Summer camp in Petisovci in Slovenia

04.Jun.01 - Collective Globala, association Political laboratory and co-ordination of different autonomous political groups OFI (Office for Interventions) are organising an 'Open borders summer camp' in Slovenia.

The problem of immigrations in Slovenia is very accentuated. The Balkan path has been released after the end of Yugoslav wars, the State is dealing with the problem in exclusively repressive and violent manner, the European Union is pressing economo-political elite to stop any migration what so ever.

The fortune of immigrants is completely in the hands of the police. The state politics is to prevent any immigrant to enter the territory of Slovenia (zero tolerance at the border). So the state has accumulate huge police force at the southern and eastern border (with Croatia and Hungary). By doing this they established a police regime in the border area. The police not to have any contacts with the immigrants harass local inhabitants. In spite of such police measures local inhabitants are self-organising and they help those who illegally cross the border. Those immigrants that are caught are imprisoned in the special detention centres, which are overcrowded and inappropriate for living. Because of that and because of police manoeuvres with them the conflicts between local inhabitants and immigrants are unavoidable. Through this and by the media interpretations of immigrants as criminals and disease carriers there is a huge wave of xenophobia in Slovenia. We prepared a manifestation against xenophobia and for open borders in Ljubljana which changed the attitude of media, but the state politics stayed the same.

The starting point of our activities is that we live in the global, world society and by this fact we demand the indiscriminate right for global movement and the acknowledgement of universal social and political rights, that is universal citizenship. In this context we established together with association Ya basta! from Northeast Italy a network trans-alpina, which aim is the area of Alpe Adria (Northeast Italy, Slovenia, Southern Austria and Croatia) without borders. Our concrete goal is the free circulation of radical social movements. The manifestation in Ljubljana was the first common action. Latter we participated in the manifestation against G8 in Trieste and we organised common manifestation on the border between Gorizia and Nova Gorica (divided city in divided world).

We are organising the No border summer camp through which we would like to share experiences and knowledge with activists that are acting against borders and against discrimination of immigrants in the context of the globalisation of resistance. We would also like to co-ordinate future activities in the framework of Transalpine network and broader. The activities in the camp are going to culminate in the manifestation at the border.

The summer camp is going to take place between 4th and 8th of July in the village Petisovci near Lendava. The location is filled with symbolic. It is 1 kilometre from the Croatian border, 2 kilometres from Hungarian border, next to a dying refinery, in the place that was once a spa.