16th and 17th April 2016 - Call for a EuroMediterranean mobilization on the first anniversary of the sinking of 18th April 2015

EuroMediterranean mobilization on the first anniversary of the sinking

of April 18th, 2015

Against Fortress Europe for the demilitarization of Sicily!

No Frontex, No to War, No to racism!

SATURDAY 16TH APRIL : NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION "NO FRONTEX" IN CATANIA

DEPARTURE FROM THE SEAPORT OF CATANIA (3 pm)

Agency Frontex’s activities are becoming more and more visible not only at sea but also in Sicily. The decision to open 5 so-called "hotspots" (with a "mobile" one in Catania) in our island together with the decisions taken in Malta in November 2015 pursue the horrible aim of dividing 'economic migrants' from asylum seekers. Negotiating with the worst and the most corrupted regimes in Africa and in the Middle East, European governments would like to repatriate 400,000 "irregular migrants." At the same time the EU orders the Italian Government to use force to take migrants’ fingerprints , obtusely applying the odious Dublin Regulation.
Sicily has been over the years more and more militarized. Sigonella, the Muos, drones, arms depots, the radar in Lampedusa have turned it into a open-air war arsenal.

Similarly the opening of CIE and Cara in Mineo has made them the largest detention camp (we could define it a lager) in Europe where migrant women and men wait on average 18 months for the examination of their asylum application and suffer physical and psychological violences with many migrants forced to prostitution.

We will oppose by all means to further militarization of our lands, coasts and seas, we can not stand here staring while thousands women, children and men dying in the Mediterranean Sea as if it were not enough the killings, the violences suffered by men and the sexual abuses perpetrated against women in Libya.

Fortress Europe, especially in 2015, threw off its mask: the Eastern European countries policemen have laid hundreds kilometers of barbed wire along the borders (beating those who violated it) and in the Western European ones Schengen has been suspended and in some countries the expropriation of refugees’goods has been ordered to "pay" their political asylum.

The specter of a new apartheid has taken shape and even xenophobic right parties make their electoral fortunes fueling the alarm of a possible "invasion of Isis terrorists". To this tragic reality, European governments are able to respond with borders guarded by the police to prevent departures: to give 3 billion euros to the Turkish butcher Erdogan the "accommodation" in new detention centres of Syrian and Kurdish refugees is another crime against humanity even worsen after the recent agreement between EU and Turkey. But the EU and the US can do worse : to prepare a new armed intervention in Libya and to keep on considering PKK, the head of the Kurdish resistance,”terrorist” even though PKK has so far defeated Isis terrorists.

To save human lives humanitarian we ask for humanitarian corridors with North Africa and the Middle East (in the countries near the war zones), a radical change in migration policies and the creation of an "European Right of Asylum".

The opening of an office of the infamous agency Frontex in Catania is an insult and a great shame for the whole Sicilian population. Catania has been a city open to hospitality, antiracist and always a bridge between peoples.

Frontex and Triton are the European Union military operation programs aimed at the closure of the borders and the refoulement of migrants,they have nothing to do with the reception and saving of the lives of those who by hunger, war and despair are forced to cross the Mediterranean Sea on insecure barges of human beings dealers. Celebrations of a large part of the political world for this shameful presence appear terrifying and show once again the enormous hypocrisy of those who pretend to cry for the deaths at sea of migrants and for massacres and at the same time support such policies. This is the case of Frontex, which does nothing but feeding shipwrecks and encouraging trade of human beings. Frontex and Triton are acts of war against migrants . The use of a public space, such as the former Monastery of Santa Chiara, to host the military headquarters of the agency Frontex (especially in the new version of the "European Border Police") is an insult to the entire city where the social spaces destined to schools, welfare, social projects and meetings are more and more reduced. It 's a shame that our mayor, Mr. Bianco, has allowed to use one of the most important buildings of the city for the coordination of military operations for the refoulement of migrants, pretending it will be a "welcoming" place.


Catania and Sicily don't deserve this insult, let’s get ready to reject Frontex!  Frontex has no right to occupy any building, here or elsewhere. For these reasons we call for a unified Euro-Mediterranean mobilization for the first anniversary of the sinking of 18 th April (the greatest tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea since World War II):
 

For the European Right of Asylum to refugees and the freedom of movement for all migrants!

No to the Dublin Regulation! No to Frontex!

Let's open the borders! Let’s close all ethnic prisons (like CIEs, CARAs, hotspots)!

In the Mediterranean Sea no more shipwrecks: fortress Europe is the cause of the massacres!

Promoters: Rete Antirazzista Catanese, Coordinamento dei Comitati NoMuos, La Città Felice, Cobas Scuola(Ct), Catania Bene Comune, CarovaneMigranti Italia-México-Mediterraneo, Campagna LasciateCIEntrare, Garibaldi 101 (Na), Confederazione Cobas, Associazione Diritti e Frontiere-ADIF

Subscriptions:   Borderline-Sicilia, Borderline Europe, Forum Antirazzista(Pa), Askavusa (Lampedusa), Arci Sicilia, Arci nazionale, La RagnaTela(Ct), Comitato Solidarietà Migranti (Co.S.MI)(Rc), Associazione Antimafie Rita Atria, GRUPPO Donne NoDalMolin(Vi), Federazione Anarchica Siciliana, BAOBAB Experience (Roma), Red Militant(Ct), Open Mind LGBT, LILA (Ct), Circoli Precari e Olga Benario PRC(Ct), Rete Welcome to Europe; Comitato NoTav Spinta dal bass e Spazio Sociale Visrabbia- Avigliana, Catanesi solidali con la Resistenza Kurda, PRC-SE, Accoglienza Degna(Bo), Partito Comunista-Sicilia, Rete contro la guerra ed il militarismo(Na), Forum Antirazzista –Campania, Collettivo politico Experia(Ct), Comitato giovani NoMuos(Me), Democrazia e Lavoro(Ct), Azione Civile(Ct), redazione I Siciliani,
                                                                  
For info and subscriptions: catanianofrontex@gmail.com
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1739935839576577/