Noborder Camp in Timisoara (Romania),9-15 june

Newsletter 1

19.May.03 - Starting with the mid 80’s, Europe started to show it’s border regime and legislation. In 1990 Schengen covention was adopted, by wich common standards on migration politic were established for all member states. All the countries in the european Union, except UK and ireland, signed this agreement. Starting with that moment, asylum seekers from outside EU could ask for asylum only in the country they succeded to reach. This thing made it impossible for immigrants to choose freely the resident country in conformity with, for example, the language they knew to speak or the place where their familly or friends were.

In 9-15 june, Timisoara, a city placed in the west of Romania, near the borders with Hungary and yugoslavia, will be the scene of the first Noborder camp from Romania. This camp will mean 7 days of actions, discussions and workshops around the central problem – freedom of movement and establishment for everybody. The camp aims to unite activists, imigrants and artists from all aver Romania and Europe, to create an environement for communication, exchange of informations and debates about migration and border regime.

Preliminary Agenda

NoBorder timisoara will be a practical demonstration of collective and participants abillities of organisation and administration of theyr own actions durring the camp, on non-hierarhical basis and self-management. This attemt asks for everybody's active participation, the camp being planned as a diy project. This agenda is only a general one, containing only major topics and aspects; latter it will be split on hours. The actions, projects and discussions which apear in the preliminary agenda can be modified following the discussions and conclusions during the camp.

Main discussion points:

freedom of movement - fundamental human right; UN high commandament for refugees

Schengen Information System - "electronic borders", social control SIS is the central piece in the the border regime in Schengen region. Projected for centralisation of the dates concerning immigrants and refugees control, SIS is used also now for search and find the people considered "dangerous". All 13 member states of schengen agreement are participants in the SIS under legal but also logistic aspects. Altough UK and Ireland are not a part of schengen space and so they are not part of the same visa regime, an official raport shows that the two countries have a in EU’s efforts of stopping ilegal migration and organised crime.
SIS data base contains recordings made in each EU member state, agencies from EU countries being interconnected through thousands of terminals, this thing allows them to persons wanted for deportation or arrest, or suspected for being a danger for national security and for public order.
These data base contained at the end of year 2001, 10541271 recordings, including also between 1.3 and 6 millions of names. Siemens and Nixdorf and Bullroup have projected and offer for SIS infrastucture and also the soft interface, and sema group is the one who’s providing the SIS management. In the present SIS 2 is being projected, which wil allow identification with the DNA and biometric recordings (recognision by the iris).the dates held by SIS are available for Europol and Eurojust. The number of the new ebtries in SIS increased seriously after september 11 2001.

migration, globalisation, work - detention centers for imigrants, imigrants rights, international legislation regarding imigration, romanian legislation regarding migration, detention centers for immigrants in romania refugees and imigrants are some of the most vulnerable members of society. The number of asylum seekers in the detention centers has grown very much over the past years. People who are not suspected for commiting any crimes are locke dwithout trials, many times for many months, in detention centers which are actually prisons from all points of view. The incarceration is subjective, arbitrary, ilegal, useless and unjust. People who have done nothing wrong are locked away for undefinite periods waiting for the beureaucratics proceedures for solvng theyr problems and demnds. Asylum seekers are put in domestic prisons, facing inhuman treatment, racism and segregation.

fascism, racism, nationalism

sexism, homophobia

capitalism, corporate politics - EU enlargement, the WEF, IMF, G8 the leaders of the (capitalist) world are preaching about a so-called "war without ending" who's destination is to protect western values and civilisation, to justify theyr military actions and the support they offer to opressive regimes.
In the name of protecting "our way of life", through military campaigns, they are actually trying to get unrestricted acces for western corporation to all resurces they need. Through international financial and trade institutions like the IMF, world bank, WTO, the west takes advantage of the economic domination and power to impose the rest of the world politics which will favorize theyr interests, leaving behind nations sinking in debts and poverty. As a consequance, people from this kind of places , brought to poverty by western exploitation, are being forced to leave, to imigrate looking for a better life, risking persecution and death.

pollution, animal rights - lead by their needs and desires to achieve always more profits and bigger ones, capitalism extends globally, resulting in a process of degradation of the environement in it’s way. Abusive exploitations of the naural resources, together with pollution and carbon emissions have determined rapid changes in the global climate, more and more people being forced to leave their homelands because of floods, deforestations, and other forms of environement destruction. We’re witnessess of the mass extinction of many animal and plant species – of the ecosystem and the traditional human society which is based on these things.

Preliminary agenda:

8 june - the camp opens officially

evening - concert with severed head of the state from usa and some romanian support band

9 june - arival of more people

evening - in/formal meeting and going over the program, organisation, participants, actions...
later in the evening - "relax! you'r in romania" party

10 june

all day workshops on "noborder" issues (still not decided exactly what!)
evening - concert with molotov cocktail usa and barackca hungary and romanian support band

11 june

all day workshops on "noborder" issues, still not established what yet.
evening - films

12 june "let's meet romania, kids" day

workshops on different issues from here like:
gay/lesbian situatrion
roma minority situation
rosia montana gold minning disaster
indymedia romania and ilegal radio from cluj
and maybe others

evening - concert with guardia nerra (usa-argentina) and romanian support band

13 june "diy must rule!" preparation for the final action in 15

practical workshops
evening - films

14 june

ecological cleaning of the forest around the camp
"diy active-reactive squatting workshop" - a group who will get materials and together we will shere experience and energy in trying to make the place liveable. the building we have. it's possible to be a lot to work, so the group involved in this thing might start from the 13.
evening - final details about tommorows action

15 june time to take the streets day.

The thing is,that all those things hopefully will develope and many new things will happen. All depends on people,which gonna come, all depends on you!!!

and finally,of course WE NEED HELP!!!

we still look for people,which could prepare the workshops on issues mentioned above,as well as on many technical skills.

Most important things we very very much need are:
-big mobile kitchen,or at least kitchen stuff for preparing large meals(pots,gas cookers,etc.)
-small electricity generator
-2 camping/car toilets(they look like bag and we need it for the squat)
-1-2 bigger tents(for meetings,etc.)

Also, please bring any possible political videos, books, zines, publications, etc.(the best would be in english), because Infoshops in Craiova and Timisoara got recently open, but due to isolation and financial impossibilities has yet not much to offer, so they hope for any materials...

more info:
aactivistcollective@yahoo.com (romana/english)
wielkowitsch@hotmail.com (english/deutsch)

more information: timisoara camp web site