From the Network No One Is Illegal Gothenburg and Planka.nu

The Network No One Is Illegal, an association that for two years have worked with supporting hidden immigrants in the Gothenburg area with for example juridical help, education, food and housing, are receiving a grant of 5000 kr. The money will be used to purchase bus-cards for “illegal” immigrants and is given by Planka.nu, a campaign of the Syndicalist Youth Federation for a zero-tax in the public transport system, which involves for example the political fine-fund (“p-kassan”) for “plankare”, people who refuse to pay for public transport, something which has been given a lot of attention in the press.

The reason for this cooperation is very simple: the fee-based public transport traffic with it’s control system has developed into a trap for already heavily pressured hidden immigrants. When poor “illegal” immigrants, who have had their applications for asylum rejected and therefore been forced into a underground life without social security net, are caught in the ticket-controls they have no possibility of presenting satisfying identification. They are instead arrested by police, taken into custody and almost immediately deported. During the latest months activist groups have observed cases like these were parents have been deported with their children remaining and political activists sent back to states were the opposition routinely are tortured and executed.

The ticket controls in the public transport system is probably today the most common reason that people who have been forced underground are arrested and deported. Aside from the practical counter-action of giving bus-passes to hidden immigrants the planka.nu-campaign and the Network No One Is Illegal works together to foment debate about the role and functions of the inspectors in general and in particular their cooperation with the police in the search of hidden immigrants.

- The political system of today is hard to change for groups who do not have big economic or parliamentary resources and therefore we are forced to create our own, if faulty, safety networks outside the institutions of the state, says Mina Majedi of the Planka.nu-campaign.

- 50 “hundred cards” means safer living for a large number of people on the run, whose existence once was shattered by an inhumane and illegal Swedish immigrant policy. But the basic problems for asylum seekers in Sweden remain as long as the hypocrites of the Social Democrats and Moderaterna [the conservatives] can continue with their immigrant political course, adds Johan Andersson of the Network No One Is Illegal.