Events and protest against the 13th European Police Congress

In 2010 the European Police Congress, a meeting of international police functionaries, politicians and various actors of the security industry, is again going to take place in Berlin. It is the 13th convention and just like the Congress on European Security & Defence, it is being organised by the publishing group "Behörden Spiegel". According to the organisers, last years convention was visited by 1800 participants from 70 countries.

Double Networking

As officially stated, the convention aims at "reinforcing existent relationships and developing new practices". The focal point is the expansion and consolidation of the cooperation of European repressive institutions, whose agenda is concerned with an "EU Internal Security Strategy". On the schedule is the "Stockholm Programme", a "multi-annual" programme on the future of European home affairs. This five year programme again calls for a "war on terrorism, organised crime and illegal migration", at the same time demanding the expansion of police, military and intelligence service cooperation. This encompasses the adoption of new technological standards for surveillance and control, for which the security industry will exhibit various products in the congress lounge.

The police congress wants to be "trendsetting" for the embedding of intelligence service methods into police procedures. Surveillance and repression increasingly operates "proactive", an in the police forces jargon common synonym for an "anticipatory approach", which has also been adopted by the NATO. During the police congress there will be diverse forums in which strategies are being put together to "fuse inner and outer security". Accordingly one panel poses itself the question "What can we learn from the armed forces?” Representatives of the NATO meet with police officials and intelligence agents, interior ministers and state secretaries go for coffee with security industry CEO’s at their stalls. Last year a podium talk on civil-military cooperation was given by Kai Vittrup, the chief of the EU police mission in Afghanistan. Vittrup has been chief of the UN police forces in the Kosovo as well as before being involved in leading policing positions in Sudan, Iraq and East-Timor. For years he has been chief of the police in Copenhagen, which only recently at the climate summit demonstrated how the policing of protest and resistance shall take place in the future to come.

No borders, no nations!

A day out of control in London
Saturday 23rd January 2010
2pm St. Pancras International -> 4.30pm Piccadilly Circus

While the migration regime is fortifying itself and setting up rings of
defence around European wealth, inner control is tightening to keep public order, at a time where the nation state already seems to be a dead corpse. And with an economy which exploits the most virtual
property, the need to control even the remotest parts of people’s lives is increasing.

To mark the Spanish Presidency of the European Union, dozens of Spanish organisations have decided to unite to express their condemnation, once again, of the capitalist and neoliberal project which the EU represents. These organisations are coordinated with others in the rest of the European Union and Latin America.

The EU has shown itself to be an antidemocratic institutional framework serving the interests of multinationals and member state elite organisations. We can use as an example of this the economic guidance which goes against the basic social rights of the Lisbon Treaty, passed without consulting the European citizens (except in Ireland, since it is required by law).

To serve the aforementioned interests, the EU has not hesitated in lowering working conditions and facilitating layoffs and the destruction of employment, as the “flexicurity” doctrine demonstrates. It also defends, using all its diplomatic machinery, the abusive commercial and business strategies of European companies in Southern Hemisphere countries. The signatory organisations reject the pressures to which the EU is submitting third party countries so they sign the commercial treaties, the wrongly labelled “Association Agreements”. They are a form of “neocolonialism” and plundering, both of the natural resources and the inhabitants in the Southern Hemisphere.

Meeting in Paris for a transantional call against repression

Callout to unite against repression and the police state, 16. January 2010.
 
Anti-fascists!
Sans papiers strikers!
Unions!
Squatters!
Anarchists!
Socialists!
Anti-prison activists!
Anti-capitalists!

You are all invited to the first meeting to organise a mass mobilisation in Paris. This would be the first large-scale action against the systematic attacks against migrants since the destruction of the ‘Jungles’ in Calais.

Following the destruction of the squats and Jungles in Calais in a great PR stunt, Besson publicly committed to making Calais a migrant-free zone.

Since then, the several hundred migrants who returned to Calais have been systematically flushed out anywhere they seek to shelter, day and night.

Activists from the No Borders network have maintained a presence in Calais since June 2009. They bear witness to continual the police repression; beatings, gassings, and night-time chases.

In September/October 2010 we want to organize a No Border Camp in Brussels, hosting workshops, debates, (direct) actions and trainings. On Saturday 5th of December, there was a first meeting about the organization. Next meeting is planned on the 11th of January. We invite everybody to join
the organization.

WHY BRUSSELS?

• Brussels has an important role in European migration politics: the European Parliament is based over there and Belgium will be the chairman, starting on July 2010. With the No Border Camp, we want to question the European Migration Policy and work towards a radical change.
• Brussels is the centre of decision-making in Belgium, home base of the Parliament, of the headquarters of political parties, of the office of foreign affairs, etc.
• And at last, Brussels has a multicultural society where big communities of migrants and people without papers live, who have been really active in their fight. With the No Border Camp we want to make stronger links between the activists with and without papers.

30th
of November and 1st of December 2009 in Brussels – Transnational
Protests in front of the EU – Justice and Home Affairs – Meeting

Refugee Protection and Migrants Rights instead of a brutal
EU-Border-regime! No to the repressive Stockholm program! After Tampere
and The Hague, the Stockholm program will constitute the next
5-year-framework for Justice and Home Affairs (JHA)
within the EU and its memberstates. The new program claims to build up
the ‘area of freedom, justice and security’. But in fact it will
continue to implement an even tighter regime of surveillance and
control and will promote a securitisation of social life, undermining
all civil rights and privacy despite contrary claims.

Those most affected are refugees and migrants, denounced and
criminalized as ‘illegals’ and hunted by national borderguards and the
EU-agency Frontex. With the “road map of Stockholm” the EU and national
governments go on to escalate their border regimes to a real war as
Frontex’ role in militarising the borders will be strengthened once
again. Many thousand people have died and drowned trying to cross the
borders of Europe over the last years, hundreds of thousands have been
detained and deported. Refoulement is a daily practice at all hot spots
of the EU external border : from Hungary and Slovakia to Ukraine, from
Greece to Turkey, from Italy to Libya and from Spain to Morocco. The
western European Schengen states and Britain are the driving forces in
externalising migration control.

Informal
Meeting of JHA Ministers to elaborate "Stockholm Programme", 15.-17.
July 2009 – Demonstration for internal and external Freedom! 15. July
2009, 17.00 Gathering at Södermalmstorg, Stockholm.

The march towards Medborgarplatsen where speeches and music are going to be.

Come to the demonstration against the EU’s increased control, surveillance and militarism.

We refuse to just watch as the EU is investing more into building a
surveillance society, putting up even higher walls around Europe and
undermining the right of asylum. When the emerging supranational EU is
permeated by an increasingly racist and militaristic policies.

Wednesday 1st April 2009, 1.30pm
Strasbourg, Rond point de l’esplanade