call for a european action day 29//10//2005


The collective attempts by more than four thousand migrants to cross the borders between Africa and Europe have shown the brutality of the European border regime. In the last two weeks ten people were shot dead by border police. Since then, Moroccan authorities have rounded up and “deported” more than 2,500 people, and abandoned them without food and water in the Sahara Desert. More than 36 people have died there so far.

The news of the past two weeks shows only a small part of the brutality at Europe’s borders, where hundreds of migrants drown every year crossing the Straights of Gibralter, suffocate in trucks, or are blown up by landmines in the fields between Greece and Turkey.

The reaction of the Spanish Government and the European Comission is military reinforcement of the borders and externalising the “management” of migrants. European colonialism and economic policies created the sitations that are forcing people to flee. Now, being pushed by the German government and others, refugees are being made invisible to Europe; caught way before the borders and held in “transit” prisons far away. Third countries, such as Morocco are made to handle the situation in exchange for economic aid. The EU has given 40 million Euro to Morocco to build up border defences. The Moroccan government uses these deals to systematically violate human rights, torturing, deporting and murdering migrants.



Across Europe groups are organising acts to reject this brutality at the borders. We are calling for a coordinated day of action on 29th October 2005.

For Freedom of Movement
No one is illegal!



 http://freak-animals.org/ptx/english/articles/antiborderactionday.htm



indymedia estrecho is doing excellent reporting, and there were quite a few protest actions in some EU countries.



more material here:

 http://estrecho.indymedia.org/

call for the action day oct 29

 http://estrecho.indymedia.org/newswire/display/16394/index.php french
 http://estrecho.indymedia.org/newswire/display/16387/index.php english
 http://at.indymedia.org/newswire/display/54608 german

imc features

germany
 http://de.indymedia.org/2005/10/129667.shtml

austria
 http://at.indymedia.org/feature/display/53394/index.php

athens
 http://athens.indymedia.org/display.php?articleId=4424


huge link collection
 http://at.indymedia.org/newswire/display/54580

-  http://www.migreurop.org/ (french and spanish)
-  http://www.noborder.org/news_index.php (english)
-  http://thistuesday.org/ mostly english
-
 http://www.amnesty-eu.org/static/html/pressrelease.asp?cfid=12&id=242&cat=4&l=1
(english, french, open letter by amnesty international to EU presidency
(UK))
-  http://www.msf.org/ medecins sans frontiers issued a widely
acknowledged report about the fact that refugees were sent to the desert
to die ->
 https://www.aerzte-ohne-grenzen.de/obj/_scripts/msf_download_pdf.php?id=2389&filename=09-05-Bericht-Marokko-Immigranten.pdf
is the english report about this,
-  http://www.apdha.org/areas/documentos/delcaracionlarache.htm is the 'declaration on larache' where several human rights ngos from southern spain and northern morocco met and put up this declaration that can be signed online (spanish and french)




African Refugees Dream of Simple Life

By DANIEL WOOLLS, Oct 13, 2005

Patrick Thomas speaks so softly I have to crane my neck to hear. He is alone, far from home and scared.
"My life is in a miserable way because I have no one who will help me," says the tall, thin man from Gambia.

Thomas risked his life to reach this Spanish city on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, only to be told that Spain has changed its policy toward migrants and he may be expelled.

On Sept. 27, some 1,000 African men seeking work in Europe tried to scale two 10-foot razor wire fences enclosing Melilla. Thomas, 25, is one of about 300 who succeeded.

Now he's behind another fence, this one surrounding a tent city housing the illegal immigrants, whose numbers have grown to 700 since the initial rush on the frontier. Most are from nations south of the Sahara, meaning they had to cross the desert to make it here.

I ask Thomas if he would like to come over to my side of the fence so we don't have to speak through the metal mesh. But he won't budge, and clutches the fence with both hands.

It took him three years to travel to Morocco from Gambia, where he was the oldest of eight orphaned children. He spent more than a year of that hiding from police in a forest in Morocco, venturing out at night to scrounge for food and water.

His long journey may have been in vain.

The port city of Melilla has long been a lure for Africans seeking a better life in Europe, and in the past Spain did not deport many, having no repatriation agreements with their home governments, which do not want them back. The migrants eventually were taken to the Spanish mainland and turned loose — without work permits or residency papers, but free to look for jobs in the unofficial economy.

But facing a flood of illegal entrants, Spain now is expelling some recent arrivals — not to their homelands, but to Morocco, under a 1992 treaty that had never been implemented.

Other residents of the camp wander in and out, playing soccer in a dusty lot just outside the fence, but Thomas is terrified of leaving. "I'm afraid the police will get me and deport me," he says.
So we talk through the fence.

Thomas says none of his siblings know where he is. "Every day and night I think of my younger sisters," he says.
I ask him how long he spent in the forest in Morocco.
"One year, six months, 15 days," he says.
"You're good with numbers," I say.

He explains his accounting method. While living in the bush, he made a pile of pebbles, one for each day of his private purgatory.
"Just like that," Thomas says, pointing at a hill of gravel and rocks used to cover the ground at the refugee camp.

The men haven't given up hope of making it to Europe but for the moment they aspire to simpler things.
They all want to borrow your cell phone and call home.
Misa Rada, also from Gambia, wants a Spanish-English dictionary to start learning a new language.
Mahamed Diarra of Mali wants a pen and a notebook.

Fanny Ibrahim of Ivory Coast, a decorator who specializes in plaster, wants to know how to say this word in Spanish. I tell him it is "yeso" and offer him a pen and paper. Instead, he writes it on the palm of his hand, in big, blue ballpoint letters. That way it does not get lost, he says.
Thomas just wants information. Does the outside world know of their plight and does anyone care? Will the United Nations send delegates to visit them at the camp?
"How can we have contact with them so they can help us?" he asks.

 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051013/ap_on_re_eu/spain_postcard_from_melilla_1


agency pictures:  http://www.nodo50.org/varios/melilla/