Transnational Resistance against the "European Border Agency" – Fight the Border Regime – for Global Freedom of Movement!
[noborder.org] 11.Apr.08 – Protest and press-conference in front of the
headquarters of FRONTEX in Warsaw, against european borderregime and
its externalisation to the East and South, in the frame of the
transnational chain of migrationrelated actions!
While the number of migrants and refugees is rising everywhere, the
European Union is implementing a more and more restrictive border
regime to limit, control and "manage" migration according to its own
interests. The result is violent exclusion of migrants and refugees,
leading to thousands of people dying every year outside the walls of
Fortress Europe, in the desert, in the Mediterranean sea or in the
Atlantic ocean, leading to enforced mass deportations, leading to
millions of "undocumented migrants" and asylum seekers who are deprived
of fundamental Human Rights and Labour Rights. FRONTEX, the "European
Border Agency", plays a crucial core role for this racist european
border regime and has achieved rapidly growing importance and budget
since its foundation in 2005.
The job of FRONTEX is to link, to coordinate and to harmonise the
work of national border control forces of the Eurpean Union’s member
states, integrating responsibilities of police forces, military forces
and secret services. Being granted a high level of autonomy, FRONTEX is
exercising its growing power without any obligatory criteria of
transparency and parliamentary control. Together with national border
guard agencies, FRONTEX officers carry out a growing number of
anti-migrant-operations. According to the EU-commission, FRONTEX has
participated in picking up and rejecting 53.000 people along the
European Union’s borders in 2006 and 2007. In 2006, FRONTEX carried out
operations outside EU-territory to prevent African migrants from
reaching Lampedusa, Malta and the Canary Islands by boat. For this
task, FRONTEX produces the image of a war against the threat of
"illegal migration", and thus legitimizing the use of military
equipment like warships, aircraft and helicopters. As a first step in
tightening the closure of the EU’s southern sea borders, FRONTEX
connected the EU member states in the region in a "European Patrols
Network", and Frontex also carries out various joint operations in
order to build a common european border regime. With the recently added
component of the so-called Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABITs),
Frontex is moving fast towards a militarised border guard agency, a
cornerstone in the fortification of europe.
To be sure, such border control operations and measures are
responsible for more and more migrants dying. Fighting migration does
not stop the causes of migration, but forces refugees and migrants to
choose increasingly dangerous travelling routes. Nevertheless, FRONTEX
and its partner institutions cynically present their chase of migrants
as a „humanitarian engagement against criminal human trafficking".
A growing focus of FRONTEX since the enlargement of the Schengen
area is the control of the eastern borders. FRONTEX is also involved in
research on "illegal migration" and technical measures, technical
equipment for border surveillance and training programmes for border
police forces. Furthermore, FRONTEX has been given the mandate for
negotiations with states outside the EU to collaborate on border
surveillance and migration control. Besides this, FRONTEX increasingly
engages in networking the national authorities of EU member states to
carry out joint charter-flight deportations.
Recently, the EU-commission, presented a proposal for a so-called
"Border Package", titled " A comprehensive vision for an integrated
European border management system for the 21st century" . According to
this plan, FRONTEX shall function as a central coordination hub in the
architecture of a european border regime unprecedented. An
all-encompassing European Border Surveillance System (EUROSUR) will spy
on migrants from the very beginning of their journey to Europe, while a
biometric entry/exit system at the borders will control all movements
into and out ouf the European Union. All this will have Frontex at it
centre. .
FRONTEX represents a militarised security-regime in which police,
border control, migration authorities, army and secret services are
forming a more and more integrated complex of repression, dividing the
world along hierarchies between rich and poor, between (western) Europe
and "the others", between those who have rights, those who have less
rights and those who have no rights at all. We’ve had enough of this
so-called security. We’ve had enough of people being killed, of people
being rejected, being imprisoned or being deported by the border
regime. We want no migration control and no border surveillance. We
want no hierarchies of capitalist, racist and sexist exploitation and
exclusion. We want Global Freedom of Movement and Global Rights for
everyone!
Migrationrelated groups and networks from all over Europe are invited to send delegates to Warsaw:
– on 5th of June to attend and contribute to a common information- event in the evening at 7 p.m
–
on 6th of June to join the press-conference at 12.30 at and the
protest-siege with banners and speeches at 2 p.m. in front of the
Frontex-headquarter
Let’s make the 6th of June in Warsaw as a powerful starting point
for a longterm transnational campaign against Frontex, against the
monster of European border regime!
First sigantures: No Borders Poland; Zwiazek Syndykalistow Polski,
Warszawa (Union of Syndicalists, Warsaw); Praga Anarchist Group,
Warsaw; No one is illegal Hanau, Caravan-Group Munich, Frassanito
Network
