Red Pepper News: Deaths in the desert: call for action

A migrants’ collective based in Spain and no borders groups across Europe are calling for a European Action Day on Friday 29 October 2005:

The collective attempts by more than four thousand migrants to cross the borders between Africa and Europe have shown the brutality of the European border regime. In the last two weeks ten people were shot dead by border police. Since then, Moroccan authorities have rounded up and ‘deported’ more than 2,500 people, and abandoned them without food and water in the Sahara Desert. More than 36 people have died there so far.

The news of the past two weeks shows only a small part of the brutality at Europe’s borders, where hundreds of migrants drown every year crossing the Straights of Gibraltar, suffocate in trucks, or are blown up by landmines in the fields between Greece and Turkey.The reaction of the Spanish Government and the European Commission is military reinforcement of the borders and externalising the ‘management’ of migrants. European colonialism and economic policies created the situations that are forcing people to flee. Now, being pushed by the German government and others, refugees are being made invisible to Europe; caught way before the borders and held in ‘transit’ prisons far away. Third countries, such as Morocco are made to handle the situation in exchange for economic aid. The EU has given 40 million Euro to Morocco to build up border defences. The Moroccan government uses these deals to systematically violate human rights, torturing, deporting and murdering migrants.Across Europe groups are organising acts to reject this brutality at the borders. We are calling for a coordinated day of action on 29th October 2005.For Freedom of Movement

No one is illegal!

Useful links:

http://estrecho.indymedia.org/

http://www.noborder.org/news_index.php

http://thistuesday.org/

http://www.amnesty-eu.org/static/html/pressrelease.asp?cfid=12&id=242&cat=4&l=1

http://www.msf.org/

https://www.aerzte-ohne-grenzen.de/obj/_scripts/msf_download_pdf.php?id=2389&filename=09-05-Bericht-Marokko-Immigranten.pdf