Kompass-newsletter No. 102 - 03/2022

 

Stop the war - Open the Borders! +++ 8 March: Strike the War +++ 16.3. everywhere: "Time to listen" - Social Media Campaign for Refugees in Libya +++ 26/27.3. on Malta: Freedom Conference for El Hiblu 3 +++ Big Boza in Melilla +++ Alarm Phone: Central Med Analysis +++ Pro Asyl on murderous Push-Backs in the Aegean +++ Reviews: CommemorAction on 6.2.; Second anniversary of the murders in Hanau +++ Outlook: Iuventa trial in Sicily in May 2022; NSU tribunal in Nuremberg in early June 2022; Transborder Summer Camp II near Nantes in July 2022...

Dear friends,

Ten days of Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, thousands dead and about 1.5 million people on the run. The imperial mania leaves us stunned and angry. Completely unpredictable where the escalation of armed violence will lead over the next days and weeks. "No to War. For a Transnational Politics of Peace" is the title of a statement published by the Transnational Social Strike platform at the beginning of March and signed by groups and collectives from many countries:

„We stand together with all those in Ukraine who suffer the outbreak of the war. We stand with all those in Russia who oppose the Putin regime. We back whoever opposes the war from all sides, and we say that all military and economic reciprocal retaliations must stop immediately. The massacre of arms must be stopped as well as a further crisis looming over the life of workers, migrants, women and men that struggle for their daily life. While nationalists preach their actions in the name of identities and interests that fragment and oppress us, and democrats fuel further conflicts in the name of void values that support capital’s grip on everyone’s life, we call for a transnational politics of all workers, migrants, women and men for peace, against this shattering war.“

As brutal as the war of aggression is and must be stopped immediately, as insane and militaristic are the 100 billion "special funds" for arming the army in Germany. 100 billion that could be used sensibly for climate AND social justice, e.g. to completely phase out fossil fuels.

Stop the War -  Open the borders!

Buses that travel to Sicily, Lesvos or the Belorussian border to pick up refugees and bring them to cities of welcome. This idea - new "Buses of Hope" - has been discussed again and again in our networks in recent years, but could not be implemented after 2015. Now, within a few days, they have become a reality. 

 

Quite officially and universally praised, buses from Germany travel to the Ukrainian border to unload aid supplies and they bring refugees with them on the way back. Even the reactionary governments in Poland or Hungary have agreed to the new "EU mass flow directive" and opened their borders. Have to open them! But at least at the Polish border, not equally for everyone. Here, people with passports from African or Asian countries have repeatedly had to wait particularly long when fleeing.

As was said in the mainstream just a few months ago with regard to the Belarusian border: just no new 2015. What was meant was - as in 2015 on the Balkan route - open borders, even if in autumn 2021 only a few thousand people were at stake. Instead, refugees were blocked with barbed wire at the Polish border and left to freeze to death in forests as a deterrent. The sentence could now be turned around: just no new 2016! Against a renewed racist rollback, against border closures with new walls and against mass deportations. For open borders, for everyone. 

In addition, a look in the opposite direction: at the EU south-western border in Melilla! "Big Boza" on two consecutive days. Several thousand migrants collectively stormed the fences at the beginning of March. The majority were detained or pushed back. But several hundred people made it across this highly armed EU border.

With solidarity greetings,

the Kompass team