German Text: "Wir können nicht in Stille verharren. Und wir sind nicht still" - Von Said Saidi - Karawane Bremen, 06/02/2009
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Documents: On the Caravan Nationwide Meeting 30.01 - 01.02.2009 in Hamburg
- *On the Occasion of the Tenth Year of Struggle by the Caravan for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants in Jena and Weimar (Thueringen). By Seid Seidi - Caravan Bremen
- *The Protest of The VOICE Refugee Forum, By Salomon W. from the Refugee Heim in Möhlau - Refugee News Network (RNN)
We cannot remain silent. And we are not silent.
It was one year after the foundation of the Caravan in 1998. We Iranian refugees were trying to organize a protest meeting in support of the struggles of the students in Iran. That was when I got acquainted with the people of Caravan. There was something in the Caravan that attracted me very fast, and they accepted to support our protest.
During the preparation, the people of the Caravan said that we refugees are the living testimonies to the crimes that this system commits every day all over the world. This point was so great and meaningful that all of us felt our responsibility to bring the truth to the people of the world more deeply. In fact, all of us have had his or her own unique experience of oppressions, exploitation, colonialization and degradation by this system against hers or his.
We cannot remain silent. And we are not silent.
In that first meeting, somebody asked one of the Caravan activists that how Caravan can help the refugees. "Look," said the activist, "We are not a sort of welfare organization. If you stand up for your rights and fight for them, we will follow you and join you in your fight against the system.” This was and is a very basic principal of the Caravan: the refugees are the most vanguard people who have the ability to lead the struggle forward.
In this manner, I discovered that I have a voice in the Caravan; a voice to raise my anger against injustice. This was completely the opposite of the tragicomedies that is the electoral system and its lies, of voting for somebody so that they may speak for you and look after your rights. No. Here you are in the front line. In the Caravan, it is your responsibility to talk about your vision of the world. And to resist against injustice.
For a long time the Caravan used the parole, “Deportation is torture, deportation is death, stop deportation! For us refugees, we all knew that the danger of deportation was even much stronger and more direct than any racist attacks by Neo-Nazi’s. Indeed, Every refugee knows all too well how this destabilizes our daily lives.
Later came a further parole: “Freedom of movement!” You better believe that the bourgeoisie and the rulers of the system cannot understand this. Instead, they reserve any kind of rights, including of freedom of movement, for themselves. And then they expect us to obey their silly law of obligatory residence and restriction of movement. They expect us to remain deprived of the rights to communicate, to work and to travel, instead prefering us to remain silent in the cages that they built for us.
They have forgotten or ignore that most of us have already crossed many borders to find freedom. They have forgotten that we are outlaw peoples, that we are the people who did not tolerate the hell that they established in our lands through their puppet regimes. We escaped from those conditions.
So in this manner, through several actions and meetings, I got acquainted with many other refugees from all over the world. Of very special importance, however, I also got acquainted with progressive German activists who are against their own unjust system. In doing so, I was experiencing the objective meaning of Internationalism: refugees here in Germany, side by side with our German friends, engaged in two-front battle against the puppet regimes of our homelands and against the racist and brutal condition of our lives here in Europe.
Refugees are the product of war, starvation, oppression. In short, as the Caravan continuously points out, the major powers of the world are destroying our lands through their puppet regimes, thus obliging us to flee while leaving behind our families and our friends.
Right now everybody see how the wars of the major powers against Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine as well as in Africa are forcing people to flee their lands due to the colonialist plans of the occupiers. Still, the people see how this world economic crisis, which is the result of the very work of the capitalist system, millions of people are becoming unemployed with many even starving, even leading tens of thousands of Indian peasants to commit suicide!
In the eyes of their system, people are nothing more than instruments which can be (ab)used to make money. But at the same time they make us out to look like beggars at their doors who are asking for help!! And to confuse the people of the world they claim that their wars against each other and especially against their own puppet regimes such as Islamic Fundamentalists, Sadam and the like are wars for democracy. Also, by taking advantages of events like September 11th they label any protest as an act of terrorism. In such a situation in which many movements have retreated, the Caravan stands up bravely, for example protesting about the murder of Oury Jalloh. Such campaigns expose the face of the real terrorists.
The Capitalist system runs under the banner of “dogs bite the throat of dogs.” They have people like Bush and Sadam, but at the same time, to keep their system running, they also have people like Obama and Khatami, all of whom defend the murderous capitalist system. In one single night they can activate a place so horrible as Guantanamo, but they say that they need one year to close it!!
They talk about the change but they have nothing to say about massacre of the people of Palestine. At the same time, they push the criminal puppets like the Islamic Republic of Iran to appear as the supporter of the people of Palestine. The victims of this system, we refugees of this world, are not let them to fool the people. So long as there is the resistance of the oppressed people, including the resistance of refugees, our Caravan is alive and active in our fight against the brutal capitalist system.
Resist those who dominate the people of the world!
Each control is one control too much!
Their isolation camps for asylum-seekers must be closed!
Unite to stop deportation and support freedom of movement!
Long live Internationalist solidarity!
*The Tenth Year of Struggle by the Caravan for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants in Jena and Weimar (Thueringen). By Seid Seidi - Caravan Bremen from the Caravan Nationwide Meeting 30.01 - 01.02.2009 in Hamburg
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The Protest of The VOICE Refugee Forum
By Salomon W. from the Refugee Heim in Möhlau
- Refugee News Network (RNN)
They are all refugees that resided in Germany for many years without the recognitions of their refugee status. However, they could not return to their country of former residence. Their lives would have been in danger because of their political activities, engagement, wars, political crises, statelessness, disintegration, family displacement, etc. In Germany, their rights of existence have been minimized to the lowest possible class. And despite the fact that some of the victims affected in this inhuman practice were professionals, university graduates, politicians, journalists, human right activists, etc., they have been prohibited from participating in their own social, economical, and integral affairs.
At the same time, the Foreigner Office of the different local governments find a different way of interpreting the law. Indeed, they use this opportunity to manipulate or formulate unacceptable practices for some refugees who otherwise would have been eligible to receive international protection, thus depriving them of their institutional existence.
These allegations and manipulations include sending some refugees to an embassy other than their own. Sometimes they don't even send people to the embassy itself but rather organise a place where some embassy representatives come and judge someone they have never met. Nevertheless, the Foreigner's Office knew very well what the definition of "nationality" actually means.
So why do they send people to the embassy that is not from their country of origin?
Had he not protested together with The VOICE Refugee Forum and the Caravan for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants, Salomon. W would have been a victim, too. Salomon, a political activist from the Republic of Benin, was sent to the Nigerian delegation in Halberstadt. Why?
Could this be called a mistake, or rather a manipulation? Yet be it a mistake or a manipulation, its outcome could lead an innocent Salomon to his death. The VOICE Refugee Forum's coordinator, Mr. Osaren, intervened through telephone calls while Salomon was in Halberstadt. Osaren's action contributed as part of the protest to denounce this practice rooted in colonial heritage. The reaction of the Foreigner's Office to his phone calls was to correct their mistake of sending an innocent Salomon to the Nigerian Embassy.
Lots of other people have been victims of such practices. Some have even died as a result.
Why is it that our identities were been correctly given but some foreign offices and the embassies deny us our identity by declaring us unknown? In doing so, they are putting our lives in danger.
We are no longer living in the past 19th or 20th Centuries. Now we are living in a modernised and globalised world of the 21st Century.
Nevertheless, foreigners continue to be terrorised by the police, some have been killed, and yet others, like OURY JALLOH, have been burned to death in police custody in Dessau.
We Therefore call on the police and the Foreigner's Office to stop discriminating against us and to stop killing us so that we can participate in the creation of a better world of peace and without hatred in the future.
In respect to the above-mentioned points, our organisations, The VOICE and the Caravan, are protesting, denouncing and are crying for solidarity for all!
Salomon. W
Political and human right activist
The Caravan Nationwide Meeting 30.01 - 01.02.2009 in Hamburg