Against European border policies, for the closure of Immigrant
Detention Centers, for the freedom without charges of the Zona Franca
detainees (Barcelona) of Saturday, June 24th.
Since autumn of last year, the horrifying images which the current
European border regimes are producing haven’t stopped appearing in the
press, on television or on blogs. The deaths at the border fences in
Ceuta and Melilla, the deportations to the middle of the Saharan desert,
those stranded along the coast of the Canary Islands, the bilateral
negotiations with certain African countries to accept those deportion
even of non-nationals in exchange for large sums of money, the
mobilization on behalf of the UE of naval and air patrols to control the
coast of the Canaries and West Africa... they speak to us of a war along
Europe’s exterior borders against those men and women who try to travel
to Europe in search of a better life.
South-North migration, the same as earlier migration from the
countryside to the city, imposes itself as an irreversible process.
However, the European Union insists on confronting this phenomenon in a
consistently repressive manner. This doesn’t just happen outside on the
external European borders and the tansit migration countries,
subcontracted for the management of the displacement of people towards
Europe, it also takes place more and more in our own cities: police
enforced identity checking is multiplying - from train station exits, to
tourist agencies or the post offices, the objective is not so much to
identify and expel all the extracommunitary migrants without residence
permission, rather it is to make permanent the threat of deportation for
all, to maintain a segment of the population, of greater and greater
importance, in a state of subalternity. As such, extracommunitary
migrant citizens who live and work in the EU, see their legal status,
their security, their freedom of movement as subjugated to the arbitrary
legislation of exception. The fear and uncertainly that penetrates their
lives but also in our cities is a new social atmosphere.
The events of last Saturday at the Immigrant Detention Center currently
under construction in Zona Franca, are one more expression of the
repressive military-police methods which the current border policies of
Zapatero’s government have adopted, as well as all other EU governments.
First of all, because nothing exemplifies better the arbitrary
implementation and denial of rights produced by the border regimes than
the Immigration Detention Centers. In these prisons for immigrants, are
kept for 40 days, their crime: to exist and to want to live, work, and
coexist in a place where they weren’t born. Concretely, the Immigrant
Detention Center (CIE) currently in construction in the Zona Franca,
Barcelona, with double the capacity of the existing center, isolated
from the nucleus of the population and difficult to access, perfects the
horror and places it out of sight of right-thinking minds.
Moreover, through the events of last Saturday, we can see the oppressive
orientation of the border policies in the way the police reacted against
those highlighting the borders, against those who, having been born
here, tell us that these policies, supposedly carried out in the name of
our security, do not represent us. The detention of the 57 people who
entered the CIE under construction, including two lawyers and two
journalists, the abusive accusations, the mistreatment in police
custody, the prolongation of the detainment for more than 48 hours in
response to a peaceful action, can only cause us to further reject those
very policies.
For these reasons, the signatories below demand, in solidarity with all
those who immigrate to Europe and who find themselves humiliated,
subalternated, and attacked and in solidarity with the one hundred men
and women who came from all over Europe last Saturday in order to
undertake a peaceful action to direct public attention to the new
detention center before it becomes operational, and so to extend the
movement against Immigrant Detention Centers throughout Europe:
the retraction of all charges against the detainees;
the declaration of Barcelona as a city free from Immigrant Detention
Centers;
the unconditional regularization of all immigrants in Europe;
the end to police-military border policies.
