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Dear friends and comrades

The Defencing festival on the border between Slovenia and Croatia is approaching. This weekend, from June 24 to June 26 we will express our refusal of repression against refugees and migrants, against construction of fences on the border, against closure of official Balkan Route, against shameful EU Turkey deal and Europe that applies policies dictated by racist and xenophobic populisms. And we well express our commitment to build solidarity and act in coordinated way so that freedom of movement becomes everyone’s right.

For last two weeks Social Center Rog that harbours self organized refugee community was under threat of eviction. Comrades in Rog bravely and intelligently defended the place and scored significant victory against authoritarian municipal administration. But menace is far from being over. Although Rog has won temporary suspension of demolishment until court rules out in the dispute between activists and municipality, the situation is precarious because municipality appealed against the court decision while neo-nazis attack and threaten the place regularly. To support self organized refugee community in Ljubljana and Social Center Rog, we will start the Defencing festival on Friday, June 24 at noon with protest action.

After the action in support of Rog we will head to the border, which is approximately an hour and a half from Ljubljana. If we will be short of personal vehicles to drive to the spot, we are considering to rent a bus. For this reason, we have to know as soon as possible how many people are coming and if you have your own means of transport. Please inform us about your arrival on d10.ljubljana@gmail.com. Let us also know if you are planning to arrive already on Thursday or if you are considering to come directly to the border.

On the border we will stay in two camps. Each camp is located very close to the border with razor blade fence. The majority of the festival activities are going to take place in those camps. Do not forget to bring your camping equipment. Please also think about how can you help to manage the camps and activities in camps. If you have any idea how to help (either with kitchen or program etc.) please let us know on d10.ljubljana@gmail.com or on the spot. Internet connection will be provided.

After arrival to the border we are going to prepare camp (building tents…) and organize common life for next two days. In the evening there will be concert in the town of Bistrica ob Sotli. Concert is part of municipal festivities. Participants of the festival will have free entrance. On Saturday during the day there will be workshops and assemblies. The content of some workshops is already defined, but new ideas and searching for synergies are very welcomed. In the evening we will try to have a picnic on the section of the border were only little bridge separates two countries. In the camp on Croatian side of the border the day will be concluded with concert. In the camp on Slovenian side of the border there will be little movie festival and possibly also a concert. On Sunday we will have concluding workshops and assembly.

The modalities of actions are going to be decided together in the framework of assembly. We will have to look for consent between local organizers and participants of the festival, among them asylum seekers from both sides of the border. The aim is to achieve our common goals:

1. Make visible our protest against repression on migrants, militarization of borders and closure of Balkan Route;
2. Strengthen relations and solidarity between refugees, activists and local community on the border;
3. Encourage long term collaboration along the Balkan Route and common activities in the region with the aim to drill various holes in the fenced border and build various bridges across.

More information on:

https://www.facebook.com/defencing/

https://www.facebook.com/FrontaBrezMeja/

Freedom of movement for everyone!

For de-fenced life!

Preparation group of Defencing festival from Zagreb/Kumrovec/Bistrica ob Sotli/Ljubljana

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Saturday, Jyne 25: We meet at Venizelos statue (Arstoteles square) and we go by cars and motorcycles to the relocation centers around Thessaloniki.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Ελληνικά.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Ελληνικά.

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“HarekAct is offering current analysis of migration policies concerning Turkey. We believe that the EU-Turkey deal demands for a comprehensive and critical analysis of the Turkish-EU border regime”, says Lülüfer Körükmez, co-editor of HarekAct. “Researchers and activists from Turkey, Germany and Austria will make an important contribution regarding bordermonitoring with this transnational information platform.”

While the EU is intensifying its cooperation with Turkey regarding border surveillance and deterrence, there is a lack of independent analysis and information on politics and practices on-site. The critical civil society of Turkey is facing practices of intimidation, making independent research and media reporting more and more difficult. At the same time, the importance of Turkey for the European border regime is growing rapidly.

“In the situation we are facing right now, we feel that it is crucial to establish a critical and free source of information, which aims at strengthening the power of civil society”, explains Lülüfer Körükmez. Activists and the interested public, as well as researchers and journalists should use the information provided by HarekAct to follow, initiate and comment on recent debates, discourses and activities around migration policies.

HarekAct will publish information that is hard to find in the mainstream media and will report to counteract the politically intended growing in-transparency on the topic. Together we will publish elaborate analysis, academic papers and reports from the ground on a regular basis. We explicitly invite fellow activists, critical academics and journalists to contribute to our blog with their own reports and analysis, to improve our activist cooperation. As Gerda Heck, another co-editor of HarekAct comments, through HarekAct “We hope for synergy effects and the strengthening of the Turkish and European civil society in general, among others due to the international networking”.

Currently, a briefing on the state of migration policies in Turkey, a commentary on changing flight routes as well as a comprehensive analysis of the EU-Turkey deal and the situation of migrants in the Turkish-Greek border region are available online. Beyond, HarekAct provides an interview with a refugee, who has been deported from Greece to Turkey in the frame of the EU-Turkey deal. Furthermore the blog offers legal background information and a collection of relevant news reporting.

HarekAct is available from June 20^th 2016 at: http://harekact.bordermonitoring.eu/

harekact@bordermonitoring.eu

Further information on HarekAct   |  Twitter

The trilingual (English, Turkish, German) blog HarekAct has been initiated by researchers and activists from Turkey, Austria and Germany and keeps a close contact with networks and organizations in the migration field such as GAR (Migration Researchers’ Platform, Türkei), Mülteci-Der, kritnet (Network for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies), borderline-europe and bordermonitoring.eu.

The name of the blog is a combination of the Turkish word „hareket“ (movement) and the English word „act“.

HarekAct aims at contributing to a critical and analytical knowledge production on the question of migration in general, with a focus on the case of Turkey in particular. The blog will serve as a collective platform to monitor, increase and share various debates and information on migration, asylum and border issues primarily in Turkey as well as on the general European context as far as it is connected to Turkey.

http://moving-europe.org/14-06-2016-eviction-of-the-two-last-self-organised-camps-in-northern-greece/

Yesterday early in the morning the Greek authorities started the eviction of one of the two last self-organised refugee camps in Northern Greece. The camp was located at a gas station on the highway, next to the town of Polykastro and provided space for around 1’300 people.

This morning, the eviction of the second self-organised camp started. This camp is located very near to the Macedonian border by the town of Evzoni. It stretched along to the highway next to Hotel Hara and the BP gas station. With its proximity to the border, this makeshift camp symbolised the last hope of people to find a way to cross the border and continue their journey to Western Europe independently. Especially after the eviction of the big independent camp in Idomeni, these places were important to people on the move.

Unlike the new military-run camps, people had the possibility to organise their daily live with self-determination. Furthermore, local and international support structures had free access to the site. This made the every day struggle more bearable for the people staying there, as there were volunteers and activists around that could help out with every day needs. The official camps however, are often in very remote areas where a self-sustainable live is very difficult to maintain and the access for independent supporters is highly restricted.

Similarly to the eviction of Idomeni, the authorities announced that the evictions went smoothly and without the use violence. However, once again independent observers and journalist were not allowed to access the site. While during the Idomeni eviction people have been deprived of food, water and electricity for extensive periods of time to make them leave, equally pained messages reached us from our friends there.

B. who has been staying next to Hotel Hara with his wife and daughter since the eviction of Idomeni tells us disturbing stories: “This morning there was all of a sudden so much police here around hotel Hara. The police is not behaving nice at all, they are pushing us with force and shouting and hitting. People here are tired and hungry and sick and the police is forcing us to go from where we live now. They rip open the tents, even if only women or children are inside. They take even the women and children by force. And we don’t know where they bring us!”

Apparently the residents of the gas station and Hotel Hara have been brought to a new camp in Vasilika and the already established camp in Vagiochori. We have reported on the miserable conditions in latter camp here. The new Vassilika camp is once again located in an old warehouse which probably offers similar bad conditions as the other camps around Thessaloniki (see our summary statement here).

A former resident of Eko already reported on Facebook about the new camp in Vasilika:

„The first day in the new camp was terrible.The food is not good enough so i dont think the people here can’t do Ramadan and we dont have close super market that the people can buy good food.The toilets here are the biggest probleme here it is very dirty.Yesterday the people from the near towns crowded near the camp and started to throw stons into the camp
The military man told us that the people here dont want camp in this area and The police finally slove it in the end after seven hours.“

From what we gather from people who had lived in both Idomeni and the now evicted independent sites Hara and the gas station, we know for sure that physically removing people from their self-chosen place of living, which was an expression of hope and possible freedom of movement, will not break their will to go to their desired destination. Removing visible gatherings of people from the border area surely brings more misery, violence and complications to their journey, but their plans to cross these very borders remain.

See first photos of Vasilika camp here:

Fotomovimiento

@aid_act

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