Per la libertà di movimento, per i diritti di cittadinanza

Fragil Mosaico – The journey of the Overthefortress campaign in Lebanon

Blind border walls

No wall has ever succeeded and will never be able to stop those who must enter. And certainly all the walls prevent those who are inside to see what happens outside. Beyond the bloodied walls with which the fortress Europe protects its fears, beyond that Mediterranean become a cemetery of migrants, beyond the moving lines of the front, unravel stories, vicissitudes and narratives that are essential tiles to read that fragile Mosaic which is the contemporary world.

Stories, vicissitudes and narratives that we have pursued with #OverTheFortress, meeting the migrants in the Greek camps of Idomeni, along the Balkan route or in the informal camps in southern Italy.
Stories, vicissitudes and narratives that we have heard in the textile laboratories of the Turkish cities of Gaziantep, Kilis and Antakya from voices of children.
Children fled from Syria’s war, many of them without more familiar alongside. Small slaves who are the real protagonists of the economic miracle that Erdogan’s country is going through in the textile sector. Cowardly consequences of those control treaties that Europe has vigorously demanded but which does not want to see the consequences, while providing, in its legislation, clear mechanisms of protection for “unaccompanied minors” who manage to enter into its Borders.

And that’s just not wanting to see that it’s the basis of all our fears. Because looking beyond these walls, it hurts and puts you in front of all your responsibilities. And that’s why casting the look beyond is a necessity, as well as a duty.

Continuing walking and asking

A trip, a true trip, always has a beginning but never has an end. The answers you collect in your path trigger other questions that you will bring in even after your return. Starting again, looking for more answers and discovering other stories to tell, is a path that comes naturally to the traveler.
For us, that we had the chance to be born inside the Fortress Europe, the path can not be anything but a backward path of that path by the migrants.
Whole families fleeing the war and we met on the borders of Europe told us about Lebanon, of large refugee camps where relatives and friends took refuge. Men, women and children who survived the bombing and ethnic cleansing have joined Palestinian refugees driven out of Israel.

We decided to reach these camps, to talk to these people, to tell their stories. And we will do it at a very delicate time for Lebanon. On Sunday, May 6th, after nine years of “democracy suspended” and continual postponements, election consultations will be held that elect the new government.
Strait between an aggressive Israel and a Syria on fire, appetite for economic potentate as the wealthy families of southern sheiks, traversed by a migratory stream that has no other outlet, Lebanon is playing his future in a clash between the Party of God, Shiite and pro-Iranian, and the pro-Saudi deployment currently in power.
A clash that threatens to compromise that “fragile mosaic” in the Middle East that still resists on the other side of our own Mediterranean Sea.

Continue telling

A journey is in itself a narrative. “Fragile mosaic“- so we decided to call the experience we will do in Lebanese land – wants to be an attempt to share this narrative. And we will do so with all the means available to us by registering and monitoring the different aspects that animate this very ancient place and rich in diversity.
To follow us on this trip will be the project Melting Pot Europe, which already launched the campaign #OverTheFortress, the association Ya Basta Êdî Bese and Borders of Borders.

Many will be the people who tell us their stories, and so many will be the stories we’ll tell. Many questions for which fragile mosaic will try to offer, to those who will want to follow, tools to build answers.

With the filming of the report “LA MERCE SIAMO NOI” (“[we are the goods”) we have shown several textile laboratory on the Turkish-Syrian border, a place of exploitation of thousands of unaccompanied minors.

With “Fragile mosaic” instead we will try to give a photograph of above all access to education in the refugee camps in Lebanon. Children to whom war, after childhood, also stole cultural continuity. The possibility, that is, to follow the traditions of their countries of origin, to mature securities on which to build their own personality, to speak the language of their parents, to study their history, to love their poets.

Entire nameless generations for whom telling and telling them self is the last hope of surviving with dignity in that too fragile mosaic that is contemporary history.

Stay in touch with us through our channels, share and support in this new attempt to create a breach #overthefortress.

We need all of you!

Info:
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