Kompass-newsletter No. 94 - 05/2021

 

1 May: Transnational Social Strike +++ 6 May in Aschaffenburg: Trial for calling for CitizenAsylum/Bürger:innenAsyl +++ 8 May in Kassel: Demonstration - Remember, Resist, Consequences - In solidarity against right-wing violence +++ Preventing deportations +++ From the request in the federal parliament +++ https://noborderassembly.blackblogs.org/de/abschiebe-alarm/ +++ Protests against Afghanistan deportations +++ Protests against detention in Darmstadt +++ https://eu-relocation-watch.info +++ Criminalisation of Church Asylum: Acquittal for Monk, Indictment against Abbess +++ Indictment against Iuventa +++ Alarm Phone 1: Push Back report Aegean +++ Alarm Phone 2: Coordinating a maritime disaster: Up to 130 people drown off Libya +++ Report from Sea to Cities +++ Balkan Bridge - First Newsletter +++ Review: Solidarity with El Hiblu 3 +++ Outlook: June 18th + June 19th Border Abolition 2021; 19.6.2021 Bicycle Ride for Hanau; 25/26 June online: from Sea to Cities Conference; Zapatistas on tour in Europe this summer; September in Palermo: Camp & Convergence

Dear friends,

"The Transnational Coordination of Migrants calls on all migrants - men, women, LGBTQIA*, refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented people - for a day of transnational struggle. We invite all workers, collectives, feminist and anti-racist groups and trade unions to make this May Day a day for the freedom, power and dignity of migrants. A day of strike against institutional racism that supports exploitation and reproduces patriarchal violence."

This is how the call on the website of the "Transnational Social Strike" begins, which many groups from many countries have signed, but so far none from Germany.

We are also promoting https://www.transnational-strike.info so prominently here again, because we want to inspire anti-racist networks in Germany becoming more aware of this approach, which is mainly carried by initiatives in Italy and France, and to consider how they can establish a connection to these struggles. It seems self-evident that exclusion and exploitation are intertwined, that anti-racist struggles are in the context of transnational social liberation. But these connections - and this also applies to our Kompass - often remain underexposed when our focal points of anti-racist mobilisations and documentations move in the triangle between anti-deportation/right-to-stay campaigns, MigrAntifa and the struggle at the external borders.

"Charter deportations to Afghanistan and now even to Sri Lanka, individual deportations to Somalia or Ethiopia. Those responsible no longer know any taboos. The policy of exclusion continues to escalate at all levels: in the countries, in the federal government and at the European level, especially through the border agency Frontex. Deportations at any price: to war, to persecution, to poverty and lack of prospects. To Pakistan or Nigeria, to Tunisia and above all to the Balkan countries.

In 2020 alone, there were 122 charter deportation flights with the participation of the Federal Police and with financial support from Frontex. In total, more than 10,000 people were forcibly flown out during this period of massive Corona travel restrictions. Added to this is the extension of detention. An apparatus of humiliation and violence. Institutional racism!"

With these sentences from the announcement on the appeal process for calling for CitizenAsylum we want to focus on the struggle against deportations in this issue: 

According to information from a request in the federal parliament of Germany on deportations in 2020, the last-minute resistance of those affected on scheduled flights has not decreased. Pilots also repeatedly refuse deportations. In the answers to the above-mentioned small question, information on the names of the airlines involved was refused for the first time, explicitly stating that "these companies are exposed to public criticism and as a result are no longer available for transporting people who are obliged to leave the country to their home countries". The website https://noborderassembly.blackblogs.org/de/abschiebe-alarm/  collects all information and continuously alerts against the Charters of Shame. Again and again there are protests at airports, especially against the deportations to Afghanistan. Sea rescue activists observe and support people who have been rescued in the Mediterranean or survived the crossing, after they were relocated to north-western Europe and ultimately threatened with deportation. Last but not least: In Bavaria, a monk and an abbess successfully and publicly defy the criminalisation of church asylum....

Finally, a fitting quote from the above announcement: "For a future with equal rights for all, in which the deadly border regime and the brutal deportation practice will appear as a criminal chapter of history. Make deportations history."

In this spirit,

The Kompass Crew