Katarzyna Izabela: I just came back from Warsaw and Lublin in my homecountry Poland. Two days ago I was standing on the former grounds of the Warsaw Ghetto, after Lodz, the biggest Jewish Ghetto in Nazi occupied Europe, a collective point by the SS, where over 300 000 Jewish citizens were deported to and killed, there, or in the extermination camp Treblinka. A mass cemetary. But also both, the Warsaw Ghetto and occupied Warsaw itself, a city of organized uprising and underground resistance. We tend to forget history. Timeshift. I stood on the ground of the former Warsaw Ghetto and looked up to a skyscraper, fitting into a line of today´s modern architecture, in a postwar postsoviet neoliberal capitalist nation, part of the European Union and its politics. The building I was looking up is the headquarters of the EU border agency FRONTEX, responsible for over 20 000 documented deaths of people trying to enter the EU in search of safer lives, dignity and human rights. FRONTEX, which now in its new PR narrative doenst fight illegal immigration anymore, but aims to stop human trafficking. After the deaths on Lampedusa caused by Fortress Europe, a desaster as a part of enduring catastrophe, even more money will be spent on rearmament on the outer EU borders, making routes migrants are forced to find even more risky. And pushing them into the arms of local businessmen and spontaneous traffickers. The EU´s anti-immigration politics create those jobs. I don´t know how often we need to repeat that migration is not a crime, and asylum is not an act of mercy, but a human right. Our society is at critical a point of time, where it will have to decide which direction it wants move on. All the current Refugee and Migrant selforganized protest movements growing and spreading all around Europe are pointing at us and our responsibilities, not only at the authorities but also towards us citizens and civil society, to drastically change and start being involved if we want to live in a common space based on Human Rights. Parliamentarism isnt a way out here. To fight the deep-rooted causes (and not only be temporarily effected by the current realities shown on the news) we need to support the fights and struggles of Asylum seekers, refugees, San Papiers, illegalized and criminalized. Be it standing on the streets with them, through civil disobedience and non-violent resistance. Together we need to rise against inhuman deportation politics, punishment of those who speak up for their own rights and structural racism in current asylum politics. Today, is the European Day against Human Trafficking. I feel shame but am also bestrengthened. We will take out the bricks of the Fortress, one after the other. We are indepted to do so. Read the article or watch the video below on how Frontex is violating Human Rights.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 17:42:20 +0000
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