Frankfurt Airport: Demonstration inside the Terminal

2nd day of action:
Spontanous Demonstration inside Frankfurt Airport-Terminal

  Pictures

Around 50 people participated in a "spontanous demonstration" for freedom of movement inside the terminal of frankfurt airport on 2nd of april. Police and securities have been surprised and could not stop a noisy protest-march with speeches and banners through the airport-building. This action was not announced anywhere before, because the airport-company and police try to prevent any kind of announced demonstration inside the airport-terminals (in the past with hundreds of police-men to block and control all entrances!).

A few more background-informations: Frankfurt-airport is the most important deportation airport in Germany. More than 10.000 deportations yearly (more than 30 every day!) are organised by border police on this airport. And on the area is (since 1993) a closed internment-camp (Internierungslager) for refugees and migrants, who arrived here in Frankfurt without valid papers and who are suspected to have no "founded" asylum reasons. The arrested people should be deported back after a quick asylum-procedure, never having the chance to leave this airport-area.

Since 12 years some initiatives are active to fight against deportations and internment-lager at this airport, with a peak in 2001, when we organised a big nobordercamp near frankfurt with more than 1000 participants and with a final demonstration of 3000 people. Beside many demonstrations and symbolic actions in the last years we are many times present at the airport (sometimes with only a few people) to try to prevent particular deportations of singular migrants.

A few weeks ago we could succeed to stop the deportation of an iranian woman in the last minute. The pilot refused to transport the woman after a lot of protests, from outside but also from inside the airport. 150 people joined the spontanous protest in the airport, but 60 persons have been arrested later on by police for a whole night because of "a not allowed protest in a private space".

So the 2nd of april "spontanous demonstration" referred to these situations and experiences, and for sure we will continue with our protests - particularly inside the airport-terminal - as long as deportations and internment take place from here.