5 years Frontex – 5 Years Ceuta Melilla
5 years ago in May 2005, Frontex, the European border agency, started its work with a few pilot projects. Today, Frontex is permanently involved in militarized sea- and land-operations against refugees and migrants on the European border as well as in the coordination of charter-deportations. Frontex is the driving force on different levels intensifying the repressive system of migration-control even beyond EU-borders. In their mission, to combat so-called illegal migration, Frontex is willing to accept the death of thousands of refugees in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. Thus Frontex represents one of the main counterparts in our struggle for freedom of movement.
5 years ago in October 2005 migrants and refugees have been shot to death on their way to Europe – trying to overcome the fences of the Spanish exclaves in Ceuta and Melilla. The collective storm with self-made ladders against Fortress Europe was met by the use of rubber and even live bullets of the Spanish and Moroccan border guards. Thus Ceuta and Melilla visualize and symbolize the brutality of the European border regime against flight and migration.
Undermining the European Border regime! No one is illegal!
Inside and outside Europe, refugees and migrants move from one country to another one, looking for a better future and a secure life, refusing the forced order of capitalist exploitation and modern apartheid. Movements of flight and migration challenge the system of global injustice and undermine its racist hierarchies and differentials.
Regulation of migration and the systematic denial of rights go against the demand for equality, justice and freedom. All human beings have the right to decide on their own where and how they want to live, regardless of their origins or their identities.
WELCOME TO EUROPE!
We are calling to oppose and to resist all forms of migration control.
We are calling for support on entry and access.
We are calling for help in the continuation of migrants’ journeys into and through Europe.
We are calling for provision of work and to support migrant workers’ struggles.
We are calling for the supply of identity papers, medical care, education and training, of accommodation.
Because no one is illegal.
Reclaiming global social rights for everybody the Welcome-to-Europe-Network supports the daily struggles of migrants and refugees against the European border regime on their way to and through Europe. (see www.w2eu.info)
5 years later we call and mobilize for a summer of events, visualizing the close link between the Frontex operations of today and the death on the EU borders, symbolized in the dying at the fences of Ceuta and Melilla.
5 years later we call to interconnect a series of actions. We begin in may in Warsaw, where the Frontex headquarters are located and an „European day of Boarder Guards“ will be officially celebrated and we finish the chain of actions in October in Melilla in remembrance of the 5th anniversary of the border-killings from 2005:
— Join the conference and protest in Warsaw on the 23rd and 24th of May, when Frontex cynically celebrates its 5th anniversary with amongst others an exhibition “Surveillance Technology for Border Control”, see more soon at www.noborder.org
— Join the week of actions against the deportation machinery from 1st to 6th of June, a week of decentralized protests against charter deportations and Frontex, see http://stopdeportation.net/node/41
— Join the Caravan-Festival in Jena from 4th to 6th of June: „Unite against colonial injustice in memory of the dead victims of Fortress Europe“, see www.karawane-festival.org
— Join the European Social Forum in Istanbul from 1st to 4th of July with workshops and protests against Frontex and the externalisation of the EU-border regime, see more soon at www.noborder.org
— Join the swarming noborder activities in Greece from 25th of August until 12th of September 2010, where the biggest sea-operation of Frontex is announced and also their involvement in new screening-centers and in coordinating charter deportations on the islands of Lesvos and Samos, see http://lesvos09.antira.info
— Join the nobordercamp in Brussels from 24h of September to 3rd of October with actions against the EU-migration-regime in the decision-making-center of EU, see http://nobordersbxl.noblogs.org
— Join the remembrance in Melilla in the days before the 7th of October in Melilla, with a conference in Oujda, see more soon at www.noborder.org
Welcome to Europe Network in April 2010
