Kompass-newsletter No. 142 - 03/2026
6 to 8 March in Darmstadt: We'll Come United meeting +++ 16 to 23 March in several cities: Medico events with film & discussion on the Polish-Belarusian border +++ 19 March in Leipzig: ‘No Border lasts forever’ - book presentation by We'll Come United +++ 26/27 March in Hamburg: kritnet conference +++ 28 March in Valetta: Protest action marking 7 years of criminalisation of the El Hiblu 3 +++ Echoes No. 20 +++ Alarm Phone - Central Med Analysis +++ Sea Watch: Successes in court +++ Deportation figures in Germany 2025 +++ Reviews: CommemorActions 6 February 2026; Hanau attack 6th anniversary +++ Outlook:; 12 to 14 June in Jena: Entgrenzt - first migration law conference for lawyers; 4 July in Erfurt: resistance against AfD party conference; 4 to 8 August in Cotonou/Benin: World Social Forum
Dear friends,
A coordination and strategy meeting, a decentralised action calendar currently in planning, a newly revised website and, last but not least, a new book: We'll Come United, the germanwide network of groups and initiatives for freedom of movement and equal rights, will be active on several levels simultaneously in March 2026 – the counter-programme to ongoing racist agitation and new laws of exclusion.
Six months after the Free Movement Caravan in September 2025, the new publication will be presented for the first time at the Leipzig Book Fair: ‘No border lasts forever – Refugee Resistance and the Rise of the Far Right’. The book from We'll Come United is a powerful testament to resilience, solidarity, and the fight for human rights. The introduction states: „...Over the years, our struggles have become more connected across borders, less spontaneous perhaps, but more conscious and rooted in shared experience. This book is a contribution to documenting those times of resistance and solidarity, not from above, but from within the struggles themselves. It focuses on self-organized resistance, on transnational solidarity networks, and on concrete fights against criminalization, border violence, and detention regimes across Europe and along the migration routes…“
The book from We'll Come United is to be presented in as many cities as possible in the coming months, ideally in combination with proposals for regional actions. So far, plans include a demonstration at Frankfurt's deportation airport at the end of May, participation in ‘widersetzen’ (against the racist party AfD) in Erfurt in July, and a new caravan in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania at the end of August. Hopefully, other groups will develop their own ideas in many other places. The book is thus intended to amplify anti-racist campaigns and establish connections with transnational struggles beyond the external borders and the Mediterranean.
Keyword: external borders. One year before the elections in Italy, the post-fascist Meloni government is once again playing the racist card, as was to be expected. Under the guise of new so-called security laws and in the wake of the CEAS(pact)-implementation in June 2026, it is seeking to escalate the criminalisation of migration and the repression of civilian sea rescue operations. A ‘naval blockade’ is in preparation, a new version of Salvini's port closures, to prevent the arrival of refugees and migrants by force.
There is no question that these state ‘border crimes’ will continue to meet with stubborn resistance under the new conditions. On a practical level, this resistance will continue in the form of the Civil Fleet, as impressively documented once again in the diary of the new edition of the publication ‘Echoes’. But it will also continue on a legal level, where Sea Watch recently achieved a more than symbolic double victory. In the 2019 case concerning Salvini's unlawful detention of the Sea Watch with Carola Rackete, the Italian government must now pay damages of 76,000 euros. At the same time, the Italian administration's current order to detain the new Sea Watch 5 for refusing to communicate with Libyan militias was immediately overturned by a court.
With this in mind: „From the Sea to the Cities“ – solidarity in the fight for freedom of movement and equal rights will continue at all levels in spring 2026.
The Kompass Team