Stop the deportation - Protest against the Ausreisezentrum for migrants.

Closing the Lager camps action days in Fürth/Nürnberg 11-14 September 2003

01.Aug.03 - The refugee issue can only be understood from a point of view that includes the colonial structure of opression, exclusion and violence.
The refugee is many times understood in terms of race (from poor countries where black or mestizos live). When colonialism began and the whites "discovered" Africans, Indians, etc. they were placed in zoos and sent throughtout Europe to be seen as exotic animals. The reality of today is not much different. Refugees are placed in refugee Heims like Markersdorf in Thüeringen and Eisenhuttenstadt in Brandenburg that are far from many possibilities of intergration into the society. They are excluded and marginalized and only looked upon with curiosity (or perhaps less hatred) when they display some aspect of their cultural identity (clothes, music, dance, etc.). When something is to be done to fight this inherent injustice, then the European sees the refugee as someone who needs to be helped and given charity. Nevertheless, if the boot of opression is on the back of the majority of the world, then no helping hand will be worth more than the gesture until we remove the boot of opression. And it must be clear that this symbolic boot on our backs is the very concrete situation in the world, whereby few countries in the hands of a handful of corporations and rich try to control the wealth (both human and material) of the entire planet. It is in the interest of these rich that our countries are devastated and our resources taken. When we attempt to find a better life in order to feed our families, enjoy an education or even seek out the right to decent health care, then the societies whose rich destroy the very fabrics of our societies and our identities, criminalize us and put us in prison, when they are the people responsible for committing the crimes from the outset. Now, because of even more repressive migration controls, this restriction of our freedom of movement begins through police control - and police brutality - in our own countries, where the local police receive European money in order to criminalize the people´s desire to seek out a better life, for which they are imprisoned. If we manage to make it past the increasingly rigid and brutal controls of the European Fortress then we are immediately considered to be terrorists and criminals and our deportation is prepared even before they know our names or even of our very existence. The buerocratic machine of injustice continues to work, and we remain people and cultures without faces and without rights, just simple objects to be stared at and talked about as if we were still in the human zoos constructed for us hundreds of years ago. When we are deported, we are sent back to the very lands that have been destroyed and raped of any future, just as was begun when the Europeans reached our countries and began to "discover" them in the name of religion and profit. Just like today. And just like when colonialism began, we are treated like animals not worthy of the so-called ideals of the Europeans - liberty, fraternity and democracy. We are put into cages (either heims, ausreisezentrum or deportation prisons) and they try to make clear to us that we cannot enjoy the benefits of a so-called free society with democracy, education, health care, the right to work and the right to movement neither here nor in our own countries. We are expected to accept the injustices placed upon us by our governments and their rulers (U.S.A and European governments, WTO, IMF, World Bank). We are also expected to not fight back when attacked, but instead act like we were domesticated animals who must only obey and cower before the master.

The VOICE Jena