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Ceuta: European Caravan Against The Fence

transmitter | 28.10.2005 22:03 | Migration | World

Here is a call for a "caravan against the fence" at the very southern border of europe: the spanish enclave "ceuta". The Caravan departs on the 4th of November.

EUROPEAN CARAVAN AGAINST THE FENCE : NO-ONE IS ILLEGAL.

The caravan is departing on the 4, 5 and 6th of November, 2005

The fact tha many people die at the borders, unfortunately, means today nothing new, and even less at that very southern European border that separates Spain and Morocco: we just have to think about the great quantity of remains of "pateras" (boats) found adrift throughout the years. Neither mean something new the illegal deportations of immigrants, often asylum petitioners whose demands were never admitted, either to the Algerian or to third countries. And it is no news that people try to go cross the borders: in fact, more than an insurmountable barrier, the borders work as dry docks, with their complexe floodgates system that determines who will pass and how, at the expense or in exchange of what. Jumping the fences that separate the colonial settlements of Ceuta and Melille from the Moroccan territory means from many years is an entry way in Europe, overall for those who cannot or don´t want the falsified visa, the "patera" or the policeman in charge who will turn a blind eye at the suitable time.

What makes so different then the images from Ceuta and Melille that we´ve been watching throughout the past weeks? The cruelty that has reached the broder regime: for the first time, the security forces (who cares under which flag, after all the degree of «cooperation» gets higher and higher now) have shot dead people trying to jump over the border fence. For the first time, the deportations ended in the very middleof the desert, far from any village or city and, therefore, from any supply of water and food. The quantity of people trying to cross the border made it different too. Maybe because of the Integral Surveillance System at the Straits of Gibraltar (SIVE), that obliges people to find alternative routes? or because of a raise in the prices charged by people smugglers? or because the jump means not having to come to terms with those "mafias"? . Does it have somenthing to do with it the increase of police cooperation between Spain and Morocco and the resulting intensification in the pressure put by moroccon authorities on those bound for to North in transit through Morocco?. These all are important factors that, among another, oblige us to question about the reasons why the southern border is the most militarized one of European borders.

There are still more different points this time: while those images made their way in our everyday spaces (on TV, on the radio), it was more and more unbearable for us to look in another direction, as so many times before. That´s why in different european places, concentrations,
demonstrations and night meetings were held to say "basta": stop the murderings, stop the homicide deportations, stop the blows and vexations, stop the expenses to militarize the borders.

Social groups and selforganized spaces, social communicators, european citizens born here and there, neighbourhood associations, assemblies and migrant forums have decided to go form different European places in a caravan towards the fences in Ceuta, so that our "basta" is heard in a loud voice. Towards the fences as the scene of a crime perpetrated in the name of the European democracies. Towards the fences as a symbol of a border regime that is not only made up of physical barriers and surveillance areas more and more militarized, but also of a system to access to the rights that creates "first class" citizens and "second class" ones (as well as "non-citizens"), provoking authentic labour and social "apartheids" that cut off and precarize the social bond and fill it with fear towards the others.

We invite you all, men and women from the different european cities, to join us in this journey. Because today more than ever, in the face of the cruelty, against the proliferation of barriers and the inclusion/exclusion systems in the really existing Europe, producing the common means raising our voices to say "basta" to the fence of death and to everything it symbolizes: not in our name. And it also means producing an alliance with those trying to go through it, defending their right to the existence, that is also ours... in a better world."


taken from:
 http://estrecho.indymedia.org/newswire/display/16577/index.php

original callout in Spanish:  http://estrecho.indymedia.org/newswire/display/16553/index.php

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