A-Infos (en) Poland, Shut Down EU Migrant Hunters! - Actions against Frontex*

Frontex is the EU agency which deals with hunting down migrants, intercepting 
boat people, organizing charter deportations, training and coordinating armed 
border defense teams and border guards, spying on migrants and other heinous 
acts. With the slogans "No Borders, No Nations, Stop Deportations" and "Shut 
Down Frontex", we went to its headquarters. ---- On June 5-6, activists from 
many different countries came to Warsaw to protest against the deadly policies 
of Frontex, the EU agency which conducts migrant hunting operations, trains 
border guards and special units to hunt down people crossing so-called "national 
borders" and which helps to coordinate and implement EU immigration policy. 
Frontex has its headquarters in Warsaw.

On June 5, the second of two transnational conferences took place. (A more 
complete account of the conference should appear later.) The conference was 
opened by Laure Akai with presentations by Amadou Mbow, a human rights activist 
from Mauretania, Devi Sachetti from Italy, who deals with issues of migrant 
rights, including the issue of precarity and migrant labour, Vincent de Jong 
from Holland, who is active in resistance against detention and deportation in 
Holland, Georgios Maniatis from Greece and Hagen Kopp from Germany. The speakers 
presented information about the Frontex operations near the coast of Africa and 
their consequences, the operations in Libya and the Mediterraen and Agean Seas 
as well as an overview of Frontex operations, the ideology behind this and our 
arguments against this regime. It was pointed out during the presentations and 
later discussions how destructive these policies are and how the migrants can be 
victimized twice - for example, by the practices of some businesses which 
undermine their traditional livelihoods at home and then by the policies of the 
countries these businesses tend to come from, which seek to exclude people.

On June 6, a demonstration was held in front of Frontex headquarters. People 
from many countries were present, people from various social movements, some 
refugees living in Poland as well. The protestors demand that Frontex be shut 
down and that freedom of movement should be given to all, that there be an end 
to descrimination of all sorts against immigrants. The sleazy head of Frontex, 
Ilkka Laitinen, came out to try to assure the press that he's a nice, decent guy 
who's just doing his job, which most people agree with. He invited some people 
in to speak with him but, just like any two-faced, teflon politician, he tried 
to deflect all criticism by using Eichmann's defense and pretended to not know 
anything about migrants suffering because of Frontex's work. He asked people to 
please inform people should they hear of any problems. As if the fact that 
people came thousands of miles to protest was no indication that something was 
going wrong.

The protestors made some speeches and had many slogans against borders in 
general, against deportation, against Frontex, etc. Afterwards, a demonstration 
was held. People went to the Presidential Palace to protest Poland's immigration 
policies, in particular it's agreement with the Vietnamese government to deport 
5000 Vietnamese people. The Polish border police, along with Vietnamese security 
forces, carried out a number of raids recently in which Vietnamese people were 
beaten, detained and deported. This government agreement has driven many of 
Poland's Vietnamese (70,000 people in Warsaw) underground.

Afterwards activists met and agreed to continue working on this issue, to make 
the issue more known and to provide a deeper analysis of the processes, 
including appeals to working class people not to be fooled by the divisive 
ideology of the statists and capitalists which pits working people against each 
other.

The anti-Frontex activities were ended by a concert on June 7th.

Photos: http://cia.bzzz.net/warszawa_demonstracja_przeciwko_frontexowi#comment-38784
http://www.poland.indymedia.org/pl/2008/06/36790.shtml

Video: http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=1vD16bjhCf4

Audio links (in English):
1. Bernd Kasparek
http://radio.indymedia.org/en/node/16895
2. Tobias Pflüger
http://radio.indymedia.org/en/node/16894
3. Amadou Mbow http://radio.indymedia.org/en/node/16893

More info on Frontex:
www.noborder.org
www.frontex.info.pl
http://frontexwatch.wordpress.com/

http://www.frontex.info.pl
============================
  * Antiauthoritarian anticapitalists involved in this initiative
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
http://ainfos.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
http://ainfos.ca/en