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07.Apr.05 - reports from the actions and demonstrations that took place within the framework of the 2nd european actionday for freedom of movement and the right to stay
April the 2nd is a day of action for migrants' rights and against detention and deportation. It is a day in a process already begun that will lead towards Euromayday 2005.
Today, April the 1st, the migrant precarity networks started making some actions that hit several subjects that manage detention centers and which collaborates with the shame of deportations.
In Venice and Cormons (Gorizia) the actions have directly hit the Confraternita of the Misericordia that manages several detention Centers for Migrants (Agrigento, Modena, Lampedusa and Bologna), "lagers" that deny migrants' rights and transform them in hostages of the exploitation without justice and dignity.
In Rome and Milan have been occupied the offices of Blue Panorama and Alitalia, airlines that collaborate with the deportations made by the Italian government making their businness on life of the human beings.
In Mezzanone (Foggia) a Center of identification for asylum seekers has been invaded, a place in which governement is building a detention center, in which everyone can see the politics of detention and denial of migrants' rights.
On April the 2nd there will take place more initiatives for freedom of movement, for migrants' rights, against detention centers and deportations. We think it is fundamental that all the actions hit directly the structures and the subjects that participate to detentions and deportations.
Rete del Precariato Migrante
Friday 1st of April
Venice - Action against Confraternita della Misericordia:
We took action and sanctioned the Venetian branch of the Confraternita della Misericordia, an organisation that holds branches all over Italy through out the network called Confederazione italiana delle Misericordie. Misericordia pledges itself of being charitable and merciful for it "helps poor and derelict citizens" but the truth is that this structure is earning huge amounts of money by managing the new concentration camps, the well known detention centres (CPT) where migrants are detained just because they are papersless. One of the representative of Confraternita italiana della Misericordia is Minister Giovanardi's twin brother. Giovanardi the reactionary redneck Minister for Parliamentar Relations and for Civil Service...
Misercordia runs many detention centres: the one in Agrigento, in Lampedusa, in Modena (built by building co-operatives linked to Legacoop and from today on it also run the detention centre in Bologna via Mattei.
These contracts directly signed by Home Office are one of the most dreadful examples of the business of sufference and of war against civilians. CPT are an unacceptable shame and the ones that make money out of them are accomplices with the jailors.
As it happens in Iraq, embedded NGOs give their precious help to the lords of war and to their exploitation and death devices. How can managing detention centres be consistent with the "Gospel"? Migrant precariat, condemned by brutal laws to a life of pain, needs to be freed of borders, jails, deportations, tortures, racism!
We today appeal to all the ones that reclaim and fight for freedom, that resist against global war to begin campaigning and boycotting by all means possible detention centres managers. Main objectives are: UNMASK war, which governments impose through out detention centres as well; denounce all collaborators; have all businesses drop their shameful contracts.
There are no choices: it's either WAR or DEMOCRACY! FOR THE CLOSURE OF ALL DETENTION CENTRES!
Cormons (Gorizia) - Occupation of Misericordia's branch:
Around 30 activists denounced the connivance of this institution with the management of detention centres in Italy. The occupation of Misericordia's offices lasted about two hours, activists reclaim that Gorizia's detention centre never opens and that Misericordia immediately drops its contracts.
Roma:
The occupation of Blue Panorama In the morning activists from ESC laboratory, Astra and Action occupied Blue Panorama Airlines main offices. Blue Panorama Airlines, together with many others, place their planes at deportations' disposal: they repatriate migrant citizens that hold no residence papers.
Milan - Occupation of Alitalia's offices:
Week by week in Europe hundreds of people disappear. They are first caged in migrants' detention centres (CPT), then beated, tied up, gagged with cellar tape to be deported to southern countries. They're forced through airports' gates to board on civil and military planes.
Today, 1st of april, we have occupied and closed down Alitalia's offices of Stazione Cadorna. During the past demonstration to Corelli's detention centres, the activists' network managed to send two delegations iinside this CPT which collected desperate witnessies of migrants deported by Alitalia's flights. They told they had been beated, tied up, and gagged up with cellar tape. Alitalia is actually one of civil airways which serve to deport migrants caged in CPT, called "temporary" detention centres. We closed down this office to express our disdain against the inhuman concept of deportations, to sanction this "civil" airways accomplishment and to start a campaign against all airawis and firms involved in the horror of deportations. During the action we have communicated with Alitalia's employeess and all passers-by, telling them the role the potential role they have as employees of this company or planes passengers.
Together with our European mates we have denounced everydays suspension of human rights in detention centres such as Corelli's CPT were detainees cannot meet anybody because nobody can enter these lagers. In lots of Italians towns people are demonstrating today against migrants detention centres denouncing private companies – such as Confraternita delle Misericordie – which take profit from CPT management and are partners of this shame.
Citizenships and circulation rights for all! Stop deportation! For the end of racist laws like Bossi-Fini law! For the shutting down of all CPT/lager. No man is illegal!
Borgo Mezzanone (Foggia-Puglia):
Today 50 activists from Naples, Bari and Benevento invaded the Centre for administrative detention of migrants in Borgo Mezzanone (Foggia-Puglia). At the moment up to 15 asylum seekers are inmate in the centre. Some of us managed to interview few of them who are "hosted" in caravans placed within a yard enclosed by fences. The authorities officially define the place as a "shelter" centre, but the place is guarded by policeman and inwards and outwards circulation is actually forbidden. During the summer hundreds of migrants are normally inmate in the centre. The area of Borgo Mezzanone is one of the major regions in Italy for agricultural work. Thousands of migrants work in the fields surrounding the area and the centre of Borgo Mezzanone play a major role in assuring that they can be deported when their seasonal job is over.
Next to this premises a real lager has been built and it will be put into function April 5th. It will "host" asylum seekers waiting for their application to be processed and migrants waiting to be deported.
The activists managed to break also into the premises of this real "lager" and to support their action with documentary evidence: two blocks surrounded by fences 4 meters high have been built, while another circle of fences encloses the whole area. A police station and an identification centre will "complement" the structure. The Red Cross which will run the centre has already opened its offices inside the place. We tried to interview them in other to get information about the centre but members of the Red Cross tried also to use physical constraint against the activists and refuse any collaboration with us. The invasion of the centre was successful even though the police and the Red Cross tried to prevent it.
Borgo Mezzanone is meant to become one of the most cruel and "efficient" lager for the detention of migrants and asylum seekers in the South of Italy, but the campaign to prevent its entry into function will continue.
The action of today was aimed at denouncing the very institution of the centres for the administrative detention of aliens and we will continue to violate and trespass these lagers which are built inside and outside Europe.
Today action in Borgo Mezzanone was organised and supported by a wide network of anti-racism and anti-borders activists in South Italy.soem 150 people took part at the demonstration against deportation and for the fredmom opf movement and the right to stay.
Saturday 2nd of April
Gradisca:
Today, 2nd of April 2005, after many actions made yesterday, migrants' struggles crossed all Europe with one voice FOR FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT AND THE RIGHT TO STAY. In Gradisca d'Isonzo too, more than 1500 men and women reached the detention centre under construction to reaffirm the NO to detention centres that since many years is crossing Europe. NEITHER HERE, NOR ELSEWHERE repeated in their speech the migrants from Gradisca and the others who came to take place to the demonstration from every place of northern Italy, especially from Brescia, Vicenza, Bologna,. NO TO THE BOSSI-FINI LAW, NO TO THE LAW N. 30 ON THE LABOUR MARKET, which taken together represent a strong attack against all workers, and threaten illegality and detention the life of all the migrants who live in this country.
Today we went along the streets of the Italian eastern frontier against the Europe of frontiers: the militarized ones of borders; the ones surrounded by walls and barbed wire of the detention centres; the one of the "contratto di soggiorno per lavoro".
While thousands shared this passwords in the "southern door" of Europe, Sicily, in front of the detention centre of the city of Ragusa, after the demonstration in Gradisca, many people left a sign on the wire netting which marks off the border between Italy and Slovenia. A banner affirming FREEDOM FOR MIGRANTS, FREEDOM WITHOUT BORDERS, to repeat another time that in spite of and against every frontier, hundreds of men and women everyday cross our "eastern door", acting the same FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT which today has been asserted with one voice everywhere in Europe.
Tavolo Migranti dei Social Forum Italiani
Napoli:
Hundreds of people have participated in a demonstration through the city center. After yesterday’s invasion iniziative at the identification center of Borgo Mezzanone, today the anti-racist, precarious, student, immigrant, and unemployment networks have taken to the streets to fight against the absence of immigrant rights.
[more pictures here]
Crotone:
A protest/demonstration in fornt of the detention center Sant’Anna. The activists and all of the associations present are demanding to enter to see the conditions. The detention center in Crotone is the bigest in Europe: there are over 1000 cells. Inside, the "first arrivals" center is also hosted. This is the detention center in which the immigrants who landed in Lampadusa were sent.
Ragusa (Sicily):
Demonsration against a detention centre for only women which has opened recently in this Sicilian town. Six activists from Sicilian Antiracist Network got in the CPT together with a Senator of DS Party.
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