NoBorder Camp in Timisoara, 9-15 iunie 2003

Acesta este un anunt preliminar--reveniti in cateva zile (sau o saptamana) pentru mai multe detalii. Textul este deocamdata in engleza--o sa adaugam o traducere in limba romana.

Starting with the mid 80's, Europe started to show its border regime and legislation. In 1990 the Schengen covention was adopted and common standards on migration policy were established for all member states. All the countries in the European Union, except UK and Ireland, signed this agreement. Starting with that moment, asylum seekers from outside EU could ask for asylum only in the country they succeded to reach. This thing made it impossible for immigrants to choose freely the residency country in conformity with, for example, the language they knew to speak or the place where their familly or friends were. As years passed by, further hurdles in the way of free movement of people were added. Soon, people coming from or transiting through countries in Eastern Europe were refused entry/asylum to Western Europe on the grounds of the "safe country of origin" and "safe third country" agreements among the countries of the EU.

In 9-15 june, Timisoara, a city placed in the west of Romania, near the borders with Hungary and Yugoslavia, will be the scene of the first Noborder camp from Romania. This camp will mean 7 days of actions, discussions and workshops around the central problem - freedom of movement and establishment for everybody. The camp aims to unite activists, imigrants and artists from all aver Romania and Europe, to create an environment for communication, exchange of informations and debates about migration and border regime.

Preliminary Agenda

NoBorder timisoara will be a practical demonstration of collective and participants' abillities of organisation and administration of their own actions during the camp, on non-hierarhical basis and self-management. This attempt asks for everybody's active participation, the camp being planned as a diy project.

This agenda is only a general one, containing only major topics and aspects; we will later post a more detailed schedule. The actions, projects and discussions which apear in the preliminary agenda can be modified following the discussions and conclusions during the camp.

Main discussion points:

Freedom of movement - fundamental human right; UN high commandament for refugees

Schengen Information System - "electronic borders", social control

SIS is the central piece in the the border regime in Schengen region. Projected for centralisation of the dates concerning immigrants and refugees control, SIS is used also now for search and find the people considered "dangerous". All 13 member states of the Schengen agreement are participants in the SIS under legal but also logistic aspects. Altough UK and Ireland are not a part of the Schengen space and so they are not part of the same visa regime, an official raport shows that the two countries have a role in EU's efforts of stopping ilegal migration and organised crime.

SIS data base contains records made in each EU member state, agencies from EU countries being interconnected through thousands of terminals, this thing allows them to find persons wanted for deportation or arrest, or suspected for being a danger for national security and for public order.

These data base contained at the end of year 2001, 10541271 records, including also between 1.3 and 6 millions of names. Siemens and Nixdorf and Bullroup have projected and offer for SIS infrastucture and also the soft interface, and the same group is the one who's providing the SIS management.

In the present SIS 2 is being projected, which wil allow identification with the DNA and biometric recordings (recognision by the iris). The data held by SIS are available for Europol and Eurojust. The number of the new entries in SIS increased seriously after September 11 2001.

Migration, globalisation, work

detention centers for imigrants, imigrants rights, international legislation regarding imigration, romanian legislation regarding migration, detention centers for immigrants in romania

Refugees and imigrants are some of the most vulnerable members of society. The number of asylum seekers in the detention centers has grown very much over the past years. People who are not suspected for commiting any crimes are locked without trials, many times for many months, in detention centers which are actually prisons from all points of view. The incarceration is subjective, arbitrary, ilegal, useless and unjust. People who have done nothing wrong are locked away for indefinite periods of time waiting for bureaucratic proceedures that they hope would solve their problems and demands. Asylum seekers are put in domestic prisons, facing inhuman treatment, racism and segregation.

Fascism, racism, nationalism

Immigrants tend to replace the lower strata of the "native" population in Western Europe, and to take the lowest paying jobs, the worst living condition, and to take the heat from most fascist and extreme right groups. Since 1990, immigrants of color (from Africa, North Africa, Middle East, Asia, Roma immigrants from Eastern Europe) have been the preferred target for racism-based violence.

Also, racism and xenophobia has become institutionalized: most immigration/border policies have worrying racist and nationalizing undertones. Those picked for deportation and harsh treatment are more often of color. The tightening of the German border, for example, with the change in the asylum law in 1993, was a response not necessarily to the thousands of immigrants, but to the thousands of Roma immigrants from Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia. The official governmental discourse of closing/protecting the borders and defending the "native" population (as it happened in France, UK, Ireland), only added to the hatred and racism that the newly arrived were experiencing.

The effects of the immigration policies extend well beyond the borders that they are intended to defend. The EU has conditioned the acceptance of certain Eastern European countries (and Romania among them) on solving the "Gypsy problem" and stopping the immigration of Roma toward Western Europe. Extreme right groups in Romania have blamed--and still blame in their programme--Romania's poor international image on Romanians being "mistaken for" an "uncivilized, dirty, and lazy nation," that of the Roma (the New Right is calling for drastic measures involving the army and the police).

Capitalism, corporate politics, UE enlargement, the WEF, FMI, G8

The leaders of the (capitalist) world are preaching about a so-called "war without ending," who's destination is to protect western values and civilisation, to justify their military actions and the support they offer to opressive regimes.

In the name of protecting "our way of life", through military campaigns, they are actually trying to get unrestricted acces for western corporation to all resurces they need. Through international financial and trade institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, WTO, the West takes advantage of the economic domination and power to impose the rest of the world politics which will favorize their interests, leaving behind nations sinking in debts and poverty. As a consequence, people from this kind of places , brought to poverty by western exploitation, are being forced to leave, to imigrate looking for a better life, risking persecution and death.

Pollution, animal rights

Lead by their needs and desires to achieve always more and bigger profits, capitalism extends globally, resulting in a process of degradation of the environement. Abusive exploitations of the natural resources, together with pollution and carbon emissions have determined rapid changes in the global climate, more and more people being forced to leave their homelands because of floods, deforestations, and other forms of environement destruction. We're witnessess of the mass extinction of many animal and plant species - of the ecosystem and the traditional human society which is based on these things.

Va rugam sa distribuiti informatia celor care credeti ca ar fi interesati/ar dori sa contribuie.
Contact (inlocuiti _la_ cu @):
aactivistcollective_la_yahoo.com (romana/english)
wielkowitsch_la_hotmail.com (english/deutsch)

Please distribute to all those interested.
Contanct info (replace _at_ with @):
aactivistcollective_at_yahoo.com (romana/english)
wielkowitsch_at_hotmail.com (english/deutsch)

Afisat de: Claudia la data de May 16, 2003 07:50 PM | TrackBack