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CROSS THE BORDER
October 8-15
Coordination: Florian Schneider
No One Is Illegal (Munich), Hilda Kozari
and Seppo Koskela
(Helsinki).
Borders are there to be crossed. Their significance becomes obvious
only when they are violated--and it says quite a lot about a
society's political and social climate when one sees what
kind of border-crossing a government tries to prevent.
A few days before the EU summit in Tampere, which is
completely dedicated to the Europe-wide harmoniziation of
border and migration affairs, the workshop will bring
together individuals, groups and initiatives, dealing
with the subject of border crossings from different
perspectives: migrant groups and refugees in Finnland, sans papiers
from all over Europe, escaping artists, anti-racist and
anti-border activists.
New media, and over all the internet, have opened new ways of acting
and interacting in the free field between the
significance of the new border regime and the
signification of proceeded bordercrossings. During the
workshop the results of various offline activities along
the borderline will be presented online. This workshop will particularly
focus on the results of the border camp, which took for
the second time in August, at German-Polish-Czech border.
Though the network of CAISA International Cultural Centre Helsinki, ( www.kulttuuri.hel.fi/caisa
) ethnic groups and individuals can participate in the
TEMP project. TEMP is also taking part in Caisa's
Multicultural Fair, 12-15 october.
www.come.to/tampere
www.contrast.org/borders
Living near the Border Involvement of the Borderpopulation into theGerman Border-Regime at the German-Polish Border The
German Border-Regime rests on three pillars. One of them
is a matter of foreign policy, namly the
functionalization of Germans Eastern neighbours as
door-keepers of the EU. The second pillar is the armament
of the German Border Police, the Bundesgrenzschutz (BGS), which
is a Federal Police, and its equipment with more
and far-reaching powers. And finally we
have the growing involvement of the borderpopulation into
border- control. There is also a fourth party playing a
role in this concept, but it is handling
only with those lucky peole that managed to
cross the border secretly. The foreigners administration and the
German legislation upon asylumseekers and
foreigners is part of a system which is
more and more becoming a means of keeping out any refugees and
migrants or to freeze out those, who are already there. For to give
an idea what German border-policy means
there will be a short description of the first two points
before coming to the main topic, the involvement of the
population into the chase of illegals and borderviolators,
or whatever you may call them. 1.
Utilizing the neighbour-states as buffer states Since
the modification of the German Constitution in 1993 there
is nearly no chance left for refugees to
apply for asylum in Germany. The so called
Save-Third-Country-Regulation makes it possible for the German
administration to reject nearly every application for asylum
immediatly, because the asylumseeker came transit across
one of the neighbourstates. All the trouble of handling
with migration and refugee movements Germany
and the EU delegate to their Eastern neighbours which are given
clear rules of well-behaving in order to get
admission to the EU one day. The model
pupil in this relation of ordering and obeying is Poland.
According to the German-Polish Agreement of May 1993 Poland got
120 Million Deutschmarks for building up her own
borderfacilities such as boats, helicopters
and technical equipment, but also for raising a
BGS-like border-police and establishing an own asylum-procedure.
Since then, there spread a dense net of
detention prisons for foreigners. For
example 1,5 Million DM flew into the restoration of the detention
in Leznowola, a guarded camp. Poland now has 25
detentions for deportees. But not only the system of
pulling out rejected asylumseekers or by the
BGS returned secret immigrants was copied from the German system.
Also a firm system of readmission-agreements
was established with the neighbouring countries in the
East, so that there occured something that
could be called Domino- deportation. People that were rejected or
pulled back by the German BGS are transported -
with or without a often very long stay in a
detention camp - to one of the Eastern neighbours as
there are Belorus or Ukraine. in 1996 about 1500 persons,
nearly a third of the altogether near 5000
borderviolators pulled back by the BGS,
were immediately pulled out by Poland to a neighbourstate or
deported into their home-country. Most of this domino-deportations
are operated in a 48-hour-term. On the 27th
of June 1997 the trip from the German
border to the Ukrainian border ended up in a heavy accident
in which two of the deportees died. The driver of the
vehicle fell asleep after 14 hours non-
stop-driving. The new Polish asylum-and foreigners laws of
1997 make it even more difficult to apply for asylum at
all to prevent a deportation. Poland is learning her
lesson. The same system works between Hungary and Austria,
the keen new member of the sacred EU.
Another thing with the same purpose are the readmission- agreements
Germany signs with a growing number of states to make
deportation easier and quicker. The first
readmission-agreements were established with Poland in
1993, the Czech Republic in 1994, Romania in 1992 and
Bulgaria in 1995. Secret immigrants from Romania and
Bulgaria who are arrested at the border are
immediately transported to the airport Berlin-Schnefeld
and then turned back to the named countries of origin. Germany and
the EU can put immense pressure on countries
like Poland that want to join the EU: only
if they fulfill the security-demands of Western Europe
they will be admitted to that sublime assembly. This is
why they obey some even humiliating
conditions of this stick-and-carrot-policy, too. If
everything is working out well, there will be spoken in favour
of the EU-aspirants. 2.
The armament of the German border-police BGS The number
of officers and administration personnel was increased to a
high extent. There have been 2400
BGS-officers in 1992. Today we have about 5800
Border-policemen and for the near future there is projected a number
of 7500 BGS-men. This numbers are related to
the German eastern borders only, which are supposed to be
the border with the highest density of
guard in Europe or even the world. There, at the Polish and Czech
borders there (without the Bavarian-Czech border), there are in
average 2,4 officers per kilometer doing
their service. At the US-Mexican border
there are only 0.18 officers per kilometer. With the staff occupied
in the bureaus of the BGS there are about 10
000 officers and employees in duty for the
federal border-police at the eastern borders. Additionally
there is since 1993 a border-police-support-unit of about 1200 officers
with employee-status. But there are even more officers
doing service at this border, namly the
customs officers and the ordinary state-police-forces.
This figures may give you an impression which manpower
Germany is ready to occupy to get the EU-border watertight
. The governmental budget for the BGS increased from 1.3
billion DM in 1989 to over 3 billion DM in
1997. All in all the BGS has about 30 000
officers (1992: 24 500) in charge for the what is called
border-protection and inner security . We have to be aware regarding
the border that it is no longer the borderline
we were accustomed to, but as a zone
extending to 30 kilometers further inland. In this security
belt the BGS (and also customs) has the same powers as
the state-police and even more. It is
allowed to control papers of any person without suspicion
or event at any time, he can observate houses and listen
in on telephonlines and raid any place declared a
dangerous place. The newest changes of the
BGS-law provide the same powers for it along bigger
transitroads and in railwaystations (the BGS is the railway-police,
too) and their surroundings. The technical
armament of the BGS with the latest technology adds to the
high standard of border-control that is
established at the German Eastern borders. I just name some of these
hardcore apparatus: There are for example carbon dioxide
detectors that can measure if there are
persons breathing inside any container; there
are the newest infrared cameras and those to see at night with the
remaining light in darkness; and there are certainly patrol-
boats on Odra and Neisse, there are
helicopters and more than 600 tracker dogs.
(By the way: in Austria there is the army engaged in guarding the
border, young and unexperienced men doing there military
service have to live in tents and to handle
arresting illegal immigrants; moreover Austria is working
with ground radar at the borders). And there is a
high-tech computersystem, the SIS or Schengen Information
System. Alone all over Germany there are
9000 (in part mobile) terminals of this system. Germany
fed this gigantic system with the data of about 320 000
unwelcome people of the altogether 415 000. Germany bundles
up all these computer-control-systems to a
border-terminal-system, which is in use
with nearly 700 terminals at the Eastern borders. Next step in this
progress will be the finger-print-directory EURODAC, but all
these technical tools can't keep up with the help of the
borderpopulation observing the borders. 3.
The involvement of the population into border-security
Most of the statistics and figures comes directly from the
German border- police.They are extracted from the annual
report of this institution. Other material is nearly not
available. The speaker of the the BGS-center in
Frankfurt/Oder in the state of Brandenburg pointed out
publicly, that 50 percent of all the arrests of secret
immigrants are due to hints out of the
border-population. The BGS-speaker of Rothenburg at the
Neie in the state of Saxony even spoke of 70 to 80 percent
arrests due to German informers living in the border region denouncing
the trespassers. The FFM- team was stunned by these
figures and tried to get some more
information on the role the ordinary people there play in
border-control and which emphasis the federal border-
police puts on these volunteers, which kind
of propaganda gets people to hold it right
and necessary to denounce migrants and refugees. In the media the
picture of a flood of criminals waiting in the East to slosh
into the EU to rob, steel and even murder,
to destroy the social system, to take away
the jobs of the righteous inhabitants and to bring in unmeasurable
amounts of what is called organized criminality penetrates the
peoples' minds unfiltered, because there is nearly no
critical, differentiating approach to what flight and
migration are in fact. There is some special
kind of border-criminality, no doubt, the circumstances are too
inviting. But the effect of the pauseless indoctrination of
people (not only in the border region) is
that for every single stolen car or bicycle, for every
burglary and every violent attack on someone the
foreigners, "die Auslnder", are blamed. Marking immigrants
and refugees who have no other legal possibility
to enter the country with the word illegal
immigrants or illegals , what people keep in mind is that
every secret border-crosser is a criminal. After having
this thing clear nobody feels the need to ask for some
more details about the persons, their motivation to flee
or migrate, their lifes and fates. What is
more, is identifying every secret immigrant with what was worked
out to be a capital offence, namly trafficking.
This official propaganda could be proofed
with uncounted press-articles or ministerial announcements.
The Minister of the Interior, Manfred Kanther (and nowadays his
successor Otto Schily), was a hero of this kind of setting
people in fear. To make clear the effects
of this propaganda one ought to take a
closer look on the myth of racketeers and traffickers: The picture
that media and official announcements draw of
trafficking aliens is the picture of especially
unscrupulous and brutal criminals that exploit the
poorest of the poor, that are bringing in drugs, weapons and
criminal energy into the country and thar are likely to be
a branch of the Russian or whatever mafia. Useful for
this imaging the traffick in aliens are the
incidents and accidents in which refugees and migrants
die. No doubt, there are criminals involved in this business, there
are women forced into prostitution or other
people brought into a slave-like state of indentur. But -
this is the result of FFM-research and asking
refugees and migrants about there trafficking experience - the
majority of all acts of trafficking aliens is responsibly
planned and has the form of a real and
regular business. As long as for this propaganda it
is useful to blame the traffickers, the refugees are welcome
victims that were persuaded with false promises, deprived
of all their families' scanty money and then forced into
an extremely dangerous, illegal and
exhausting trip to Western Europe to find themselves exposed to
a racist society that does not welcome them - a
misery. Fact is, however, that the
trafficking agents work like other businessmen, they have to
take care for their reputation, which could be spoilt
by too much deported former clients of them. The prize
that people have to pay e.g. to be brought
to Germany from Sri Lanke ranges between 12 000 to 15 000
DM. The people who decided to leave their home country
try to collect this money in their wider
family which often put together all available savings to
buy a chance and a life-perspective of at least one
family-member. Then they get in contact with the well- known agent
and the thing is negotiated. Then the trip goes -
by the way: most of the journey is legally
done - via Moscow, Kiew or Vilnius to Poland and to
the Polish-German border. Often only crossing this border is
against the law. (To give some comparison,
there are sentences of the German Supreme
Court, the Bundesgerichtshof, of the 1970ies, in which the court
holds it to be rightous to help people crossing
the German-German border and to take fees
up to 40 000 DM for this service. These traffickers were
called escape agents then and it was a heroic deed to help
one of the former GDR-inhabitants - by the
way the classical refugee for economical reasons - to
cross the border illegally. In the German
income-declaration-forms of these years there was even a special
column for the fees for escape agent, that could
be deducted from tax.) The BGS is doing his
own advertising and propaganda in the border-region.
They offer the socalled citizens-telephon for security.
People can call the BGS all over Germany on
a charge free service-number all around the
clock. In every newspaper near the border, on every single police-car
and telephon-box you can find this number encouraging
people to report every suspicious move in
their surroundings. And this despite the fact
that there is no significant growth of any kind of criminality near
the border. In contrary: in most of the
towns and cities the FFM was doing research
the rate of criminality is sinking, often in 10-percent-steps
a year.[To give some examples of many: In 1997 the
criminality rate in the police-district of
Frankfurt/Oder dropped according to the official report
about 11 percent, in the city itself it went down 16.3 percent;
in Grlitz in East-Saxony there is a decrease of 27 percent]. The
BGS not only emphasizes the importance of
his presence because of the extremly high rate of
criminality for which enormous decrease he at the
same time claims to be responsible. If the decreasing rates are
presented to public the BGS prefereably talks about the
subjective security sense of the people that requires the
increase of police-density and control. Fact
is that for nearly every criminal deed the foreigners
are blamed. People even talk of the fear of moving around
at night because of violent foreigners everywhere: this
fear is especially absurd because the only persons that
are in danger of being attacked in this region are
the foreigners, the non-German looking people themselves. The
result of this politics of fear is that the BGS can
really reckon with the voluntary and busy help of the
people living near the border, without handing out
rewards. In times of unemployment-rates around 20
percent, the BGS is also an interesting and popular employer.
There were mentioned the numbers above but
there is another important fact that adds
to the popularity of the BGS: the BGS today is an important
part of every days life. Many of the officers of the
BGS are living near the place of their work
or are even coming out of the borderpopulation itself,
often after a long term of unemployment. But there are several
other phenomena that contribute to the thesis of a involvement of
citizens into border-control by social technology.
Everywhere near the border there are
popping up civic action groups that compose their own
private border guards. With self-created uniforms, torches,
binoculars, clubs and often even with gas- pistols adult
persons are patroling and standing post
near the border during nighttime. The FFM got aware of
this developement after there was scandalized a racist
harrasment of a young boy on his way home
at ten at night in Forst at the river Neie.
He was stopped by these self- appointed borderguards with others
and controlled, because he was a person of color.
The BGS was called, the young people had
to wait for half an hour for their arrival and were
released afterwards. After the mother of one of the kids
complaint about this incident it got
evident that BGS and police are working together with
these civic action groups closely and confidentially. The
BGS denied this cooperation when the whole thing became a
real scandal. To calm the thing down, these civic
border-guards are now involved into a programme of the
home-secretary of Brandenburg, which is
called security-guard and consists of private people guarding their
neighbourhoods. They have no weapons and are to call the
police if there is a suspicion or incident.
Such security-guards exist in about 50
villages in Brandenburg by now. But also on an official level there
are established what can be called
denouncing-coalitions between state-offices such as the
labour-office and the social welfare, who work
together closely in an informal manner to find illegal workers or
persons without a legal status. But also non-governmental
institutions as guilds and Chambers of Commerce. The BGS
in Pirna for example met with representives
of the taxi-guild of Saxony, the Chamber of Industry and
Commerce in Dresden, politicians from border-communes and the
county, the public prosecuters office and the collegues from the
state-police. They came to an agreement how to work together
to stop illegal immigration. The results of
this meeting were made public. The
background of this meeting in 1997 was an unheard-of wave of trials
against taxidrivers in the county of Zittau-Lbau at the
border-triangle of Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany
in Eastern Saxony. What
happend here is the reverse of the medal of involvement
of the border- population in border-control. Upon people
who don't want to be deputy sheriffs of the
border-police there are played heavy sanction by
means of jurisdiction. There must be some silent agreements also
between the three powers in order to
improve border-security. The courts there
in Zittau and Grlitz are playing an important role in creating an
athmosphere of thread near the border. Since 1996 there have
been several sentences against taxidrivers that where
accused to have brought illegal immigrants
into the country not under one year without suspension!
The circumstances of the trials are scandalous, not only
because noone of the drivers brought anybody across the
border, but because prosecuters are only
working with vague indications which are
always interpreted worst for the accused taxidrivers. By now there
are investigations against 22 of altogether 73
taxidrivers in that county. The first defendant, sentenced
to 1 1/2 years in prison without suspension and whose
appeals all failed is sitting in jail since half a
year now. The
construction of the prosecuters are the following: It is
not necessary to really cross the border with illegal
immigrants, but also to pick them up near
the border and to bring them out of the 30-kilometer-zone
of responsibility of the BGS for example to the next
bigger city such as Bautzen, Dresden or even Berlin. It should
be the taxidrivers duty not only to
recognize who is an alien without status, but then to deny
service and/or denouncing the clients to the BGS. The
above mentioned meeting between BGS and among others the
taxidrivers guild included the edition of a flyer for the
driving collegues with some hints what they
should do. Having picked up some suspicious strangers
they should either controll the papers themselves - which
is against the law, which seems to be suspended for
border-security - or call the BGS by means
of using a code-word. Many taxidrivers from all
over Germany protested against what this means for the future. They
are not willing or allowed to controll
their guests, they are obliged by the law
to transport every person regardless who it is. Now they should
for the interests of the border police suspect
every persons that does not look like a
German fellow-countryman of being an illegal alien. There
have been protests in Grlitz during the first trial. The
author witnessed one trial in early 98, where the question
how a taxidriver was supposed to regonize
the illegal bordercrosser, the prosecutor shouted: These
persons were closed in a typical Eastern European manner. This
shows, how a stranger is constructed by (social)
discriminatory or even racist rules that refer only to the
phenotypical appearance. These trials were
absolutely ridiculous in what could be called juridicial
fairness or regarding a high principle like in dubio pro reo . Also
the appeals are. What they are trying to do is
to set a warning example against all persons that deny to
play the game of border-control. These
taxidrivers now are put to jail, their driving licences, concessions
and the allowance to transport persons are
retracted, in short: the defendants, most of them very
well-behaving heads of families without any police record
are ruined forever. And for what? For having transported
illegal aliens: this act - done accidently or with purpose
- is made a capital offence, which is in regard of the
actual damage they've done unbearable. These scandalous
verdicts proof that this is no independent
jurisdiction but a willing helper in favour of the needs
of inner security and border control. The
resulting athmosphere near the border makes it possiple
that things like the following can happen without anybody
sounding public alarm on this atrocity.A
group of twelve people from Kosova crossed the border
secretly at the night of the 15th of May 1998 near Schwedt. Some
resident informed the BGS. The Federal border guard stopped the
trespassers at 11.30 p.m. All of them were arrested, only
one young Kosovo-Albanian could flee the arrestation. And
what happened now is unbelievable: For more
than four hours a hunting company consisting of
the BGS, the state police, the customs and the local fire-brigades
equiped with cars, dogs, helicopters and lighting was
chasing that poor refugee. After hours the
hunted man tried to break free by swimming across a
near-by canal, just next to the bridge were BGS-officers
were posted, and in his exhaustion he drowned and died.
One should keep in mind what his crime was:
this refugee was only crossing the border illegally. And
what is schocking also, is that this incredible tragedy
was mentioned in no newspaper (but a local one). And this is
every-days-life at Germany's borders and shows an alarming state
of lacking human orientation we have reached by
now. The FFM has documented the sad list of victims due
to the German border-regime and foreigners' policy: 88
refugees died at all borders, alone 67 at the Eastern
borders; 54 detainees committed suicide because of their upcoming
deportation, at least 95 were seriously injured by trying to do
so; 4 refugees died during deportation, 33
deportees were injured; 4 people were killed in their
homecountries after deportation, at least 86 were
arrested, maltreated or even tortured by military- or
police-officers in their country of origin,
11 of the deported disappeared traceless.
LINKS
Pro Asyl - Human Rights Organisation for Refugees
http://www.proasyl.de Sans Papier - Africains sans papiers/Without Papers
http://www.bok.net/pajol/
Open Europe
http://www.bok.net/pajol/manifeurop27-03-99.en.html
Autonoom Centrum
is een politieke organisatie die zich inzet voor
illegalen en vluchtelingen. Zij houdt zich bezig met
anti-racisme, migratie, detentie van vluchtelingen en
illegalen, registratie / identificatie en basis democratie http://www.xs4all.nl/~ac/
Grenzaktion - Bordercamp at the german-danish border
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/grenzaktion/
http://www.is-bremen.de/~arab/
Antirassismusbuero Bremen - antiracist infoshop
National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC)
101 Villa Road
Birmingham B19 1NH
Phone: 0121-554-6947 Fax: 0870-055-4570
E-mail ncadc@ncadc.demon.co.uk Web www.ncadc.demon.co.uk/
Teleportica - Break the logic of war! Desert! Open the borders!
http://www.teleportacia.org
home page of the Tampere counter-summit
f i g h t f o r t r e s s e u r o p e
For international solidarity - against Euro-fortress!
http://come.to/tampere
Campaign to Defend
Refugees and Immigrants at http://www.tao.ca/~ocap/immigration
Open europe discussion list eurofort@tao.ca
Asylkoordination Schweiz
Archiv und Dokumentation
Postfach 5215
CH-3001 Bern
Tel: ++41/31/312'40'38
Fax: ++41/31/312'40'45
http://www.raben-net.ch/aks
Cross the border/No one is illegal
http://www.contrast.org/borders
Melting Pot
http://www.meltingpot.org/
Nicaragua Solidarity
Network of Greater New York provides Immigration News Briefs
http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html
Immigrant Solidarity is anti-racist/ pro-immigrant
organisation set up in Cork in January, 1998. We can be
contacted at PO Box 178, Cork. Further details on what we
stand for are at http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/is.html
De Fabel van de Illegaal
http://www.dsl.nl/~lokabaal/index.html
UNITED UNITED for Intercultural Action - European network
against nationalism, racism, fascism and in support of
migrants and refugees
http://www.xs4all.nl/~united
National Network on Immigrant and Refugee Rights
http://www.nnirr.org
Sherwood - No borders
www.sherwood.it/noborders
Rainbow Antiracist Organisation Tromsø
http://www.student.uit.no/regnbuen/index.html
International Caravan for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants
http://www.humanrights.de/caravan/indexen.html
FORSCHUNGSGESELLSCHAFT FLUCHT UND MIGRATION -
Documentation and research on borders, migration and
refugees
http://www.berlinet.de/mh/ffm/
Unlimited - Hints for refugees and migrants
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/migration/
CORPORATE WATCH:
http://www.corpwatch.org/feature/index.html
LA LINEA: GENDER, LABOR AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ON THE US-MEXICO BORDER
Refugee Law Centre (US)
http://www.refugeelawcenter.org
The Interhemispheric Resource Center
U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Program
http://www.irc-online.org/bdrprj.html
SOS Racismo (Portugal)
http://www.sosracismo.pt/
Crosspoint - Antiracism web resources
http://www.magenta.nl/crosspoint/
ex-Yu and antinationalist journalists (?)
http://www.aimpress.org
medico international - support of internationalist social /
medical projects (deutsch)
http://www.medico-international.de/
UN Commission on Refugees
http://www.unhchr.ch/
Poptel Statewatch - EU Human Rights Monitor
http://www.statewatch.org/swsearch.html
Amnesty Int.
http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/countries/index.html
Black women against violence
http://www.bwrap.dircon.co.uk/
Human Rights Server
http://www.humanrights.de/index.html
Oneworld Refugee Guide
http://www.oneworld.org/guides/immigration/front.shtml
RomNews
http://www.romnews.com
Australian National Committee on Refugee Women
(ANCORW Co-operative) Aust Govt Dept
http://www.dpmc.gov.au/osw/awwt/ancorw.htm
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