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29.Jul.03 - Romania: a country with 22 million people an a surface of 230.000 km2. 10 millions people are living outside of Romania in the rest of the world (altough reality seem to outnumber the officials information by much). Located in the Central-East Europe, Romania was also one of the countries behind the Iron Courtain. 1989 brought the 'Revolution' and the change of the system… a countribution to this thing had the revolt and the riots that took place in 16-17 december 1989 in Timisoara and left behind lots of injured and dead persons. Visas were needed for romanians to enter the schengen Europe untill january 2001 when they were taken out. 27th of november 2002 brought the invitation for Romania to join NATO, in Prague-Czech Rep. After the invitation for Hungary, Czech Rep. and Poland to join EU, Romania will receive a different role in the EUropean border politics, 'buffer zone' between the 'unwanted' and the 'promise land'. The dissapearence of wizas for Romanian citizens brought new conditions: the 500 euro to show at the border, 2 way tickets, health ensurance; and also harder border control for other nationalities. Citizens ffrom the Republic of Moldova who had in the past the possibillity of getting romanian citizenshipjust with a moldavian passport are now forced through a harder process and much more complicated, or they are forced into using mafia networksto get it. Once the borders open people who worked in (now privatised) factories, who were fired, paid shit or having bad working conditions and no rightsdecided to go and steal a better life for them and theyr families. This lead to racist attitudes in romanian communities, and not only there, towards gipsy/rroma community - which are so many times blamed for all the trouble romanians do in the western countries and also from here for delaying the process of Romania joining EU (which we all want to go well!?). This attacks on rroma people were most of the times lead by the media and the government and also international institutions (or other foreign/western governments… ). Human traffic also developed after the dissapearence of the visas, mainly prostitution being one of the branches that shows a huge growth (in Romania prostitution is illegal - this results in a lot of hassle from the police on the womens who do this, almost nothing to the pimps, and a very high procent of ill womans) - and many times womans who get jobs from strange adds in the newspappers and up being forced into prostitution either in western countries (Italy, Spain…) either in other parts (Greece, Albania, Bulgaria…). Still afficial data shows that more or less 80-90% of the romanian population is for Romania joining EU. This is because of the government and media lies about a better life, bigger wages, more working places, more wealth, blahblahblah. Instead more and more people are seing everyday poverty, unemployment, misery, bad working conditions and bad sallaries, so they go by themselves in EUrope to take what they were promised to have in 'a while'. This is why western european and romanian governments started agreements on sezon working places. Romanian government would have what to throw in the eyes of the people in the next elections and also for lobbying the pro-EUropean agenda. EU countries will have cheap and dissorganised working force to exploit and a(nother) reason reason to throw out the indesirable 'sana-papiers' from Romania. And a few romanian people will get a bigger salary then back home and also having the chance to disscover the real face of EUrope.
Timisoara - A city with more or less 400.000 inhabitans somewhere in the west of Romania. Placed at 50 km from the Serbia and 100 km fromt he border with Hungary, Timisoara is the biggest city in the west of the country and one of the most developed economically/industrially in Romania. Also once part of the Austrian Empire, Timisoara has a ethno-cultural diversity which not even 45 years of communism managed to destroy it. Hungarians, romanians, serbians, germans and even bulgarians living together in rural and urban communities. Timisoara is also a very important city for the border economy, it’s the leaving point for many smugglers going to Serbia.the serbo-romanian 'colaboration' is going on for quite a few years now… during Ceausescu regime, serbian smugglers were comming to Timisoara with many things not to be found in the romanian shops/markets. After the 'Revolution' it was the time for romanian people to return the favour.
Dumbravita - A small village 2 km out of Timisoara. Having a lot of hungarian ethnics the village was a good place for the camp. In the forest next to the village there is only one more event happening there the whole year: the Bikers Festival. The local community had nothing against us being there and even helped some lost people to get to the camp. Also local authorities village hall, forest administration, police were pretty ok and some of them helped with some things (of course not the police…!). exactly on the day of our demo also the village had a demo, organised by themselves in the village. They were protesting against the construction of a garbage hole for the city next to theyr village. We also helped them wiht a banner. A regret was that we didn’t interconnected more with the people in the village, but that should be a lesson also.
The camp - The NoBorder camp was the first big action in Timisoara organised by the collective of local anarchist activists. Between 9-15 june there were around 100-150 people durring alll week, but some people from the city didn’t camped there, and some people didn’t stood thare for the whole period of the camp. Workshops and discussions were on:
- migration regime, IOM, bordersituation in Romania
- freedom of movement, freedom of information
- new world order, empire, imperialism, capital
- Romania, reality or utopia
- Work on sweatships
- Presentations of future events in Greece and Poland
- Migration and work
There were also movies shown durring the evenings about: IOM, G8 - Geneve, Woomera… and also in the Publix Theatre Carawan bus from Austria there were all night films about different things. 2 concerts were planned to take place in a cultural center in the center of the citybut only one happened and bands from USA, Hungary and Romania (the 3 countries who rule the world!) played there. A party was also planned there on friday to advertise the action on saturday but the people there refused to let us do it because of paranoia of police problems. Also thanx to the Publix Theatre Crawan bus from Austria and Everyone is an Expert van from Germany we had there non-stop internet and theer was satelite connection, at the end of the camp some problems appeared with the electricity power. On saturday a demo took place through the center of the city . there were more or less 100 people, we had music, some great chearleading from the Publix Theatre Carawan (who were dressed in plastic bags with EU & USA flags). There was also a big garbage monster made by some of the people comming from G8 together with kids from the village. There was also leafletingon the streets of the cityand shouting of slogans. After the demo people went to the (hopefully) future place of squatted infoshop and spend some time there talking and singing together with rroma people from the sorroundings. There was also in the last days cleaning action in the forest wich is the victim of week-end tourists which leave loads of garbage behind. For one week, an autonom zone was open, a free space for exchanging ideas and experiences developed. All in all, the biggest action organised by us went great and we invite you all next year when hopefully hopefully our UTOPIA will happen again. We urge the participants to the camp to send theyr impressions about the camp to us and arround the world and spread the word in theyr web sites and publications.
Fara Granite! Fara Natiuni!
A collective of anarchist activists from Timisoara
noborder.lab bus and expertmobile in the camp
dish of the sattelite internet uplink of the expertmobile
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