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Madrid: Demo against detention centers this saturday

transmitter | 30.03.2006 22:19 | Migration | World

The network which initiated the Ceuta Caravan last november has sent out an appeal for a demo at a detention center in Madrid on 1 April. Their call is worth reading even though most of us won't go to Madrid this weekend - but maybe to Harmondsworth next Saturday?

See the call in Spanish:
 http://estrecho.indymedia.org/feature/display/20688/index.php

April 1, 2006, Madrid
European Caravan for the Freedom of Movement
No to immigrant detention centres
Demonstration from Metro Aluche (7pm) to the CIE (Detention centre) in Carabanchel

AGAINST IMMIGRANT DETENTION CENTRES!
FOR FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT!

Immigrant detention centres are disguised prisons. They hold people whose only crime is to have immigrated and to not yet have a residence permit. Immigrants without papers are punished with up to 40 days imprisonment whilst a “regularised” citizen would face a small fine. We say that they are disguised prisons but in reality they're worse: rules are much more ambiguous and greater discretion is given to the director and staff. In this sense detainees are more exposed and vulnerable to bad treatment and poor conditions. It is not by chance that visiting a detention centre is much more complicated than a conventional prison.

Most immigrants leaving the centres do so with an order for their expulsion from the country. This order is rarely exercised, but leaves the immigrants in a situation of total vulnerability; with no possibility to obtain either a resident or work permit they are doomed to clandestinity, to the worst paid jobs and hardest conditions, to black market housing agencies and vulnerability to blackmail. In summary, a life of precarity and permanent uncertainty. In this so-called State of Rights more and more people find themselves not having the right to exist.

The construction of these centres follows the European migration policies which rely upon selective control and militarisation, provoking deaths and tense social relations. There is little or no work on a social basis. It is not recognised that migration is caused by huge inequalities between North and South, that these inequalities are a direct result of a global economic system favouring the free circulation of capital, the de-localization of companies and free trade and penalizing the freedom of movement of people who search a better future.

Against these migration politics and against detention centres as one of the most extreme symbols of injustice in our cities, the European Caravan for the Freedom of Movement convokes a demonstration:

- For the freedom of movement and against immigrant detention centres
- No more prisons in Carabanchel: for a social use of the ground currently used as a detention centre.

DEMONSTRATION SATURDAY APRIL 1ST, 2006, 7pm METRO ALUCHE (L5 C5)

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