The border trail: junction Frankfurt Airport

27.7. - 5.8.2001 4th antiracist border camp in the surroundings of Frankfurt Airport.

10.Jun.01 - Our main matter of concern is the free and unlimited immigration in the European Union (EU). Freedom of movement and action, enjoyed by the EU-citizens, is a luck that's for all. According to our opinion, the fight for a corresponding change of mind in governments and in the population must be put on top of the social agenda. Hessen is the right field of action. By organising the Conservative Party (CDU) campaign of signatures in 1999, where millions of citizens had been giving their full names against binational citizenship, philistine attitude was promoted to a social program.

After 3 camps at the east German foreign border in the province, we'll closely examine the inner and outer borders within the German Republic (BRD) this time.

• Suspected Rhein/Main-Airport to be the greatest inner-German admission control of the Border Police (Bundesgrenzschutz; BGS), which is sifting out and sending back undesirable passengers?
• Heard already about the annual number of about 10,000 people being deported from there and the fact that the death of 2 men was being approved?
• Known? Frankfurt airport also houses a internment centre. A woman committed suicide there after 8 months of detention.

Thus, failed attempts to come to Germany in order to find luck, income or refuge are ending. The surveillance of EU- borders is characterised by police search. In the interior, additional borders and controls are aggravating life for the migrants and gaining importance.
At Rhein/Main-Airport all sorts of interests, desires, needs and projections are materialising themselves. Our radical criticism of the existing economical and social order won't stop at the sophisticated facade of the Frankfurt Airport. Slogans like Global City, multicultural society, public space and job migration are outlining our main focuses of action and naming our main topics.

If we are settling down our tents, the anti-racist summer of activity, including camps and days of action across Europe, has already begun. A caravan by bus for visiting and connecting the different places is being planned. We're eagerly awaiting the international interchange of experiences and opinions.

• Antiracist activists in Germany are considering campaigns against deportation prisons. The internment centre at Frankfurt Airport will be target of an impressive manifestation on the 4th of August.
• The caravan for the rights of refugees is calling upon everybody for massive civil disobedience. The camp will be one of the places where we'll fight together with them for their behalves.
• Ever thought of being one of at least 20,000 people crossing the borders towards Strassburg next year in order to claim open borders in front of the European Parliament?
• Already contemplated to organise yourself with others in order to break open the different cultural, social and political horizons in your home zone and on a nationwide level?

The 4th antiracist border camp is pleading for social changes and ideas stretching far beyond the gathered participants, thereby questioning niches of all kinds. The open-mindedness for irritations and provocation, the elucidation and the quarrels we're expecting from others, we're claiming from ourselves as well.

Again, the camp is meant to be a spectacular experiment. Activists from the fields of culture, leisure, media and politics will use it for exhibitions, installations, communication guerrilla, events, actions, theatre, concerts and demonstrations, in order to bewilder the ongoing 'business as usual'-situation at the Frankfurt Airport and in the adjacent cities and communities. We're curious to know if the citizens against the extension of the airport and camp participants will have something to communicate about. It's still uncertain if the camp radio will work in its usual, fresh way or if it'll be cooperating with local radios. Neither do we exactly know the form in which the popular web-magazine will appear. By means of camouflage, the propaganda brigade will see to it that our messages find their way to the news and into the letter boxes. With real pleasure we're supporting the local initiatives, may their forces for resistance be strengthened by the days of our camp.

We want an alliance, which is considering social rights as well as rights of citizens and human rights as something universal and indivisible. In the discussion about immigration and living conditions for migrants, we're appearing as lawyers, accused and plaintiffs in our own affair. Free immigration is not our aim, but only the beginning. A society which excludes people from all over the world can't be free.

Come and camp with us.

The Camp's organisers