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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
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