Hungary and Slovakia to Ukraine, from Greece to Turkey, from Italy to Libya and from Spain to Morocco. The western European Schengen states and Britain are the driving forces in externalising migration control. Through the Dublin regulations people who seek asylum from persecution and manage to evade the border controls and reach European soil are made to stay in or are being forced back to the Eastern and Southern EU-countries.
Refugees are fleeing war zones and persecution but also all forms of devastation. Leaving poverty and misery, migrants are looking for a better life and perspectives. Western industries are responsible for a historical climate catastrophe, just accelerating impoverishment. Economical weapons from the global north cause destruction and displacements all over the global south. A separation between movements of flight and migration is not possible anymore, and both clearly reflect and challenge the complex system of global injustice.
As bordercrossers in Ceuta or the European East, as boat people in the mediterranean sea, in fights against detention camps and for legalisation and rights all over Europe, no one can ignore the transnational dimension and the growing significance of migrants and refugees struggles. That is the background: men and women, minors and children, who fled or took their right to move, are confronted with deterrent, mistreatment and discrimination: arrested for months or years in closed camps or inhuman prisons, denied their fundamental social rights, exploited in the low wage jobs, often blackmailed by employers and threatened with deportation.
A "free, just and secure‘ Europe would look entirely different:
* it needs an extension of protection for refugees, including any life-threatening circumstance;
* it needs access for every person to a better asylum system in the country s/he has chosen by him/herself;
* it needs legal options to migrate to better and safe living conditions;
* it needs the right to move and stay for every human being regardless of origin or identity.
All these needs are not more than first steps for another Europe in a world with equal global rights on a social and political level.
Following these demands we invite for a 2-days program to Brussels:
Monday, 30th of November:
* 2 p.m.: Press-Conference with experts and testimonies from the various hotspots of the EU-borderregime;
* 5 p.m.: Public protest with a life-jacket-installation in reference to the struggle of boatpeople; Public Screenings with voices from Pagani and Patras, from Ceuta and Calais;
* 7.30 p.m.: Panel-debate: How to resist the war against refugees and migrants? Refugee Protection and Migrants Rights instead of a Border-regime!
Tuesday, 1st of December:
* 9 a.m. at Schuhmann-Station: Protest-Action near the EU-JHA-conference building.
More detailed informations will follow soon.
more information: Contact: frassainfo@kein.org