Anti-Frontex Days: Warsaw, Poland, 18-23 May 2012

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.

Boats4People - April 2012

In summer 2011 the list of boat people drowning or dying of thirst was getting longer. The situation is and remains unbearable. Thus, anti-racist networks demand immediate action to arrest the deathly EU border regime. For several months now (1) a transnational project 'Ships of solidarity – stop the death in the Mediterranean Sea' is being developed to support refugees and migrants by intervention on site on their way to Europe. In April 2012, several small ships will set sail in Italy in the opposite direction to the escape routes of the boat people: most likely from Rome via Sicily and Lampedusa to different ports in Tunisia. The project is scheduled at the same time as the Maghrebian Social Forum in Tunis. The aim is a Mediterranean network to implement a permanent monitoring between the North-African coast and the South-European islands. The scandalous incidents at sea are to be documented and publicly incriminated. Subject are the rights of the Harragas and the migrants in transit (2). Everything possible is to be done to save castaways.

Week of action against Frontex, 16th-23rd May

The Warsaw noborder collective RAS and the union of syndicalists of Poland ZSP invites you to a week of actions against Frontex, the headquarters of which are located in Warsaw. Throughout the week starting on May 16th there will take place amongst others: screenings of films concerning immigrant issues, street games, workshops and meetings with European noborder groups. We will conclude the Anti-Frontex Days on May 23rd with a demonstration in front of the Frontex offices aimed against „Fortress Europe”. We will stand together against discriminatory immigration policy and apartheid in Europe and in concern for the dire situation of thousands of migrants as a result of official practices of dehumanization. This event and your support are especially important, as Frontex functions here in Warsaw rather inconspicuously and to the general ignorance of Polish society. While Polish authorities hail the presence of an EU headquarters in our capital city, few are actually aware of what this institution does, not only in the Mediterranean, but also along the Polish border with Ukraine and Belarus, since 2004 a heavily fortified external border of Fortress Europe. More particularly, on May 23rd we will commemorate Maxwell Itoya, a migrant of Nigerian origin who a year ago on this day was brutally shot dead in the center of Warsaw by the police. His case remains „unsolved” while the police murderer has returned to service without any punishment.

News from Lampedusa - a personal report

Lampedusa is the very first place where migrants land after their difficult journey from north Africa. From here they are sent to several detention centers in Italy.

A new centre is going to be open in the next days in a residence in Mineo, close to Catania (Sicily) in what used to be a residence for NATO employees!

It seems that up to now about 8000 migrants have arrived from Tunisia.

At the moment there are probably about 1400 migrants in the Lampedusa detention center (there is barely space for 800!)

What follows is a personal account of an NoBorder activist's journey to Lampedusa.

Freedom not Frontex: There cannot be democracy without global freedom of movement

[The following text was written 08/03/11 by afrique-europe-interact, welcome to europe and the network of critical migration and border regime research]

The dynamic of the Arab spring is emanating into the entire world. The movements of revolt in the Maghreb encourage and give hope, not only because despotic regimes that have been believed invincible were chased away. Although the direction of further developments remain open it is obvious that the domino effect of the Tunisian jasmine revolution swiftly brought back the old insight that history is driven from below. The struggles are directed against the day-to-day poverty as well as against general oppression, they are as much about better living conditions as they are about dignity, in short: "bread and roses".

The incredible days of Midan Al-Tahrir, the Liberation Square in Cairo signify the quest for new forms of self organisation and grassroots democracy. The desire for equal rights, autonomy and a share of the economic wealth is also mirrored in the boats crossing the Mediterranean towards Europe: today casting off from Tunisia while during the last years from North and West Africa . "Exit" – to claim one's freedom of movement and to migrate in order to find a different, better life, and "Voice" – to raise one's voice and struggle locally, are not contradictory, they are rather mutually intertwined.

Frontex infonight, 13th September

7pm, at LARC, 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES

In the course of one decade the EU external border has shifted one hundred kilometres to the East and to the South, has deterritorialised increasingly, and its guarding is becoming a European common task. FRONTEX, the "European Agency for the management of operational cooperation at the external borders," became operative in 2005. It works with rapid speed towards a pan European model of border security.

[video] Frontex: The Movie

Documentary about Frontex, the EU Border Agency.

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