The Caravan Festival - In memory of victims of the fortress Europe
First published in The voice onöine forum in 2007
To the Spanish (European) society:
Appeal from from a deportee!
Ladies and gentlemen of the Spanish society!
Words cannot say what I feel at the moment – being violently forced back to where I came. I was not even able to tell you what made me begin this long and difficult journey during which many of my comrades in misery died.
I thought I could tell you personally - as someone who shows traces of ill-treatment, traces of the suffering of a people that is being oppressed and exploited. But a wall has been put up between you and me that hinders every human encounter between us and forces us to look at each other from a distance like dog and cat – although we are all citizens of the same world. Since we cannot talk to each other, allow me to look you in the eye through these fences that separate Africa from Europe and symbolize the falseness of the relations between North and South created by our governments. This wall of separation, this fence symbolizes a situation in which the South’s commodities as well as the North’s products (weapons among others) can move, but people cannot. It is completely impossible for us to meet as true brothers and sisters.
Ladies an gentlemen, in my eyes you can read the suffering and the pain of our countries in which
multinational companies bring death and uprooting - trying to create an expanse of ruins leaving only
commodities, forests and wild animals for the tourists’ pleasure.
It is the only way I know to make you learn what we Africans have to suffer and which are the consequences of this suffering. I know I will not find an echo in the media, I know politicians will not discuss human rights on their meetings because my life like the lives of all poor people on this planet does not count for them. They sacrifice us – unashamed and ruthlessly. Actually, ladies and gentlemen of the Spanish society, I am an African. My country is very poor. It is a country that has been exploited for centuries by Western multinational companies, that has suffered cruel wars. Often these wars are civil wars, but basically they are economic wars provoked for only one reason: to exploit our countries and become rich – like many African leaders have also done on the expense of millions of my brothers’ and sisters’ lives. Is it really impossible to create a different world in which everyone can live in peace?
Please understand that we are the victims of a continuing impoverishment that is being organized by
the West and often executed by our own leaders in the service of multinational companies. These are the wars I fled, this is the misery they brought upon my land. I want to survive and I want to help my family who have stayed in Africa. I do not want to die like a rat in fire. This is why I – as a survivor – talk to you to point at this inhuman situation and to ask you to help create a just and human world. The things we should eat, the things we should use to develop our countries are being taken to the West to pay debts we never ran up, to buy weapons that kill and mutilate us so that we are no longer able to keep up by ourselves. For these reasons we cannot till our fields, we cannot sleep peacefully, we cannot imagine our children’s and brothers’ future. Everything that is being produced in our countries serves multinational companies which are being supported by European and US governments as well
as by our own while we starve to death. Death has become a banal fact in our countries. Everyday we see children starve. Ordinary illnesses that could easily be cured leave many victims. This is our everyday experience.
You can imagine it is very painful to see a child suffering in your arms; to see my father dieing of
Malaria – which could have been easily be cured in any health centre. Actually, you see this kind of things in TV, but we have to face these cruelties every day, our family members are among the victims. Do you think anyone can stand a life like this?
At night, waiting for a chance to get over the wall of separation, we say goodbye to each other because no one knows what kind of ammunition will be used by the soldiers guarding the fences, no one knows who will be hit by a shot, which part of his body will be hit. We do not know if we will fall from the fence which is six metres high. I wonder: Will this be my last day? And at the same time I remember all the comrades who have died trying to escape and I feel my heart becoming cramped. I think of my family, of my friends who have stayed in Africa – and of my future. Which future?
I do not have a future … I feel lost, useless, not even existing, as if I am worthless in the eyes of this world. As though we only existed, worse than animals, for holocaust and sacrifice. But this is unjust! I have to cross the fence! I understand that I do not have a choice. I think of my country, of all the natural riches we possess. Which riches I wonder? Nothing in our countries belongs to us. Everyday we helplessly see how we are being exploited. Who dares to say a word gets a bullet in the next. The West gives us weapons so that the murder continues. Why does no one help us to get out of the abyss we are in. Everyday our misery grows instead of becoming less. Our children are sentenced to die with the traumata of misery being permanently threatened by war. Those who manage to survive war starve to death! We are sentenced to misery in countries rich of gold, diamonds, coltan and copper, countries with lots of oil. But only for the wealth of others. It is a dirty world, isn’t it?
Do not be surprised that I have tears in my eyes while I speak. The things we live through are terrible. This is why in my bitterness I will try to climb the wall if I can. To live or die – I do not mind. No one cares about my fate… Tell me, ladies and gentlemen of the Spanish society: What have we done to deserve this? As time passes I feel a different emotion rising. We are not damned! This world can be changed, I tell myself. Despite misery and war, we too are God’s children. This is why I tried my luck and came here into your country to see if I can find work to survive and to support the orphans my father left. Do you think it was easy to leave my sick mother behind, not knowing if I will ever see her again? Not knowing what will happen to my brothers and sisters? But what can I do? I have no choice. I have to earn the money to buy medicaments for my mother so that she does not die like my father did. I have to earn money so that my brothers and sisters can go to school and maybe one day will be something different than just victims. I want to work so that I can buy medicaments for my brother who has AIDS. That is all I ask for. Do you know how painful it is to see your family dieing – not being able to do anything? Do you think it is easy to live like I do?
I am here because I took the risk to go through all kinds of difficulties on a long and hard way. Luckily, I survived. But now I am facing this wall of separation that hinders me telling you about my pain from face to face. But there is still the possibility that you look into my eyes and read what I a suffering. I ask you not to think that it is an ordinary life we live. It is the result of an injustice being established and kept up by inhuman systems who kill and impoverish people. This is why I ask you not to support this system by being silent. My suffering should make you understand that it is impossible for a human being to be silent at the face of such cruelties. God knows I am not a thief or a criminal; it is just the cry of a victim who wants to live on this planet like everyone else. I am sure that if you would know my story and those of my comrades you would not force me to return where I come from, you would not leave me in a desert with no chance to survive. I repeat: The only thing I want is to survive and to help my brothers and sisters. This is all I ask for!
Behind the walls of separation in Melilla.
Bashige, Michel
***
Please find below the speech of Estrella del Pais of Migrante Europe held on May 25, 2007 at the conference "In Solidarity against deportation, exclusion and exploitation" during the stop of the CARAVAN-Tour 2007 in Düsseldorf with the reports and dokumentation of the tour from other cities and towns but in German language :(http://thecaravan.org/node/1249).
Good morning to all of you, brothers and sisters in the struggle for the rights and welfare of migrants and refugees, against racism and discrimination and against imperialism.
We from MIGRANTE-Europe salute you in KARAWANE for the militant actions you are taking in this KARAWANE Tour to expose and oppose the gross injustices committed against migrants and refugees by agencies of the German government. We stand together in our common fight against their exclusion, deportation and oppression.
Allow me to intoduce myself. I am Estrella and I am representing MIGRANTE - Europe. MIGRANTE-Europe is a network of progressive Filipino organizations of migrants and refugees. We stand for the rights and welfare of this sector. In the long term, we are working for a Philippine society where Filipinos do not have to be separated from their families because of forced migration and we are for a sovereign and democratic Philippines.
Today I would like to focus on the issue of undocumented migrant workers and refugees in Europe. The reasons – first, they make up a very vulnerable sector and second, because they constitute a sizeable number with hundreds of thousands of undocumented throughout Europe. In the Netherlands, the amnesty campaign for the “out-of-procedure” 26,000 asylum seekers is still going on.
Undocumented workers are workers without rights! They are deprived of their employment rights such as pension, unemployment, sickness and maternity benefits. Moreover, they do not have social rights like the rights to housing, education for the children and health care. They are exploited and are easily exploited by their bosses because they do not have any legal rights. In cases when they are abused, they cannot stand up to their bosses to complain. If they do there is only one way to go- that is to get fired. They are thrown into a very vulnerable situation.
In the Netherlands, there are 70,000 undocumented workers. They are mostly employed in the greenhouses (greenhouse agriculture) where they grow vegetables and in flower fields. One district with a lot of greenhouses is in Westland near Den Haag. There the number of undocumented workers has grown rapidly. In recent years, there are more Bulgarians, Polish and Ukrainians. The bosses no longer want Turkish and Moroccan undocumented workers because they ask for 6-7 Euros/hour while the East Europeans are given only 3-4 Euros/hour.
Undocumented workers in Westland work 12 hours/day, 7 days a week. They pick flowers, tomatoes, paprika, cucumber. According to OKIA (Support Committee for Illegal Workers), a greenhouse owner saves 20,000 Euros per worker per year.
The exploitation of these workers has aggravated with the entry of uitzendbureaus. It used to be that workers were hired directly by the bosses. Now they are employed by the uitzendbureaus. These employment agencies earn 5 Euros/ hour/worker. As a result, the migrant workers are exploited twice. First by the boss and next by the uitzendbureau.
Mustafa Agyun in an interview said: “If I can work legally with a work permit, I don’t have to be exploited by an uitzendbureau. But now I cannot fight back because I do not exist juridically.Who wants to work for 5 Euros an hour? … I always have to follow what my boss says. We are the modern slaves of the Netherlands.”
Undocumented Filipino workers also belong to this category. Filipino migrant workers in Europe has increased significantly since the 70’s to an estimate of 800,000 Filipinos.Thay are spread out in big European cities like Rome, Milan, Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam, London , Athens. 85% are women. A large majority work as domestic helpers and at the least 50% are undocumented.
Under the Koppelings Wet which took effect in the Netherlands in 1998, all undocumented including Filipino domestic helpers lost their social rights, and their employment rights. With no medical insurance, they cannot afford to get sick while young adults cannot afford to build a family.
Their lives are far from normal. Many women migrant workers are separated from their children and their husbands for 5,10 or 20 years. They do not have a right to family reunification the way other expatriate workers do. Many end up with broken families, and children end up as juvenile delinquents back home. The social costs of migration are incalculable.
As the political climate in Europe steadily turned rightist, other governments introduced similar anti-migrant laws like those in the Netherlands. In Italy, the Bosi-Fini law crimininalized the undocumented. The police may arrrest and detain an undocumented migrant not because he committed a criminal act but because he did not have a valid visum.
Of course these anti-migrant national laws were the extensions of the Fortress Europe policies of the European Union, established by the Maastricht Treaty in 1993. With Fortress Europe, restrictive and repressive immigration controls were set up to guard Europe’s external borders. Migrants and refugees were since then to be locked out from the European Union.
More recently in October 2006, the former Minister for Integration , Rita Verdonk introduced a policy to crackdown on the undocumented to be implemented by the Dutch police – called, the prestatie contract ( the performance contract). The prestatie contract prescribed that the Dutch police should arrrest and detain a certain number of undocumented foreigners every year. Should the police not reach the quota, then it will not be given a bonus ( an extra salary) at the end of the year. The goal was to reach a quota of 40,000 arrests each year , 12,000 of which were to be detained. The prestatie contract was put on hold because politicians, the media and migrants protested against this razzia. By the way Rita Verdonk was the architect of immigration policies which allowed the police to arrest and detain foreigners without valid papers. Eleven of which detained, died in the fire that burned down the controversial detention center near Schiphol airport.
This criminalization of the undocmented caused a lot of unrest, fear and anger among Filipino migrant organizations. But together with other migrant groups, we fought back and with the support of some political parties and concerned groups, the policy prestatie contract is on hold.
In this connection, I would like to raise the case of Prof. Jose Maria Sison.
“On 28 October 2002, the Council of the European Union added Prof. Sison to its list of ’terrorists”. This decision was taken by written procedure, without any hearing and due process, without motivation whatsoever. Unjust measures have been taken against Prof. Sison, including the violation of his civil and political rights, banning him from work, terminating his social benefits (living allowance, housing, health insurance, civil liability insurance and old age pension), the freezing of funds and other financial assets or economic resources, stigmatization as a ”terrorist” and threats to his moral and physical integrity.”
“The blacklisting of Prof. Sison and various anti-imperialist organizations by the European Union does not bode well for democracy in Europe. Groups and individuals who express and concretise their solidarity with them may be the next victims. The democratic rights to freedom of expression and of association are under attack. The highest sense of solidarity among all peoples is under challenge.”
We demand from the European Union and its member states:
• the removal of Prof. Jose Maria Sison’ s name from the list of the Council Common Position 2002/847/CFSP and Council Decision 2002/848/EC;
• full respect for the democratic rights of Jose Maria Sison as a recognized refugee under the relevant international conventions;
• encouragement to the resumption of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations in accordance with The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 as the framework agreement and respect for the 1997 and 1999 resolutions of the European Parliament supporting the aforesaid peace negotiations;
• refusal of any possible demand for his extradition or expulsion from The Netherlands.
We demand from the European Union and its member states to refrain from undertaking any action that curtails or violates the democratic rights and legitimate political activities of organisations and individuals.”
We would like you to join in the Europewide campaign to stop the unjust terrorist listing and persecution of Prof. Sison. Sign the “Appeal to Remove Prof. Sison from the EU Terrorist List”. Ask your friends to do the same. Your solidarity is needed.
No to deportation!
No to exclusion and exploitation!
No to Fortress Europe!
Defend the rights and welfare of migrants and refugees!
Estrella del Pais
25 May 2007
Situation of migrant workers in Europe
http://www.thecaravan.org/node/1255