A-Infos (en) Romania, REPORT FROM THE NOBORDER CAMP IN TIMISOARA 9-15 JUNE 2003

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 > From: AActiv-ist Collective <aactivistcollective-A-yahoo.com>
 > To: alter-ee@lists.most.org.pl
YEP, PEOPLE IT'S HERE. IT'S FINALLY HERE. TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT. AND PELASE EXCUSE OUR DELAY.
Let’s start with the begining.
ROMANIA: a country with 22 million people an a surface of 230.000 km2.
10 millions people are living outside of Romania in the rest of the
world (altough reality seem to outnumber the officials information by
much). Located in the Central-East Europe, Romania was also one of the
countries behind the Iron Courtain. 1989 brought the <<Revolution>> and
the change of the system… a countribution to this thing had the revolt
and the riots that took place in 16-17 december 1989 in Timisoara and
left behind lots of injured and dead persons. Visas were needed for
romanians to enter the schengen Europe untill january 2001 when they
were taken out. 27th of november 2002 brought the invitation for Romania
to join NATO, in Prague-Czech Rep. After the invitation for Hungary,
Czech Rep. and Poland to join EU, Romania will receive a different role
in the EUropean border politics, <<buffer zone>> between the <unwanted>
and the <promise land>. The dissapearence of wizas for Romanian citizens
brought new conditions: the 500 euro to show at the border, 2 way
tickets, health ensurance; and also harder border control for other
nationalities. Citizens ffrom the Republic of Moldova who had in the
past the possibillity of getting romanian citizenshipjust with a
moldavian passport are now forced through a harder process and much more
complicated, or they are forced into using mafia networksto get it. Once
the borders open people who worked in (now privatised) factories, who
were fired, paid shit or having bad working conditions and no
rightsdecided to go <outside> and steal a better life for them and theyr
families. This lead to racist attitudes in romanian communities, and not
only there, towards gipsy/rroma community - which are so many times
blamed for all the trouble romanians do in the western countries and
also from here for delaying the process of Romania joining EU (which we
all want to go well!?). This attacks on rroma people were most of the
times lead by the media and the government and also international
institutions (or other foreign/western governments… ). Human traffic
also developed after the dissapearence of the visas, mainly prostitution
being one of the branches that shows a huge growth (in Romania
prostitution is illegal - this results in a lot of hassle from the
police on the womens who do this, almost nothing to the pimps, and a
very high procent of ill womans) - and many times womans who get jobs
from strange adds in the newspappers and up being forced into
prostitution either in western countries (Italy, Spain…) either in other
parts (Greece, Albania, Bulgaria…). Still afficial data shows that more
or less 80-90% of the romanian population is for Romania joining EU.
This is because of the government and media lies about a better life,
bigger wages, more working places, more wealth, blahblahblah. Instead
more and more people are seing everyday poverty, unemployment, misery,
bad working conditions and bad sallaries, so they go by themselves in
EUrope to take what they were promised to have in <a while>. This is why
western european and romanian governments started agreements on sezon
working places. Romanian government would have what to throw in the eyes
of the people in the next elections and also for lobbying the
pro-EUropean agenda. EU countries will have cheap and dissorganised
working force to exploit and a(nother) reason reason to throw out the
indesirable <<sana-papiers>> from Romania. And a few romanian people
will get a bigger salary then back home and also having the chance to
disscover the REAL FACE of EUrope.

TIMISOARA - A city with more or less 400.000 inhabitans somewhere in the
west of Romania. Placed at 50 km from the Serbia and 100 km fromt he
border with Hungary, Timisoara is the biggest city in the west of the
country and one of the most developed economically/industrially in
Romania. Also once part of the Austrian Empire, Timisoara has a
ethno-cultural diversity which not even 45 years of communism managed to
destroy it. Hungarians, romanians, serbians, germans and even bulgarians
living together in rural and urban communities. Timisoara is also a very
important city for the border economy, it’s the leaving point for many
smugglers going to Serbia.the serbo-romanian <<colaboration>> is going
on for quite a few years now… during Ceausescu regime, serbian smugglers
were comming to Timisoara with many things not to be found in the
romanian shops/markets. After the <<Revolution>> it was the time for
romanian people to return the favour.

DUMBRAVITA -

A small village 2 km out of Timisoara. Having a lot of hungarian ethnics
the village was a good place for the camp. In the forest next to the
village there is only one more event happening there the whole year: the
Bikers Festival. The local community had nothing against us being there
and even helped some lost people to get to the camp. Also local
authorities village hall, forest administration, police were pretty ok
and some of them helped with some things (of course not the police…!).
exactly on the day of our demo also the village had a demo, organised by
themselves in the village. They were protesting against the construction
of a garbage hole for the city next to theyr village. We also helped
them wiht a banner. A regret was that we didn’t interconnected more with
the people in the village, but that should be a lesson also.

THE CAMP - The NoBorder camp was the first big action in Timisoara
organised by the collective of local anarchist activists. Between 9-15
june there were around 100-150 people durring alll week, but some people
from the city didn’t camped there, and some people didn’t stood thare
for the whole period of the camp. Workshops and discussions were on:

- migration regime, IOM, bordersituation in Romania

- freedom of movement, freedom of information

- new world order, empire, imperialism, capital

- Romania, reality or utopia

- Work on sweatships

- Presentations of future events in Greece and Poland

- Migration and work

There were also movies shown durring the evenings about: IOM, G8 -
Geneve, Woomera… and also in the Publix Theatre Carawan bus from Austria
there were all night films about different things. 2 concerts were
planned to take place in a cultural center in the center of the citybut
only one happened and bands from USA, Hungary and Romania (the 3
countries who rule the world!) played there. A party was also planned
there on friday to advertise the action on saturday but the people there
refused to let us do it because of paranoia of police problems. Also
thanx to the Publix Theatre Crawan bus from Austria and Everyone is an
Expert van from Germany we had there non-stop internet and theer was
satelite connection, at the end of the camp some problems appeared with
the electricity power. On saturday a demo took place through the center
of the city . there were more or less 100 people, we had music, some
great chearleading from the Publix Theatre Carawan (who were dressed in
plastic bags with EU & USA flags). There was also a big garbage monster
made by some of the people comming from G8 together with kids from the
village. There was also leafletingon the streets of the cityand shouting
of slogans. After the demo people went to the (hopefully) future place
of squatted infoshop and spend some time there talking and singing
together with rroma people from the sorroundings. There was also in the
last days cleaning action in the forest wich is the victim of week-end
tourists which leave loads of garbage behind. For one week, an autonom
zone was open, a free space for exchanging ideas and experiences
developed. All in all, the biggest action organised by us went great and
we invite you all next year when hopefully hopefully our UTOPIA will
happen again. We urge the participants to the camp to send theyr
impressions about the camp to us and arround the world and spread the
word in theyr web sites and publications.

FARA GRANITE! FARA NATIUNI!

A collective of anarchist activists from Timisoara

You can find some pictures on this sites:

www.no-racisn.net/noborderlab <http://www.no-racisn.net/noborderlab>

and also on alter-ee page which someone who knows it without
misspellings will write it.


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