In the last week(s) there has been an establishment of the ‘official corridor’ through the so called Balkan route. This intergovernmental agreement’s aim is to control the flow of people who are fleeing for a better life in Europe. Even though it may sound as an improvement, for the better fluctuation of people, it is one of the steps of the development of the common European Union’s immigration system. The institutionalization of the corridor, which was before established by the constructive forces of incomming people and self-organized activists through the mutual struggle, means new forms of exclusive inclusion to the territory of the EU.

The aim of the so called official corridor is, as mentioned in the previous article, to let a certain number of people to the next country, where usually full EU member states (as Austria and Slovenia) hold a privileged position. This of course doesn’t always work as the number of people and their struggle to reach the desired destination is not manageble by such system. The reason for its establishment is always the discourse of security and liberal humanitarism of the EU and seperate member states. Political functionaries as well as repressive organs are saying, that if we don’t manage the flows well, it could come to the chaos and collapse of the EU. The only chaos in this case is the creative chaos of the incoming people who produce fear for the privileged economical and political castes that are responsible for the suffering of the wide majority of the worlds population.

Austria has put barbed wire around Šentilj/Spielfeld border (source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/04/austrian-police-barbed-wire-border-chancellor) for what it states ”in the name of the security of its population and incoming people (migrants, refugees etc. if you wish)”. Yesterday came also an unofficial report by the Slovenian national television that Slovenia already bought 125 km of fence (which costed 1,5 million Eurs altogether) (source: http://www.rtvslo.si/begunska-kriza/prvi-kilometri-ograje-naj-bi-ze-bili-v-drzavi/377908), but its government hasitates to give more information. Its army is already at the borders with full armed gear, helping logistically with the police, but until now changes for the Slovenias Defense law – that would enable the army to use the authorities of the police – are still not enacted (for more read: https://www.oplatz.net/2015/10/28/reestablishing-state-of-exception-in-the-eu-and-a-call-for-international-meeting-manifestation-and-solidarity-action-in-slovenia/).

Such countries fear that if the next country of destination would close it’s borders, it would develop ‘pockets’ in their countries. This means that incoming people would be stranded in their countries. This of course doesn’t stop in Slovenia or Austria, but goes all way back to Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia etc. A. Merkel and other EU’s technocrats on the privileged positions are hoping for a deal with Turkey to surpress and ‘filter’ the flow of people – as mentioned, to let selectively through a certain amount of people, whether to humanitarian background or economical interest, where we presume that the letter play the most important role. Merkel is also warning for the ‘potential wars‘ that could erupt at the Balkans if the upcoming countries close their borders, but one cannot fail to see the hypocrisy here. If we translate her words and recent EU policies in concrete material grounds this actually means that: ”we want a stable workforce, since the demographic downfall in the recent years in the Western European countries is producing financial deficits, and we don’t want wars in our proximity, whether on the EU’s territory or within potential member states in the Balkans. This is the hypocrisy of the humanitarian and ‘open handed’ approach by such politicians.

In the end of the post it is important to move to the happening at some borders.

At Preševo and Opatovac, according to activist from the Open Borders Caravan few days ago (2.11.2015):

‘#BERKASOVO / #BAPSKA / #OPATOVAC / #TOVARNIK – Exhausted volunteers are seeking help as temperatures are dropping below zero, and thousands of new refugees are arriving every day. They also need food, clothes, blankets, basically everything. If you have a way of bringing help across the border, please go to #Berkasovo, where lots of people are arriving on foot, without good clothes fot this cold weather. If not, bring it to #Bapska or #Opatovac.’

This is old information, so everyone planing to go there please contact self-organized groups who are on the field, to find out what is needed. The idea of this outdated quote is to inform people, that help is still needed.

What is needed here is a few words about the relation between self-organized volunteers/activists and ‘official’ volunteers (working under the umbrella of the NGO – such as Red Cross etc.). There were tensions at the Slovenian borders, since both groups started to blame eachother about what should be done and what the other is doing wrong. With the establishment of the ‘official’ corridor, self-organized volunteers/activists, who see the whole ‘refugee crisis’ as a issue of European discriminative politics – whether border, migration, neocolonial, capitalist to name the few, are prevented (or it least it is really difficult) to destribute different kinds of aid. We should not forget that in the past weeks it was them on the ‘Balkan route’ struggling along and supporting the incoming people to demand better treatment of the latter, not the official NGO’s who were waiting for the permission of their supperiors to allow them to do something, while people were freezing outside.

This is most visible at the ‘no-mans land‘ at Spielfeld/Šentilj Slovenian-Austrian border, where the legal framework is the most uncertain. Because of this people are trapped between borders, where they are denied of any aid, whether clothing, blankets, food or tea. Mostly only the self-organized volunteers/activist are handing such aid through the fence to people, where different stories are comming from them about the NGO’s. The latter are preventing them to do this, even though, what is proved by the activists at the borders, the NGO’s have alot of humanitarian aid at their warehouses which is not being destributed. NGO representatives are saying that it has to be equally distributed, otherwise it is a danger people will fight each other for food and blankets. The aim here is not to discredit the NGO’s, as they helped and are helping with the humanitarian aid, but to produce a call for them, that there are alot of holes everywhere that they don’t see or deliberately ignore. The other important thing is not to view the incoming people as somekind of barbarians that would fight for bits of food if it is unequally distributed. Precisely such discourse shows the latent xenophobia within the liberal humanitarian discourse.

The incoming people are far from that, as they have, along with the volunteers and activist, showed huge mutual solidarites and power to change and destroy the borders. Yes, there are individual or groups conflicts, but there will be more if people will be put in the concentration camp- or. lager-like conditions. We must not help the states and its repressive organs to manage the so called official corridors which are dehumanizing people to non-beings, but demand open borders for everyone so we can start to build a common Europe and world for everyone.

Useful thing for the incomming people:

http://www.refugeecompass.com/making-the-journey.html

Carterro (http://www.carterro.com/) is an app to assist with making the long journey.  It uses map based data and experiences of other refugees travels along the route.  Please note that detail in Carterro is for the Middle East only.

Updates on the Balkan route: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zJggLarUzmHE.kdSUXTxZDCm4

Fronta brez Meja, Anti-Racist Front Without Borders is organizing a manifestation in Ljubljana on Saturday 31 of October, 11am in Tovarna Rog, Trubarjeva 72 and calling everyone to participate in a transnational meeting and manifestation against the militarization of Slovenian borders and the attempts of the EU to break the movement of refugees and migrants.

For more than a week the so-called Balkan Route is passing through Slovenia. The Slovenian government intended to impose the entrance quota of 2500 refugees per day and Croatia answered by sending the refugees and migrants over the so-called “Green” border. This controversy between Slovenia and Croatia created dire humanitarian conditions for the refugees and migrants. The Slovenian government used this self-induced humanitarian emergency and what they call a chaotic situation on the Southern border to rapidly militarize the society and call for an EU summit on the Balkan Route.

The results of the Sunday summit are measures corresponding to EU policies, meant to demolish the movement of refugees and migrants. They decided on concrete measures to slow down refugees and migrants with the intention of establishing so-called hot spots in Greece and to designate Turkey as a buffer zone for refugees and migrants. After pushing the people on their journey to freedom and a decent life in dire humanitarian conditions, they used terrible images from the Slovene-Croatian border to talk more about deportation, externalization of the repressive and violent migration regime, the selection and stratification of refugees and migrants in the process of registration of which the aim is to destroy their collective power.

We are the people daily involved in solidarity with refugees and migrants travelling through Slovenia trying to reach their final destinations. We do not see refugees and migrants as either hopeless victims or as an invasive force but autonomous people with a desire for a better life. What we are perceiving in our day to day engagements on the border is that the attitude of the Slovenian authorities leads to the dehumanization of refugees and migrants and turns this route into a total institution whose aim is to isolate refugees and migrants from the broader society and subject them to procedures of policing, selection and deportation. We also perceive that activities of solidarity by independent volunteers are more and more restricted by authorities.

We believe that the only way to address these dire humanitarian conditions of refugees and migrants is to build relations with them. The solution is not sending people back or subjecting them to a life without perspective in closed refuge centres isolated from broader society. The solution is to build a common European society together, as citizens, refugees and migrants.

We call to meet in Ljubljana, on Saturday 31 of October, 11am to participate in a transnational meeting and manifestation against the militarization of Slovenian borders and the attempts of the EU to break the movement of refugees and migrants. After the manifestation in Ljubljana, we will go together to the border as international independent volunteers to express solidarity with refugees and migrants and to build another, open Europe together.

Contact us at frontabrezmeja@gmail.com

‪#‎openborders‬ ‪#‎noborderspower‬ ‪#‎stopmilitarization‬ ‪#‎refugeeswelcome‬

#Rigonce 21.10.2015

In the last week, since the Hungary closed its borders, Slovenia became the ‘new hotspot’ for the so called Balkan route, where people, who traveled from Serbia or Croatia to Hungary, were forced to change their direction of traveling to their desired situations.

In the last post we talked about the hypocrisy of the seeming humanitarian and ‘open’ Western European countries, since in the recent political assemblies at the European Commission it is becoming apparent that the EU is trying to hold people at its external borders or just let inside the desired amount of people, whether those needed for the labor markets or ”those who really need the international protection”.

Last Wednesday the Slovenian government met at the emergency assembly to discous how to ‘deal’ with the influx of people. After just 5 hours of intensive assembly they decided to change the countrie’s Defense law, a law which is valid for situations if the nation is attacked by the other nation(s), with which they will give the Slovenian army more power in the current situation. What does that concretly mean: the General assembly and government of Slovenia gave the Slovenian army authorizations to use measures similar to those of the Slovenian police. By Slovenian Constitution, police force and army are strictly separated state organs, where army only has powers to use force for external affair, such as defense of the country from the other nation. The logistic help from the army, however, was allowed even before.

The new law was analyzed by several Slovenian critical media (Radio Študent, Mladina etc.), as well as the legal organ of the Slovenian General Assemby, and it is extremely poorly written and biased. There are no clear definitions what kind of authorizations will the army get. The law states that the army will now have the power to control the flows of people, as well as stop them and detain people, which is a part of ‘wider protection of the National border‘. The document also doesn’t states if the army will be armed at the border and what kind of coercive means can be used.

Since by Slovenian legal framework it takes one week that a such a law becomes officially valid, it will become clear today if this will be so. If the new law will start to be valid every new authorization for the army will have to be accepted by majority of votes in the Slovenia’s General Assembly (2/3). Currently some intiatives are collecting votes for the Referendum against the changes in the Defense law and they have to collect 2500 votes until today.

The most worrying thing is the bluring of the lines of authorizations between the police and army and understanding the influx of people entering the country as a ‘external threat’.

Slovenia government is not invoking the mini state of exception by its own will, but it is a direct response to the recent European Union’s immigration policies, meant to demolish the movement of refugees and migrants. What is a state of exception other than express adoption and modification of the current laws and the usage of the most repressive state coercive apparatuses to deal with the countries internal affairs? It is not just Slovenia, lets take also Germany for example, which is planning to use army planes for deportations, without early notification of who will be deported from the country. But it is not just Slovenia and Germany, but it is the whole European Union that invoked the state of exception.

(source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk Desperate Slovenia brings tanks deal migrant arrivals 12000 enter country 24 hours.

The leaders in the high EU institutions are now praising themselves that the new Eropeanwide laws will provide more effective coridors for desired destinations and destribute more financial aid for building the refugee camps and logistics. The activists from the borders are saying how this really looks in practice: the self-organised groups of activists and volunteers, who viewed the whole situation as a political issue of the EU’s immigration and asylum system, neocolonialism and capitalism in general, are saying that it is becoming impossible to cooperate and help the incoming people, as the whole ‘official coridors’ are becoming extremly formal.

It is true that people are now processed and registered more efficently, as well there is a quicker cooperation between transport services which take people between different points, but these are ‘official’ national and mainstream media informations about the Croatian-Slovenian borders. There are major downsides to such ‘good news’, quoting the Anti-Racist Front Without Borders:

‘What we are perceiving in our day to day engagements on the border is that the attitude of the Slovenian authorities leads to the dehumanization of refugees and migrants and turns this route into a total institution whose aim is to isolate refugees and migrants from the broader society and subject them to procedures of policing, selection and deportation. We also perceive that activities of solidarity by independent volunteers are more and more restricted by authorities.’

More and more, under the language of hygene standards etc., the self-organized activists and volunteers are prevented to help the people with warm food, where the latter are freezing in the cold rainy nights. But also the access to the latter is becoming increasingly impossible, meaning, besides the inability for a pragmatic help with clothing and warm food, this prevents mutual political actions which would address the discriminative immigration system, opening the borders and the reasons why people try to come to the EU for a better life in the first place. Rather than involving everyone in the political fight to build a common world for everybody, the EU’s selective mechanisms are destroying the border struggles, under the pretence of security and not enough space for everyone.

But be warned, the state of exception is not just for those, who ‘do not fit the correct citizenship’, but it will involve all future anti-capitalist, anti-establishment political-social struggles in the EU.

That is why Anti-Racist Front Without Borders  is organizing a manifestation in Ljubljana on Saturday 31 of October, 11am and calling everyone to participate in a transnational meeting and manifestation against the militarization of Slovenian borders and the attempts of the EU to break the movement of refugees and migrants. After the manifestation in Ljubljana, we will go together to the border as international independent volunteers to express solidarity with refugees and migrants and to build another, open Europe together.

Croatian-Slovenian Border 28.10.2015, early morning (photo: C. Jazbec).