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15.Feb.04 - This mobilisation marks two years of internal work to establish a broad based and durable European network of sans papiers, refugees and migrants to fight against the policies of repression and exploitation enforced by the European governments and bosses.
Frankfurt, Germany: Paper royal award
The Association for Legalization is a nationwide network that is demanding the right for legalization.Today we opened a new branch in Frankfurt/Germany. We celebrated this event with a manifestation joint by about 100 people. After a presstalk, several speeches about the issues of deportation, detention of refugess and the struggle of undocumented people for their political and social rights, the Association for Legalization awarded Goran Bogdanovic with the Paper Royal Price for outstanding achievements in overcoming the european border regime. Despite of having been arrested already several times for not beeing documented, he exercised his right of free movement. As price Mr. Bogdanovic received a scouter, in allusion to the one million "guestworker", who likewise received in 1964 a scouter too. The manifestation ended with a marriage convoi to propagate the marriage on papers as strategy of legalization.
Goettingen, Germany: kiosk occupied, re-opened for useful knowledge
In small town Goettingen in the center of germany in this morning a group of 30 people occupied a historical kiosk on the marketplace where normaly newspaper were sold. They put a black stuff around and than re-opened it as "kiosk for usefull knowledge". Offered was knowledge you normaly can´t find in mainstream-media and public opinion: about struggles of migrants (in detention-camps), actions of supporters from outside at the fences (de-fencing) and what all of us can learn from this for the struggle against actual precarisation. Instead of that in small town göttingen is no detention-camp or central administration-building daily exclusion and bloody bad living-circumstances in ghettos for migrants - esp. for sans papiers - are everywhere and made visible in the "kiosk for usefull knowledge". Different direct actions of de-fencing, pictures, speeches and lots of letters from refugees from inside refugee-camps on built up barbed wire-fences next to the kiosk show this hidden reality and collective struggle against it.
Paris, France
In Paris, more than 100 sans papiers and support groups have peacefully occupied the Assembly chamber of the Economic and Social Council, third constitutional house of France, in order to meet the trade unions and associations who voted in support of the report concerning the needs of Europe, including France, in terms of immigration.
After a debate with the Vice-President of the Council and representatives of the CGT, FO (two of the 3 main French trade union confederations), ATD quart monde and the Associations’ Group, an appointment was taken for a meeting with those who voted in favour of the Council’s report and the collectives, associations, trade unions and sans-papiers who led this action.
We strongly hope that this meeting might lead to the necessary co-operation between workers’ trade unions and militant organisations against all discriminations and help to confront together the ruthless capitalist powers developing of a global class of poor and excluded.
We will communicate by Monday the different actions undertaken this day in the participating countries. First reports on :
Press Release: The Sans-Papiers occupy the Economic and Social Council
The Sans-Papiers must be legalized
Since 2:00 pm this afternoon, 100 sans-papiers and activists occupy the Economic and Social Council, 3rd constitutional House in France supposedly representative of the "economic and social forces" of the country.
This occupation follows the report produced in October by the Economic and Social Council, underlining, as many others before (UNO, PLAN, OECD, ILO, European Commission,...), the needs of Europe in general, and of France in particular, in terms of immigration.
This report, which proposes among other things, the legalization of sans-papiers residing on the Schengen territory, contradicts the repressive security policies enforced by Europe towards the migrants and the sans-papiers and highlights their intolerable condition, caught in the vice-like grip of repression and exploitation.
The quasi-slavery of millions of migrants and sans-papiers is 100% profit for the bosses and plays into the European Governments’ plan for global precariousness.
The multiplication of casual contracts imposed by the bosses and the French government will become all the more widespread that the exploitation of migrants and sans-papiers worsens, serving as competition to undermine the social benefits and union gains.
Our occupation of the Economic and Social Council has three aims :
- To meet the trade union confederations who wrote the above-mentioned report in order to create a strong and durable link between the struggle of the ever-more threatened workers and that of the migrants and sans-papiers.
- To confront the MEDEF (French Business Confederation) so that they explain their opposition to the Economic and Social Council’s report while being the main beneficiaries of the present state of exploitation.
- To confront the French Government, especially M. Fillon (Minister of Social Affairs, on his policy of casualisation (reduction of workers’ rights, minimum wage, etc.) and of organised slavery (due to the restrictions imposed to freedom of circulation and residency)
This action falls into the framework of the first First European-wide Day of Action organized in more than 40 cities across Europe, for example:
- Germany : Frankfort, Munich, Bremen, Gottingen, Berlin
- England : London, Oxford, Liverpool, Hull, Bridgewater
- Austria : Vienna
- Belgium : Brussels
- Spain : Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga
- France : Paris, Lille, Perpignan, Nantes, Rennes, Calais, Grenoble, Lyon, Marseille
- Portugal : Lisbon
- Switzerland : Freeburg, Basel, Geneva, Lausanne, Bern
This action is the first step towards the establishment of a European coordination of sans-papiers, migrants and refugees, which should become a broad based and durable tool in our struggle against the policies of repression and exploitation led by the European governments and businesses.
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