BLOCKUPY INTERNATIONAL
February 23, 2016
On the side of the migrants!
Freedom of movement, freedom from austerity!
On Friday February 12th the EU commission sent another
intolerable ultimatum to Greece. If the country does not tighten its borders
and install immediately the so called hotspots for the registration and
segregation of the incoming migrants, it will be expelled from the Schengen
community. The ultimatums imposed on Greece in all these last months and years
– via the threat of a Grexit – were put in force on the skin of those suffering
from the effects of austerity measures; this one – now via the threat to exit
the Schengen space – is played out on the skin of migrants. This does not only
show the arrogance of the European institutions, it also demonstrates which
measures the EU is willing to apply in order to stop the flow of migrants from
crossing its borders. It becomes clear when we look at the militarization of
the Aegean Sea, where NATO ships are positioned to stop migrants from arriving
in Greece – the Schengen space. It is evident at the Greek-Macedonian border
where migrants are deported, segregated and selected, like numbers and shares. Furthermore,
establishing Turkey as a "buffer zone" with detention centers
directly connected to warehouses where refugees, adult and children, are put to
work for free, exemplifies once more of what it means for the EU to handle the
"migrant crisis".
On its external borders the EU wages again a "war on migrants
and refugees" and performs its leading role as a cause of impoverishment
and injustice.
However, this war against migrants and
refugees does not happen only at the EU external borders. The internal borders
of Europe are all the more effective, as the proposal of suspending the
Schengen agreement on free movement shows. The tension between the EU
administration and the member states shows that the force of the migrant
movement is challenging the EU constitution in its innermost. While many of the
member states “reclaim” their right to exploit and limit the migrants'
movements in their own way – be it by closing its frontiers, like Hungary, or
by robbing the migrants of their goods, as in Denmark, or by introducing
stricter and stricter caps on asylum and immigration claims, as in Austria, –, the
EU is clearly attempting to turn millions of men and women into work animals. And
it does so by approving measures that are the continuation of austerity by
other means. The blackmail of the residence permit, the extreme precarity to
which migrants are destined, the cuts in welfare and wages – these are more and
more internal boundaries that affect the life of millions of migrants. These
measures go exactly in the same direction as the austerity measures we know
with their effects on the life of millions of European citizens: insecurity of
life, poverty, instability of social rights, precarization in the workplaces,
divisions that make it all more difficult to build a common opposition.
This is not the Europe we want!
We do not want to remain
silent or just declare our solidarity from a distance. Instead, with
decisiveness we demand the rights and social justice for all – by claiming the
freedom of movement and an unconditional residence permit for all those
arriving and traveling in Europe, by fighting against each border that is meant
to weaken the project of a Europe for all.
ð On the 1st of
March we have the occasion to express our refusal of the way in which the EU is
handling its "migrant crisis" by calling to participate in the transnational
day of action against borders and precarization, promoted by the Transnational
Social Strike Platform and in which almost twenty cities throughout Europe are
taking part.
ð We will do it also in
Greece, on the 5th of March, when activists in Greece will rally against
the detention centers, the hot spots and the militarization of the Aegean.
ð In the upcoming months we
will support the fight against the EU border policies along the Balkan route
where numerous groups organize the opposition against the deportation and
detention of incoming migrants, and we will support as well a transnational
campaign against all fences.
ð And finally we support to
all the already planned and future initiatives of mobilization targeting the
attempt to restore the internal borders in Schengen area, as the Austrian
Government is preparing on the frontier with Slovenia (Spielfeld) and Italy (in
particular the Brenner and Tarvisio). Disobey the borders regime of control,
spreading on transnational level all possible practices in solidarity and in
sabotage of its barbed-wire fences, it is at this time not only a right, but a
duty.
On
the side of the migrants!
Freedom of movement, freedom from austerity!
Stay tuned for calls and information:
contact us at international@blockupy-frankfurt.org
or
Blockupy
International, Feb. 23rd 2016
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