FOLLOWING NO NAME KITCHEN AS THEY DO VITAL SOLIDARITY WORK WITH MIGRANTS ON THE BOSNIA-CROATIA BORDER. ~ Ben Cowles ~ Klara, Alberto and I spent the whole day driving around the outskirts of town, sneaking into abandoned buildings that they believed refugees and migrants — or people on the move (PotM) to use a better term — were using as squats. We visited a half-built mansion, parkoured around a disused factory, breathed in the black-mould wallpapering an old mountain-side villa, and held back the spew at a house that smelt worse than the shitpits on the last day of Download. “I remember this place,” Klara said as we traipsed through weeds to reach one of the squats, a small, half-finished bungalow by the side of a road that nature had begun to reclaim. We were in Bihać (pronounced Bee Hatch), a small town in northeast Bosnia, right on the border with Croatia, where thousands of people seeking a better life slam against the walls of Fortress Europe. It was the doghouse, with Amore written across its entrance, that jogged Klara’s memory. She told us she’d been here a couple of years ago. “The guys living here invited us to dinner,” she said as we went inside. There was no carpet on the concrete floor, the bricks were exposed, and weeds crept through the walls. In the corner was a wood burning stove. Three tins of tomatoes sat on a rickety cupboard next to it. “It was one of the nights I recall the most. We cooked together. They taught me how to make bread. And we shared it together here.” Klara and Alberto were in Bosnia with No Name Kitchen (NNK), a solidarity network that supports PotM in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Italy, Spain, and Ceuta — a Spanish enclave in northern Morocco. I was there working on an episode of The Civil Fleet Podcast. NNK’s activists base themselves in those countries for around three months, usually, and provide PotM with medical care, food, clothes, legal support if they need it, and company — someone other than a cop or a border guard to talk to. Most importantly, though, NNK records testimonies from PotM about the abuses they have faced at Europe’s borders, then present and denounce these bleak findings in monthly (ish) reports and on social media. NNK’s activists organise themselves non-hierarchically. Each person has what they call a focal point — something they should focus on, like managing the warehouse, recording testimonies, issuing first aid, managing communications/media, etc. But anyone can get involved in any task. Each day I was with NNK’s team in Bosnia went something like this: attend morning meeting to discuss the day’s plans; go to the warehouse to sort and stock up on clothes, food, and first aid supplies; put them in the car, and head out to our distribution zones, keeping an eye out for the cops. Nothing we did was illegal. How is giving someone a pair of shoes against the law? But the cops, under pressure from the European Union, sometimes claimed it was, and threatened to fine or deport NNK’s activists. DIFFERENT AFTERNOONS Europe’s various authorities (be they national governments or the European Union) want PotM to suffer. They want a hostile environment, one that will demoralise PotM and drain them of hope. They hope this will force PotM to go home, or at least to go to some other country. Even the most basic form of solidarity undermines the whole system, and therefore cannot be tolerated. That’s why activists across the continent are being criminalised for helping PotM or saving their lives. The afternoons with NNK in Bosnia were different every day. A couple of times we’d hang out with the men stuck at Lipa Migrant camp — deliberately located up a mountain way out in the countryside. Another time we played basketball and football with the unaccompanied kids, teens, women and families held in Borići camp, which is located in town. We toured the squats on my last afternoon with NNK’s Bosnia crew. “I met them in winter,” Klara said of the people she met in that bungalow in 2021. “They decided to stay until spring. And since they were living outside of town, we asked them, when we found a little puppy at the bus station, if they wanted to take care of it, and they were really happy. “We brought her here, and they made a little house for her and everything. They took care of her for the whole winter.” One of the guys who’d lived there, who we’ll call Denny, spoke English very well, Klara said. She put me in touch with him. “It was amazing, actually,” he said over the phone weeks later when I asked him what it was like living in that squat. “Our house became very famous, actually, with volunteers and other organisations. We were always cooking there. There was a supermarket close to our house. The volunteers brought us fresh food. “I remember teaching Klara how to cook chapatis. It’s a good memory. She was trying to make them round. It was a bit difficult for her and her friends.” Denny fled Pakistan-occupied Kashmir nine years ago when he was 17 years old. He asked that we didn’t discuss the reasons why he had to flee his homeland. But he did tell me how India, Pakistan and China (the three states which occupy it) have oppressed the people there and turned Kashmir into one of the most militarised places on the planet. Of course, many of the problems there stretch back to Britain’s 19th century colonisation of the Indian subcontinent and the 1947 partition of it. But I don’t have the word count, or the knowledge frankly, to get into any of that. Human rights, especially in India-occupied Kashmir, have been severely curtailed and in recent years, thousands of activists, journalists and political figures have been jailed. Denny travelled first to Iran and then on to Turkey, where he stayed for a while. Later, he went on to Greece, Albania and Montenegro before making it to Bosnia in 2021.“I got there in winter,” he told me. “It’s really horrible to survive there in winter. I was happier living outside than in the camps, though I suffered a lot. “Two or three times, I went in the camps, just to see the situation. It was really horrible, how they treat people. They are really far from the cities, and they look exactly like a prison. “You see security all around you. You feel like you are the most wanted criminal in the world, and you don’t know why they put you in there when you haven’t committed any crime.” Eventually, Denny made it to Bihać, the final stop before Fortress Europe’s high-tech border walls begin, and found the abandoned bungalow. The place was well known to NNK’s team and other activist and NGO groups in the town. One day, while he was living there, Klara and her friend Lydia told Denny they had a gift for him. “I loved living there with my dog,” he told me. “Her name is Amore. Lydia, asked me if I had a name for her in my mind. I didn’t, so she said I should call her Amore. I didn’t even know what it meant,” he said. “She told me Amore means love. They brought her to me because they found her at the bus station. She was lost from her siblings and from her mum. They found her on a rainy day. I can’t explain how good it was for me to have a puppy there. It was very helpful. She ate whatever we were eating. It’s funny; once she ate raw potatoes. I took one out of her mouth. I told my friend: ‘Okay, this is too much. We have to train her now’.” “IF NOT, YOU TRY AGAIN” Amore now lives in Slovenia with a friend of Denny’s. “She’s living in Ljubljana,” he said, “with a rich family. So I’m happy that at least she’s got a good life,” he said, laughing at the irony. A lot of PotM lived in that bungalow, Denny told me. “Sometimes there were like 14 or 15 people in the house. Sometimes 10, sometimes six or seven. People were going and coming, you know. People sometimes went ‘on game’ by themselves. We call it a ‘game’ because it’s like, if you make it [across the border] you’re successful. If not, you try again, you know. So that’s why they call it a game. But sometimes people make it over the border, but the police push them back to Bosnia.” Denny went “on game” several times, and in March 2022 made it to Italy, where he now has refugee status, after making it through Croatia and Slovenia. Perhaps surprisingly, Denny looks back on his time in the bungalow fondly. “Our house become very famous, actually, with volunteers and other organisations,” she says. “We got lucky. The police came very close sometimes. They tried to push people back to the camps. But we were lucky. I met people I never imagined meeting and we became friends. We shared everything, like food. We talked about the past, the current situation and the future. “Most PotM have a bad experience, you know, they suffer a lot. They have no hope. We don’t know when we’ll make it to Europe. We don’t know who we’re going to meet or if they’re good people. Most PotM only meet cops, who sometime torture them, sometimes beat them, or sometimes just shout at them.” ~ Ben Cowles runs The Civil Fleet, a news blog and podcast focused on the activist-led refugee rescue and support missions across Europe. You can find it on all podcast services and YouTube. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article first appeared in the Winter 2024/25 issue of Freedom The post Haunting old ruins at the edges of Fortress Europe appeared first on Freedom News.

The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, which “assists” European countries in “border management, control and security”, is 20 years old tomorrow ~ from Contre Attaque ~ Frontex is a tool for European countries, with an outsized budget of 845 million Euro in 2023. The objective is to strengthen the repressive and ultra-security policy with massive weaponry: drones, radars, satellites, thermographic surveillance, biometric controls, sound cannons. Nor does the European agency does not intend to stop there in terms of equipment. This summer, calls for tenders worth 400 million Euro were issued for equipment, in order to “improve the detection of boats in the Mediterranean Sea and better combat illegal immigration”. In addition to the staggering budget devoted to this agency, the work of Frontex agents is undermining the lives of individuals. For this anniversary, the Abolish Frontex collective wants to focus on lives and not candles, with 20 reasons to abolish Frontex: 1. 29,442 people have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea since 2014. 2. Frontex communicates the position of migrant boats to Libyan militias, who abduct people at sea and force them to go to torture camps. 3. Frontex has coordinated the expulsion of more than 104,000 people since 2006. 4. Frontex coordinated deportation flights during which people were tortured. 5. Frontex is complicit in the outsourcing of border control to countries on the African continent , for example through the Africa-Frontex Intelligence Community network, which has more than 30 African states among its members. 6. Frontex has recruited an army of border guards capable of owning and using handguns, and aims to have 10,000 guards by 2027. 7. Frontex is complicit in illegal and dangerous “push-back” operations, a method of forcibly pushing a boat back at the risk of capsizing, from Greece to Turkey. Since 2020, there have been more than 2,000 such incidents. 8. Frontex cooperated with national border guards in Hungary, Bulgaria and Greece, who pepper-sprayed and beat people with sticks at night and chased them through forests with dogs. 9. Frontex has increasingly close ties to the arms and security industry, often attending industry lobbying meetings and using its own growing budget to purchase equipment. 10. Frontex facilitates the acquisition by EU countries of surveillance and border control technologies and products by acting as an intermediary between Member States and defence and security companies. 11. In its “risk” analysis reports, Frontex portrays immigration as a threat that must be stopped and contained, rather than as a natural process that must be facilitated. 12. Frontex and EU-Lisa operate a biometric-based border control infrastructure, interoperable immigration and police databases that infringe on privacy and human rights, such as the right to seek asylum. 13. Frontex is playing an increasing role in stimulating research funding for new security and border control technologies, including controversial AI applications, in cooperation with academia and the private sector. 14. Frontex has signed multi-million euro contracts with Israeli arms companies Elbit and IAI for surveillance flights over the Mediterranean. It uses drones that have been touted as “combat-proven” after being used against Palestinians. 15. Frontex, in coordination with the European Commission, can oblige EU Member States to strengthen their capacities and practices in terms of security and border control. 16. Frontex has taken advantage of the war in Ukraine to expand its operational area to Moldova, where it targets migrants under the initial guise of helping refugees flee Ukraine, and is preparing for future operations in Ukraine. 17. Frontex has signed a cooperation agreement with the UK, regardless of its inhumane migration policies, which have seen the number of people drowning double in 2022. 18. Frontex failed to save the lives of more than 600 people who drowned in the Pylos shipwreck in June 2023. 19. Frontex intentionally ignores human rights violations committed by Bulgarian border guards, such as shooting migrants, stealing their personal belongings, forcing them to undress and swim back to Turkey. 20. Frontex is a key player in the EU border regime that has killed more than 60,620 people since 1993. It should be added that the former director of Frontex is Fabrice Leggeri from France, now an elected far-right member of the European Parliament, and the subject of a complaint for complicity in crimes against humanity. In short, Frontex kills, expels, and hunts migrating people on land and at sea and participates in crimes against humanity -– arbitrary detentions, murders, torture, complicity in rape. Frontex should not exist and a reception policy should be put in place in European countries: they are clearly capable of it. As a reminder, in 2022 when Russia declared war on Ukraine, an unprecedented wave of Ukrainian exiles was welcomed with dignity , quickly and unconditionally throughout the European Union, including more than 65,538 Ukrainians in France. The lying speeches justifying the impossibility of welcoming “all the misery in the world” fell. This scarecrow constantly waved by the extreme right is not the problem: the problem lies in the policies that have made the non-European exile an enemy. This discrimination allows the designation of a scapegoat responsible for all evils and against which action must be taken. The rise of racist speech in the media and the political field attests to the need, for the camp of the wealthy, to divert attention, to prevent any more complex reflection on the place of humanity in society. We must put an end to this xenophobic, racist and inhumane policy for which lives are worth less than other lives. An action campaign is launched for the week of September 30 to October 6. Abolish Frontex proposes in particular to send a postcard to the Frontex headquarters in Poland. They also invite individuals and collectives to organise themselves to fight and denounce this murderous EU border regime. The post Frontex: 20 years of human rights violations appeared first on Freedom News.

FREEDOM’S WINTER EDITION HIGHLIGHTS SOLIDARITY ACROSS BORDERS, THEN AND NOW Internationalism’s a twisty beast, prone to making fools of us all. Just take the Leninist left’s insistence that Maduro, or Castro, or Xi Jinping (of all people) are worthy of our undying loyalty as opponents of Western imperialism. Autocrats given a pass on their obvious and ongoing destruction of social freedoms because they wave a red flag around. But the year’s events in Palestine have been a truly heinous example of this reality as it applies to the powers that be. We’ve seen a maddened Israeli politic level the homes of millions, kill tens of thousands and starve many more. Netanyahu’s quest to stay out of jail and his Knesset allies’ outright pro-ethnic cleansing policies have set fire to the Middle East. But rather than call this mass murder out for what it is the US and, to a lesser degree, the UK have shown how they view internationalism, as a cynical exercise backing particular horses in the great game. It took Sunak and Starmer more than 11 months to grudgingly suspend some (10% of) arms sales for the IDF, in which time first Gaza, then the West Bank, and Lebanon were relentlessly pummelled. And it was not simply a bunch of imagined “terrorist sympathisers” or deluded anti-Semites who called them out on it. The South African government, reflecting a population that remembers apartheid all too well, took Israel to the international court, which ruled there was “a plausible risk of genocide”. The UN has spoken up. International votes have been clear on the matter. NGOs as beige as Oxfam have petitioned for more comprehensive measures to be taken. But Starmer and co. swan on, placid in their internationalism of the moment. And of course, why wouldn’t they be? The UK Foreign Ministry is after all the most stable of the great offices of state, inscrutable in its aims, placed out of reach of serious oversight by a public that’s only vaguely interested in it, for the most part. Them out there are only a big deal if it affects us in here, and the politicians of Westminster know it well. Hence, of course, the other major moments of Starmer’s early reign. The trip to America must be prioritised, obviously, but the second greeting was for Giorgia Meloni, to learn from her how best to join the internationalism of closing borders. A far-right leader whose deputy Salvini was so egregious, with his “closed ports” policy as interior minister, it sparked a court case accusing him of kidnap. Starmer was full of praise for this brutal regime, thoroughly embedded in Fortress Europe as the bloc collectively pays thugs beyond its borders to terrorise and repress Earth’s tired and powerless masses for having the temerity to approach without sufficient money. Sir Keir’s Labour is welded to the hypocrisy of it all, begging inward migration from millionaires while decrying the feckless poor both inside and beyond the grand moat provided by the North Sea. Sucking up to powerful economic blocs while mouthing vague platitudes about dying neoliberal values of free trade to placate the orthodoxies of Blairism circa 1997. Worse even than the Leninists’ internationalism of fools, it’s an internationalism of the graveyard. We need the revival of a long-quietened opposition, of an internationalism that unites the working class to kick the legs out from this tottering zombie and put it six feet under. In this issue of Freedom we take a look at some of the work that is taking place, and which went before in the building of solidarity across borders. Dave Morris talks about the McLibel campaign in the context of spycops and taking a transnational corporation to the cleaners. Ben Cowles recalls the immense work that goes on under the radar as migrant support groups work in defiance of aggressive policing, while other articles address prisoner support work, and the Zapatistas’ holistic, solidaristic approaches to education. Several touch on or recount elements of the major wave of internationalist revolt that took place arond the Millennium, fighting globalised capital in its pomp before falling apart in the wake of post-9/11 reaction. There are many lessons in this issue but the most important of them is this. Isolated, we struggle and always will. Our rulers know the value of collectivity. To rise up to meet them we must do the same, and better. Our futures depend on it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This editorial first appeared in Winter 2024/25 issue of Freedom. The post Their internationalism, and ours appeared first on Freedom News.