"No Border" Camp Closure Days, Fürth/Nürnberg, Germany, Sept. 11-14, 2003

Anonymous Comrade submits: "Stop all deportations! Close all detention and deportation centers for refugees and migrants!
Refugee call for the Camp-Closure-Days from September 11-14, 2003 in Fürth/Nürnberg (von: Karawane für die Rechte der Flüchtlinge und MigrantInnen in Deutschland)"

New "No Border" Camp Closure Days

Fürth/Nürnberg, Gerrmany, Sept. 11-14, 2003

When the people of continents such as Africa, Asia or Latin America first came to Europe, we were brought over as slaves, and many of us were literally placed in human zoos WHERE the Europeans could see how exotic, savage animals looked and dressed. In our homelands, millions throughout the world died under the colonial expansion and exploitation of our wealth and resources. Left behind were the neo-colonial servants and slaves drivers, also known as our supposed governmental leaders, so that the capitalistic machinery could continue.Today, this reality is not much different. Our countries remained the same colonized and exploited countries as before; we are still looked down upon for who we are and we only gain respect when we are considered as folklore; we are still trampled upon, spat on and excluded, and we refugees are placed in Heims far from many possibilities of integration into the society like in Freienbessingen or Markersdorf in Thüringen and Eisenhüttenstadt in Brandenburg.

The construction of modern day, brutal neoliberal deportation and persecution centers such as the Projekt X in Braunschweig and Bramsche, the Ausreisezentrum in Fürth or the innumerable deportation prisons throughout this country represents nothing more than the decadence of a neo-colonial power that has never been capable of making the empty slogans and promises of liberty, justice and democracy or even nie wieder! a reality. On the contrary, their abused and hollow meanings have long since unmasked the truth of the injustice behind their supposed help and goodwill: terror, hunger and injustice!

With an ever increasing racist and repressive system, the restriction of our freedom of movement is lashed out from the whip of the slave driver with the „Residenzpflicht“ restrictions of movement against the refugees in Germany, racist police controls and police brutality. Even in our own countries the local police receive European financial aids to criminalize the peoples' desire for justice. If we manage to make it past the increasingly rigid and brutal controls of the European Fortress then we are immediately considered to be terrorists and criminals and our deportation is prepared even before they know who we are.

When something is to be done to fight this inherent injustice, then the European sees the refugee as someone who needs to be helped and given charity. However, if the boot of oppression is on the back of the majority of the world, then no helping hand will be worth more than any but a simple empty gesture, just like their slogans of liberty, justice and democracy. And it must be clear that this symbolic boot on our backs is the reality of our lives in our world today WHEREby few countries and a handful of rich and powerful corporations and individuals try to control the wealth (human and material) of the entire planet

No matter where we are, whenever we attempt to live a decent life, feed our families, enjoy education or even struggle for the right to life, we are criminalised, imprisoned and sent to our deaths (be it through hunger or repression) by the very societies which benefit most from our devastation and misery occasioned by their greed and economic intervention. The bureaucratic machine of oppression and injustice continues to work endlessly to keep us as a people without faces and rights. They simply want us to remain as objects to be stared at and talked about as they envisioned for us in the human zoos they constructed hundreds of years ago.

Stop the deportations! Deportation is a human rights abuse. So it is a crime.
The German authorities must be held accountable for the consequences of these deportations and the deportation threats which often led to absolute desperations and frustrations with repressions and death of the refugees or migrants here in Germany and after their deportations, including the imprisonments, persecutions, tortures or death of those deported.

When we are deported, we are sent back to the very lands that have been destroyed and raped of any future. And like when colonialism began, we are treated like animals not worthy of the so-called Europeans ideals of liberty, freedom and democracy. We are placed in Cages (Heims, Ausreisezentrum or deportation prisons) which they do not consider good enough for their dogs. They "wisely" expect us to accept this injustice without complaints and be grateful to them for their purported "magnanimity". They expect us to praise the U.S.A and European governments, WTO, IMF, World Bank, NATO etc. for "trying to rescue us" from the poverty and ugly situation they imposed on us.

Yet after so many centuries of colonialist and capitalist exploitation of our wealth and peoples, after so many massacres, repressive regimes and torture, we are still fighting both in our countries and here to overturn this injustice once and for all! We are still here, we are still strong and we still have our dignity! In Germany, France, Italy, Nigeria, Colombia, Palestine, Cameroon, Iraq, Peru, Iran, Irak, Togo, Sri-lanka and many other places, no matter where we are, our resistance - inherited from so many generations who fought and died for our liberation before us - continues and will not be defeated!

We call on all refugees, migrants and progessive-minded peoples to come together in order to demonstrate that another world is possible and that solidarity, justice, brother- sisterhood and liberty are more than mere words and slogans without substance (unlike the words of the powerful that are nothing more than masked lies!), that each finger by itself is weak and can be broken, but that when the fingers come together, they form a strong and resilient fist of resistance!

Free Movement Now! Close all detention and deportation centers!

Abolish the“Residenzpflicht“ restriction of refugees to local districts in Germany!

Wherever the repression is, we will be there! No injustice is secure from our resistance!

Karawane for the rights of refugees and migrants in Germany.

The VOICE Refugee Forum, Jena. E-mail.: voice_mail@emdash.org
www.basicrights.de

Shut down the deportation camp in Fürth! Away all deportation camps!

Camp-closure-days from September 11th to September 14th 2003 in Fürth/Nürnberg
von: Preparation group [2003-07-23]

In spring 2002 at the detention camp in Woomera/Australia... In March 2002 at the deportation prison in Bologna...End of 2002 at the Lager near the Euro-tunnel in Sangatte/France...In February 2003 at the deportation prison in Haslar/Great Britain... From January to April 2003 at the deportation prison in Grünau/Berlin...In May 2003 at the Lager in the nomensland between the border of Iraq and Jordania...

...people all over the world are in uprising: against the fences, walls and borders of the deportation prisons, detention camps, deportation lager, “centres for departure”, refugee camps. They are on hunger strike, do sit ins, they dismantle, demonstrate, spray, rattle, fax, saw, sew, glue, scream, write, climb, burn down.

Since Septemper 2002 there is a new deportation camp for refugees, a so called “center for departure” in Fürth close to Nürnberg. We say: one year of deportation camp in Fürth – enough! During the days of action from September 11th to September 14th we demand explicitly: Close the Lager in Fürth! No new Lager! Away with all deportation camps!

The universe of Lager

In the member-states of the European Union new refugee lager are being built every year. In Germany there are model projects since 1998 for new deportation-Lager, which are called “centres for departure” (“Ausreisezentrum”) by the administration. They are currently discussing plans for a new system of deportation prisons on the outskirts of Europe WHERE the refugees who escaped and arrived in Europe are supposed to have an alleged high-speed asylum process. It seems that Europe is supposed to get rid of refugees, except a very small number called “residual quota”.
Lager and camps are an important part of this stonewall policy of the industrial countries. Stonewall against those who arrive because the interests of the rich countries have a great influence on the living conditions in their countries. “We are here, because you destroy our countries”, as the refugees say. Those camps are part of a policy of (social) war against refugees: That includes deportation camps and the military armament at the borders and at the sea as well as the daily policy of scaring off, deportation, expulsion and illegalisation within Europe. It also includes the building of a belt of camps in regions of war and crisis such as Kosovo, Afghanistan or Iraq, that are supposed to keep refugees from getting to western Europe. It also includes the international co-operation of police in order to destroy escape routes of refugees. Last, but not least, migration and flight are used as a justification for “military interventions” by western states.

But –- regardless all strategic-technocratic measures, it is not possible to stonewall fortress Europe against flight and migration of people. The belts of this fortress are being undermined by the people who still manage to escape to Europe. It is also possible to break the policy of stonewalling and isolation of the camps, if the resistance and protest by refugees inside the camps and prisons are made public and meet with solidarity from outside. The world-wide protest within and outside the fences and walls of the camps and prisons, the areas of deprivation of rights, are bringing up and old question: “How is your liberation bound up with mine?”

“Centre for departure” (“Ausreisezentrum”) –- Neither in Fürth nor anywhere else!

The “centre for departure” (“Ausreisezentrum”) is not a word from tourist industry. What sounds like palm beaches and holiday trips is a further link in the long chain of systematic exclusion and isolation of refugees and migrants in Germany. “Centres for departure” are deportation camps, they are illegalisation camps. They complete “normal” refugee-camps and deportation prisons and they perfect the system of intimidation, discrimination, control and deportation of refugees. “Centres for departure” (“Ausreisezentren”) are part of the bill of the new “immigration law” which makes a difference between economically “useful” and “useless” refugees and migrants and means the utmost deprivation of rights for the excluded. Regardless all strategic discussions about this law, the red-green coalition agrees with CDU/CSU to get rid of “unwanted” refugees and to push through deportations or illegalisation. This is what is being enforced by the new deportation camps: Today, very few refugees do get a real chance of getting asylum in Germany. Nevertheless, many of them could not be deported yet, because of missing documents. They are accused of “hiding their identity” and of “not helping to obtain documents”, because they are said to have given a wrong identity and state of origin. These people are now in danger of being put into these so called “centres for departure” (“Ausreisezentren”). With interrogations by authorities and members of the embassies of their (alleged) countries of origin, this “wrong” identity is supposed to be “discovered”. Part of this system is using translators and social workers as spies. They are supposed to collect hints and they try to make the refugees give information about their fellow refugees by making false promises. By those means, they try to facilitate deportations and to undermine all relations of trust and solidarity among the refugees. These and other forms of harassment, like the use of special laws, the unbearable living conditions in these camps, the direct and indirect criminalisation, are supposed to punish refugees in the deportation camps for their “lack of co-operation” and they are supposed to be blackmailed to agree to their “voluntary departure” –- that is deportation. The “centres for departure” (“Ausreisezentren”) work offensively with psychological pressure –- officially, the goal is to get the refugees into “a state of hopelessness and lack of perspectives”. The result is mass-illegalisation. About half of the refugees that were in those model-lager so far have disappeared into illegality.

The living conditions of people in the deportation camp Fürth

+ The camp is sealed off by a fence and a closed door

+ The “Centre for Departure (Ausreisezentrum)” is separated from the neighbouring “normal” refugee camp by another interior fence- it is a camp within a camp

+ It is controlled by private security; everyone coming or leaving has to report to security officers

+ Residenzpflicht is enforced: The town of Fürth can not be left without permission

+ The refugees have to report regularly and their documents are controlled; there are irregular interrogations

+ They can have visits only with the permission of the government of the region Mittelfranken

+ Intimidation and criminalisation by the police and by raiding the rooms

+ prohibition of all work for money

+ Daily distribution of food rations – to control the presence of the refugees

+ complete cancellation of the (“allowance”) amount of 40,- EUR per month in cash or a cutback to 20,- EUR per month for people who don’t “cooperate” with the authorities

We call all refugees, migrants and anti-racists: come to Fürth/Nürnberg –-
for the abolition of all (deportation-)camps and deportation prisons!


The Bavarian interior ministry has counted on presenting the building of deportation camps as a success and without resistance, but this plan hasn’t worked out. Since the opening of the deportation camp in Hafenstrasse 21 in Fürth in September 2002, the refugees who were forced to stay in that camp have been protesting. Many groups from outside –- from refugee groups and anti-racists to trade unions and charity institutions -- also have shown their protest. By the days of action from September 11th to September 14th 2003 in Fürth/Nürnberg focussing on the deportation prison, we want to support the protest from outside the fence. We fight for the closure of the deportation camp in Fürth. We want to get one step ahead in our fight for the abolition of all deportation camps and prisons, as the lager in Fürth stands as a symbol for all lagers in Germany and in Europe. For us it is clear: Also a “normal” refugee camp is a lager which stands for social exclusion of refugees and thus has to be abolished. This year, our rattling at the fences of the world-wide lager-regime will take place at Fürth/Nürnberg. And there are more good reasons for action against the prevalent conditions in Fürth/Nürnberg: here is the federal office of migration, the central reception for refugees and the federal employment office.

People who set out for foreign countries because of a lack of living possibilities and perspectives, ethnic or sexist oppression or war have to be welcomed and get a secure status!

It is not the political and economical interests of the states and corporations who can decide over people’s right to live. Everyone has the right to decide for herself or himself where she or he wants to live. We are against the division of people into “useful” and “useless”, “desired” and “undesired”. Because no one is illegal.

Open borders for everyone!

Stop deportation!

Freedom of Movement & Right of residence everywhere!

Program (open to further suggestions):

+ Thursday Sept. 11th: In the afternoon welcoming of the refugees at the fence of the deportation camp and the neighbouring refugee camp, afterwards opening plenary session

+ Friday:

++ In the morning: rally at the Federal Office of Migration (Bundesamt)

++ At noon: Public hearing in Fürth on resistance against deportation camps

++ In the afternoon: Time for decentralised and creative actions


+ Saturday Sept. 13th:

++ big demonstration to the place of the Fürth deportation camp -- “Open the borders, close the camp!”

++ In the evening: Open Air concert in front of the lager

+ There will be an autonomous organisation and an area for women and lesbians. Feminist contents and actions will be an important part.

For further Information and program:
http://www.ausreisezentren.de


V.i.S.d.P.: Ruth Gobi, In der Wüste 1, 90419 Nürnberg