as we considered that the question of labour and work can't be , on european but also on any level, separate from the issue of illegality and (e/i)migrant conditions, we deeply support the idea of participation of some ex-illegalised persons who has being hardly exploited by european patronat in a double term: as a workers/umployers but also as a “illegals”. many of them, for example in italy, don't obtain often their wages, the patrons kick them out without paying and they have no right to complain; they are not insured, when they have a serious work-accidents that don¹t have wrights to a medical help ( france) and the recent greek example of about 30 (mostly immigrant) dyed workers in a construction of a olympic village shows that the modern exploitation does not hesitate to use very archaic tools: they are as brutal as they have being in the 19th century.

so, that's how we directly come to the open hypocrisies of the european segregationist politics: european patrons are openly recognising that they need a more (cheap) labour, but the european (ei)migrant politics claim in the same time the "immigration zero". that's how , also we come straight to the point that the interference and inseparability of 2 debates are obvious; the labour and immigrant one.

in between 3,777 persones have died at the walls of schengen since 1993.
among them, many ex/post-yugoslavs. ex-workers of ex-yougoslave ex- enterprises and factories. that¹s why we dedicate both debates to them .


THE FATAL REALITIES OF "FORTRESS EUROPE"
- Death by Policy - the fatal realities of "Fortress Europe" (Info Leaflet 14 revised)

- List of documented 3777 refugee deaths (pdf 128 KB)

- Campaign poster (pdf 304 KB)


DRAFT migration in Europe map:  http://www.pgaconference.org/images/Migreurop_EN.pdf



Democracy for Foreigners - Europe at Risk
A report from the post-Yugoslav hygienic corridor

an answer to:
Foreigners camps in Europe - Democracy at risk
Seminar at the European Parliament, June 24th and 25th, 2003
by collective eimigrative art and universal embassy people


As a socialist, but also an anti-Stalinist country, enjoying the protection of the NATO pact because of its ambivalence, the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has, for years, maintained the hygiene of the cold war, playing the role of a buffer between the blocs. And while thousands of political dissidents from Eastern Europe were finding shelter in the state of non-real socialism (until 1989), a wall was made for the Yugoslav refugees at the time of real liberalism (from 1991), from recycled bricks of the Berlin Wall.

In other words, when the figure of the freedom fighter, the fighter for the much desired human rights, "the political emigrant", the ultimate witness, intellectual and sportsman, who was running away from totalitarianism through the dressing rooms of upper class Western department stores, was replaced by a refugee with a different appearance - the barefoot, ugly, dirty, evil, impoverished and uninvited, from the war zone of Yugoslavia, the one who, carrying only his bare life over his shoulder, sneaked through corn fields and knocked on the doors of the first country of Democracy, the State of Schengen, Europe was faced not only with the first great emigration since the October revolution, but also with a dilemma: the much spoken about freedom or real equality for all citizens of the joint European space.
Nowadays, we definitely know that, in the case of Yugoslavia, the official European immigration policy had opted for a humanitarian discourse of abstract human rights, for temporary aid to the "liberated" in distress, but certainly not for a radical political solution of the complex problem of European emigration, of all those "from the periphery" who wish for a better life "inside". By closing itself ever more within their own walls by a segregation emigration policy, and by proposing recently even for a pushing of this policy outside its own back yard, the current emigration "policy" of the European Union is functioning according to the principle of amplification, that is increasing and not solving the problem, judging by the number of those who still struggle to get to the shores of the "Promised Land". It is a well-known thesis that the phantasmagoric location of the welfare state, in which even the Europeans do not believe anymore, is maintained exactly by those who swim to the shores of Europe, of whom 3,771 have died at the walls of Schengen since 1993. Among them, many ex/post-Yugoslavs.

In a development of this thesis, one might say that the general relation towards emigrants in the European region, when viewed in a longer time frame and after World War II, has all the signs of hypocrisy.

It is a fact that a person may enjoy protection only after he/she has entered the country. This drives people in need of protection to seek help from smugglers, since the legal routes of entry are very narrow. According to the professor of sociology at the University of Belgrade, Dragan Radulovic, who also deals in the problem of sex trafficking in the territory of Yugoslavia, the smuggling of refugees has always existed and is not a new problem. Activities of Oskar Schindler and Raul Weleberg would certainly be labeled as smuggling nowadays. But, during World War II, smuggling was considered as a heroic act. It became a problem in the 1990s, when an undesired wave of asylum seekers "arrived in Europe". Therefore, only when European countries made their border control stricter (through visa policies), the smuggling became a problem and a crime. But since the borders cannot be closed hermetically, the workforce that Europe needs has been criminalized in advance, and pushed into the hands of organized crime and criminal transaction networks. Here, we come to the boomerang-effect policy: by making the entry through the Doors of Heaven more difficult, the desire of those who are still on the other side to pass through it increases by the day, together with the desire of those who wish to make money out of other people's desires (organized crime).

Nowadays, Yugoslavia is a country with 250,000 people killed in the war (from 1991 until this day), 1.5 million internally displaced, while about the same number of them has emigrated. As many, maybe even more of them, are preparing to cross, illegally or not, the borders of the New Rome, the State of Schengen that is guarding the Empire from the upcoming Barbarians. The push factor of the post-Yugoslav emigration is certainly the slow transition process, but also the increasing dissatisfaction and poverty of the disappointed and tired population. The pull factor, the alluring one, is certainly the attractiveness of Europe, the effort it is investing in promising a better life for all those who opt for the civilization of secure, European values.

Together, all these factors make Yugoslavia a country of the Third World, whose population, standing in long queues in front of European embassies, is struggling daily with the effects of the scandalous European emigration policy. The policy that has turned the workforce needed in Europe, through repressive policies, into illegal and cheap workforce, which does not participate in the social transition of European countries, and which has the status of sub-citizens. A fact should be added here that the current oppressive and, above all, unpolitical Europe's immigration policy – in which the only condition for legalizing papers is a humanitarian or asylum aspect - makes asylum seekers constantly make up and build up the misery in their biographies. No tragedy is big enough, no misfortune seems real, and we witness the wave of asylum seekers from the territory of Yugoslavia who, even today, freshen up their stories with details that they see as more pathetic than the existing horror and pathos.

Yugoslavia is also a country that does not grant political asylum for third persons who enter the country on their way to the Schengen region. Currently, in an isolated motel near Belgrade, 33 persons and nine children - Afghans, Liberians, Iraqis and Somalis - are waiting for the certain negative reply from the local Interior Ministry. It is impossible to meet them without the mediation of the High Commissioner for the Refugees, whom we have not been able to find. Admitted into the Council of Europe, Serbia and Montenegro will also have to go through the process of normalization and harmonization with the European immigration policy. This means that a fictional possibility to seek asylum will be opened at key airports (experience of France and other countries speak about the phenomenon of hidden prisons for foreigners at European airports, which these fictional places turn out to be in the end). On the other hand, illegal immigrants, around 2,000 of them caught at borders every year, are being held in the Padinska Skela prison (20 km from Belgrade) for up to three weeks. Of course, only relevant is the number of those whom the local authorities do not catch. This short text is dedicated to them. The hundreds of thousands of the invisibles, uncounted, those who will never reach the camp. A thesis of Primo Levi says that "the key witness is absent, because he is dead". We agree and say: the key witness of Europe's immigration policy is the one who has not reached the camp, at this moment floating from one border of the Schengen region to another. He and hundreds of thousands like him, are the true and biggest obstacles for European democracy.