(en) Czech, AFED: No one is illegal - Invitation to a lecture tour of the No Borders collective about the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In cooperation with other collectives, we invite you to a series of discussion

evenings, which are part of a lecture tour dedicated to the current situation on
the Polish-Belarusian border. From February 23 to March 4, our friends from the
No Borders Team (NBT) will visit a dozen cities to talk about how inhumane
supposedly civilized Europe can be. ---- No Borders Team is an anarchist
grassroots group uniting individuals from various collectives from all over
Poland and Europe who oppose the actions of border authorities whose aggression
is directed at people seeking refuge in the European Union. ---- As a group, NBT
believes that freedom of movement and residence is a basic human right.
Therefore, they do not agree with the authorities' policy of categorizing people.
No person is illegal and solidarity and mutual aid are the answer to a system
based on xenophobia and contempt for people from different ethnic groups.

In recent times, NBT has been particularly concerned with the situation on the
Polish-Belarusian border, where a barrier made of razor wire was built and where
refugees who try to cross it are treated inhumanely by repressive forces. On the
one hand, the fundamentalist conservative government in Poland protects the lives
of unborn individuals by banning abortion in its misogynistic campaign, but it
allows living people to die of hunger, freezing and self-inflicted injuries with
calmness and contempt. For example, on Sunday, February 12, the body of a
28-year-old woman of Ethiopian origin was found dead on the border between Poland
and Belarus, who died after Polish border guards did not provide her with first aid.

During the "No One Is Illegal" tour, talks will be held in the following dates
and cities:

Thursday 23 February - Hradec Králové
Bajkazyl (Czechoslovak Army 216/41)
from 6.30 p.m

Friday 24 February - Liberec
Asylum beer bar (Shiroká 302)
from 18.00

Saturday 25 February - Prague
Cross Club (Plynární 23)
from 17.00
The event takes place as part of the Riot Over River Winter benefit festival

Sunday 26 February - Děčín
Teahouse Ve vlnách (Hudečkova 1)
from 6.30 p.m

Monday 27 February - Pilsen
Kulturka ZČU (Sedláčkova 19)
from 18.00

Tuesday 28 February - Brno
Three Tails Base (Tř. kpt. Jaroše 18)
from 6.30 p.m

Wednesday 1 March - Bratislava
Fuga (SNP Square 24)
from 6.30 p.m

Thursday 2. 3. - Trnava️
Kubik (Štefánikova 4)
from 5.30 p.m

Friday 3. 3. - Olomouc
SF Mini (Brněnská 110/49)
from 18.00

Saturday 4. 3. - Orlová
Fur (Masaryk class 1000)
from 8 p.m

Each of the talks will start with a screening of a short film about the
Polish-Belarusian and Polish-Ukrainian borderlands, on which NBT collaborates
with local and other activists. It shows the differences between the two sides of
the European Union's eastern border: one is open and welcomes people who are
fighting against the Russian invasion, and the other at the same time - just 300
km away - is killing people who are fleeing another war.

The screening will be followed by a presentation led by friends from NBT, where
there will also be space for discussion, questions or sharing different
perspectives on how to help people move right now.

If you cannot participate in the tour, but want to support the No Borders Team,
for example financially, you can do so through the Firefond by making a
contribution to help people in guarded centers for foreigners.

https://www.afed.cz/text/7869/nikdo-neni-ilegalni
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca

Poland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia: Pushed back at the door

http://www.ecre.org/poland-bulgaria-czech-republic-hungary-and-slovenia-pushed-back-at-the-door/

Poland, Warsaw's Pensioners and Anarchists Unite Against Gentrification

On a brisk Thursday afternoon, a queue forms in front of a newly privatized four-story 
council estate in Warsaw's Praga district. ---- A century ago it could have been an 
impressive piece of art nouveau architecture, but ? worn away by the years, like most of 
the buildings in Praga ? it now stands as a bleak contrast to the city's shiny financial 
center. The people forming the queue live in the neighborhood, though with the nascent 
privatization of the area it's hard to tell how long they'll be able to stick around for. 
---- The local Tenants' Defense Committee ? who those in the queue are waiting to see ? 
was set up to tackle up this problem, beginning its life as a small family affair. ---- "A 
multiplex cinema was erected in front of our window, where an old movie theater used to 
stand. The vibrations resulting from the use of heavy machinery began to topple the weak 
foundations of our house. The council was suspiciously slow to act, so we organized a 
protest," says Teresa Jasi?ska, who formed the committee several years ago, along with her 
husband Marek and their daughter. "Word of mouth spreads quickly around here, so as people 
heard about our success they started coming to us for advice."

The help they offered at first was primarily from a legal standpoint, but this changed 
radically after a series of unexplained fires hit the district's estate buildings in 2011.

Basements, attics and storage rooms caught fire in rapid succession; at one point there 
were as many as three fires in a single day.

The committee recruited a few more members and put together Patrol Okrzej?wki, named after 
an early 20th century socialist who fought for Poland's independence.

Wearing fluorescent vests bearing the patrol's name, the residents took to the streets, 
arm-in-arm with members of the anarchist Polish Syndicalist Union and denizens of Warsaw's 
few remaining squats.

For months they have been voluntarily taking turns in nightly patrols, aiming to deter 
whoever was repeatedly setting fire to the local buildings.

"You won't burn every one of us!" was the brigade's rally call.

Nobody in Praga believes that the fires were an accident, so who are the alleged arsonists 
behind the attacks?

Every investigation into the fires has been closed due to lack of hard evidence, with the 
police stating that they probably were intentional arsons. Those queuing in front of the 
committee's provisional office point at the building's new owners, but refuse to give me 
their names.

The buildings were privately owned before the war, but were later nationalized by the 
Soviet-approved government in an effort to both crush the bourgeoisie and to streamline 
the reconstruction process.

Some of these previous owners ? or their families ? have tried to reclaim their property 
from the government, claiming it was unlawfully confiscated, but often get fed up with the 
drawn out legal process.

This, according to Marek Jasi?ski ? spokesperson of the Defense Committee and founder of 
the Okrzej?wki Brigades ? is where the new breed of owners step in.

He claims that the same few companies have been buying out the former owners' and the fire 
victims' compensation claims. Then, armed with a host of lawyers (and ? as sociologist and 
local whistle blower Jan ?piewak alleges ? sometimes using falsified documents and 
bribes), they manage to break the council and end up owning more and more neglected homes.

Praga ? with its pre-war buildings and soon-to-be finished Metro line, which connects it 
straight to Warsaw's business hub ? is sure to attract big money. And big money is just 
what the private building owners want, not the meager rents paid by former council tenants.

What big money wants in return are renovated houses (or new ones, replacing the demolished 
structures), beautiful neighbors and a porter. Which, in the developers' eyes, means that 
most of the current tenants need to go.

"It's a mafia," says Witold, who just joined the queue at the committee's door. Of course, 
by "mafia" he doesn't mean Tommy guns and cement shoes, but that the landlords will 
allegedly use illegitimate techniques to evict their current tenants, exploiting their 
lack of knowledge around the few laws that have been put in place to protect them.

He comes straight from the courtroom, having won a case against his new private landlord. 
He asks not to disclose the details of his situation, as there are still legal battles to 
come.

"I ask the committee for legal advice. Consulting professional lawyers on my and my 
mother's income is a definite no go," he says, before reciting some 1960s Polish poetry.

Fear, he says, is the main tactic employed by the building owners while they try to get 
rid of their tenants.

"The people around here are mostly simple folk ? not primitive, but simple. When they're 
sent an official-looking document they won't question its validity. They don't believe 
they have a right or possibility to not agree. Out of all the families in my building, I 
was the only one who decided to fight against the 300 percent rise of our rent. I ain't no 
anarchist ? I just won't allow anybody to take advantage of me."

Witold believes that the more individualized societies are, the easier it is to exploit 
people.

"You're weaker if you feel you're alone," he says. "It's a popular trick. That's the 
reason why no big company ever asks for a class action. Atomization has killed the trade 
unions, now it's killing our neighborhood."

In turn, the Tenants' Defense Committee is trying to get people back together. Their 
events have managed to gather people from all social backgrounds and are a rare 
opportunity to see pensioners (a group generally perceived to be more of the 
Catholic-conservative outlook) shouting their discontent alongside anarchists, 
syndicalists, pacifists and every other breed of welfare supporter.

They demand fairer and more realistic rules on the distribution of social housing; a 
program that will ensure that municipal properties are not privatized and demolished to 
make space for office blocks and condos; and, finally, the construction of new council 
estates in lieu of subsidizing developers who build on cheap land on the city outskirts, 
fueling the gentrification of the center and putting a strain on public services.

To achieve what they've set out to do, they are now shifting from street activism to 
political work.

As well as lobbying the city council, they organize two open advice sessions at the 
committee's provisional headquarters every week, where everyone is welcome to come and ask 
for help. "It's not an easy job," says Bozena Jasinska, a law graduate.

She also claims that development companies have started to spy on them.

"We had several individuals claiming to be students wishing to take internships with us. 
Upon further investigation they turned out to be professional lawyers working for the real 
estate sector ? a few of them even confessed to this," she says. "Apparently, what they 
really wanted was to infiltrate our organization and get to know the ways in which we 
operate. One can only guess why."

Three years ago, one of most prominent activists involved in the tenants' movement was 
found mutilated in a forest on the outskirts of Warsaw. Her name was Jolanta Brzeska and 
she was 64. Initially, suicide was considered a possibility.

"Surely, with her hands tied behind her back, face down in a bonfire, miles away from her 
own home she must have done that herself," says Jasi?ski, sarcastically. Since then, the 
possibility has been eliminated by the court, but the investigation itself was canceled 
earlier this year due to a lack of murder suspects.

The investigation was canceled in April 2013, and this year it was placed under court 
scrutiny.

Currently Jolanta Brzeska's daughter, Magdalena, is also in a legal battle with the new 
owners of her home. They accuse her of owing them more than 14,000 euros ($19,342.40) for 
living there illegally (after they allegedly destroyed her contract).

?The hope of ever finding the murderers might have been forever lost in the first days of 
the investigation,? wrote Gazeta Sto?eczna ? the biggest local newspaper ? on March 1, the 
anniversary of Brzeska?s death.

?Everything was happening too slowly or didn?t happen at all; it took the police a week to 
even identify the victim [...] and only after a few months, after the court experts have 
concluded that the murderers were affiliated with the building development sector, they 
decided to search the car that the owner of her house had been using on the date of the 
murder.?

Ever since, Jolanta Brzeska has become a symbol for the tenants' movements across Warsaw, 
her portraits adorning the walls of buildings throughout Praga.

With similar problems in all major Polish cities, the Tenants' Defense Committee has a 
fight on its hands, and the memory of their murdered friend is what keeps them going.

They are currently working hard to gain broader public support by staying on the right 
side of the law; they recently stopped taking part in eviction blockades, which involved 
clashes with the police and generated a lot of negative publicity, even if the evictees 
were grateful.

As Jan ?piewak points out, by now Praga can be considered a lost battle. Those still 
fighting for their rights are only a minority, with hundreds of families having been 
evicted already.

But the re-privatization problem will not cease ? on a smaller scale it is present in 
every major Polish city as well as the other districts of Warsaw. In the city center, 
claim-buyers are now taking over communal spaces: parks, public squares and even schools.

"This may lead to another unlikely alliance, as it is no longer just council tenants and 
anarchists. Right now, it?s becoming a middle-class problem as well,? says ?piewak.

"For an average Pole, the idea that housing is a right rather than a commodity is still 
something that only the dirty squatters or crazy Amnesty International activists moan 
about," says Polish writer Ja? Kapela.

"Going into debt is the way of obtaining shelter that had supposedly been blessed by the 
God and the market alike. Our society still believes in such ghosts as God or the free 
market. The only fact that slightly shatters that faith is that 60 percent of Polish 
citizens have absolutely no chance of getting a mortgage loan."

Resist Festival IV in Warsaw on June'14‏ - Poland

Dear All,

on June 13-14-15.2014 in Warsaw, Poland, we are preparing No-Border block under the d.i.y. Resist Festival IV. The festival is about resistance strategies of social movements. Let me know if any of you or people from your groups/collectives/organizations will be around Warsaw or at least Poland these days.

We would like to invite activists from no-border network from different sites of EU to share their strategies of no-border resistance.

Please, contact me on my private e-mail address or resistfest@riseup.net.

More info about the Resist Festival you will find here:
http://resistfest.wordpress.com/

Greetings

Lukas

festiwaloporu.wordpress.com / resistfest.wordpress.com

antyseksistowsko.wordpress.com/
emmahostel.pl
massmilicja.wordpress.com
wylewka.wordpress.com

[noborder] Journées d’action contre Frontex à Varsovie

Anti-Frontex Days: Stand up against Euro Apartheid!

Throughout May and June of this year, Warsaw is to become the exhibition center of European apartheid. During these months, as Euro 2012 fans take in the international atmosphere of the tournament in beer parks specially set up for them around the city, Frontex, headquartered in Warsaw at 1, United Nations Plaza will celebrate its 7th anniversary. For last year’s birthday festivities the agency organized “European Border Guard’s Day”, a networking event with film screenings and presentations of the newest border control technologies. This May, however, is of particular importance as Euro 2012 will allow Warsaw itself to become a showcase of segregation and discrimination, or the tactics of human selection predicated by market value that European authorities call migration management. What else but their ability to consume and be consumed makes this expected wave of 800,000-1 million not a typhoon greater than any weather predicament warranting Frontex intervention on Lampedusa, but a large group of “newcomers”? In light of the chauvinism of the European authorities to the people seeking refuge during the revolutions of this past year, Euro 2012 is to be a display, ad absurdum, of their lame dictatorial practices: the self-proclaimed referees of democracy present apartheid under the guise of games.

Euro Apartheid in Warsaw

Warsaw and other host cities have been preparing for months. Unsurprisingly, no state of emergency, collective charter flights for deportees or Frontex RABIT teams have been put on alert. Instead, Poland and Ukraine have reached accross the Schengen divide to make border crossing a more pleasant experience for newcomers; infrastructure has been improved and special train connections are being set up between tournament cities. In Warsaw, welcome flags already line the streets, colorful flower beds with the tournament logo have been planted around the city, Carlsberg and CocaCola are now sponsoring the bridge across the Vistula river from the city center to the National Stadium, where the opening kick-off is to take place. An investment greater than total public spending in the city for years to come and the most expensive stadium in the world to date, the National Stadium was in majority constructed by workers without documents, both migrant and internally displaced. Although they have not been invitied to enjoy the tournament and officially they never existed, stadium construction and in turn Euro 2012 could not take place without their cheap labor because costs would have been too high.

Construction of the National Stadium also procured other costs that Warsaw authorities have not settled to date. The sprawling stadium complete with parking lots required the liquidation of the former Jarmark Europa, the largest open-air market in Eastern Europe and place of self-employment for both numerous migrant communities and local residents. For those excluded by glamorous shopping centers and luxurious downtown cafes, Jarmark Europa was the all-purpose supply store, cafeteria and town square in one, not omitting the most vibrantly multicultural place in Warsaw. Its closing two years ago unleashed unprecedented police brutality toward migrant vendors, criminalized for selling bootleg goods that dared undermine the commercial order. This violence culminated in the fatal shooting of Maxwell Itoya, a 36 year-old of Nigerian origin, on May 23, 2010. The police murderer responsible has been returned to service, and officially the case remains unresolved. The shooting of Maxwell Itoya coincided with Frontex’s 5th anniversary, which took place on the same day, just accross the river.

Frontex and the Polish authorities

For the Polish authorities, the 2011-2012 season has provided a formidable occasion to prove its dedication to free market values and border protection. The Polish EU presidency contributed the expansion of Frontex’s competencies, most notably clearing the legislative path for the creation of a European Border Guard headed by Frontex. Conveniently for public relations weary European leaders, this translates to assuring that collective expulsions, international witch-hunts and collaborative relationships with tyrant dictators will no longer sully the image of European democracy. Further toward this end, the Polish presidency campaigned for allowing Frontex to purchase its own border monitoring equipment. This new competency will not only allow the agency to establish direct relationships with security corporations, but thanks to new technologies such as the TALOS unmanned vehicle border monitoring system, will enable Frontex to make border protection entirely inhuman. With such developments on the horizon, Frontex has proclaimed a new committment to human rights surprisingly not by shutting itself down, but by establishing a “Consultative Forum on Fundamental Rights” and designating a “Fundamental Rights Officer”. Predictably, these new measures have proven a pretense as Frontex was recently exposed in a report by Human Rights Watch, which found that, the agency violates several human rights by: denying people the right to seek asylum in connection with the breach of the non-refoulement principle and the principle of non-discrimination; by violating the right to leave any country; by violating the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment, and also by contravening the EU’s provisions for personal data protection.

For 2012, Frontex plans on expanding its activities beyond the border, thus enacting the new Global Approach to migration. The agency is convinced that real border policing starts not at the border itself but beyond it, through the use of data collection systems and other identity control measures. As human rights are for Frontex only a matter of legitimizing discourse, the agency sees its preventative work beyond the border, like Operation Hera which aimed to stop migrants from West Africa reaching the Canary Island, as saving lives. Frontex’s objective, in a nutshell, is to strike a balance between minimising the threat of illegality at the border while maximising the ease and convenience of bona fide travellers. Euro 2012 is an mass event for bona fide travellers.To Euro Apartheid 2012 we say: No Traveller is Illegal!

The Warsaw noborder collective and occupied social center Syrena invites all to a week of actions against Frontex and Euro Apartheid 2012. Throughout the week starting on May 18th we will engage in creative interventions in public space around Warsaw and various other activites, including film screenings, discussions, book presentations and concerts.

Anti-Frontex Days: May 18-23, Warsaw, Poland

Please inform us about your arrival up to the end of April.

Bron : 

Feel free to ask questions: anti_frontex@riseup.net