A NEW NETWORK IN ITALY IS FIGHTING AGAINST “CPR” MIGRANT DETENTION CENTRES ON THE MEDITERRANEAN COAST ~ thymo nzk & Ibiscus ~ A protest of over 500 people took place on Saturday 28 June in the small touristic coastal town of Diano Marina, where the government is planning a new detention centre for migrants. Marching from the pier along the coast, the demonstration finished just outside the abandoned military compound where the detention centre is to be sited. Slogans included “No borders, no nation, stop deportations” and “Revolt and evasion”. One of the first policy announcements of the neo-fascist Meloni government, elected in 2022, was to extend the deportation system in Italy by ordering the construction of new “centri di permanenza per i rimpatri” (CPR)—the Italian equivalent of immigration removal centres. Inside this repressive structure, basic provisions of the liberal rights-based order are absent. Not only are they run by private companies, they also lack any form of transparency—so all solidarity activists have are detainee accounts of the violence they face. Since 1999 at least 34 people have been killed in the current 10 CPRs in Italy, including the prominent case of Moussa Balde. Abuses reported in detention centres have included forced psychopharmacological consumption. The colonial dimension of this racist apparatus is also evident. Similarly to Trump’s deportation system to El Salvador, the Meloni government has already built and opened a CPR in Albania, managed by Italian authorities. The opposition to the planned CPR expansion in Liguria is diverse. A first protest was called in 2024 by local elected officials and shop keepers, demanding that the CPR is not built in their backyard. Since then, a wider coalition of local solidarity networks, associations and political groups have been coordinating a movement against this and all detention and deportation centres, with the slogan “né qui né altrove” (not here, not anywhere). The post Italy: Protest against planned detention centre appeared first on Freedom News.

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.

ALGORITHM DECISIONS AND RE-PURPOSED RWANDA LOGISTICS HIGHLIGHTED IN MIGRATION POLICY REVIEW ~ Scott Harris ~ Solidarity campaigners had few illusions about Keir Starmer’s government treating migrants with any more dignity, fairness and respect than the Tories. “The main difference is the packaging”, says research group Corporate Watch in a recent analysis. Among other topics, the analysis highlights the increasing role of algorithms in processing vulnerable lives, and how Rwanda logistics are being re-purposed to ramp up charter deportations. In just a few months in office, Starmer’s government is said to have carried out the three largest mass deportations in British history. Immigration Enforcement (now headed by Sajid Javid’s brother, Bas) carried out raids and checks on nearly 300 sites over just a few weeks in August. One widely-publicised incident in Bristol targeting Brazilian delivery drivers. Besides packing planes full of people (three flights to Brazil have each carried over 200 passengers), the government opened up a new charter route with mass deportations to Timor-Leste and Vietnam. While Rwanda is off the table, in October Starmer agreed a plan to temporarily offshore people who claim asylum on the British-occupied Chagos Islands. Particularly concerning is IPIC, a Home Office algorithm – used in conjunction with a database called TRaM – which recommends specific migrants for detention and deportation based on certain criteria. This may enable raids against particular groups for the purposes of large-scale deportation flights and increased media impact. Another concerning project is Home Office Biometrics (HOB), a central database which will allow police and immigration officers to search for ID matches based on fingerprints, DNA and facial recognition—and likely voice and iris recognition in future. The full analysis also covers the expansion of detention facilities, and the expansion of anti-terror laws in the new Immigration Bill. “The Rwanda plan may be dead, but when the government is eyeing up alternatives, and machines are ‘recommending’ people for bigger deportation flights to new destinations, it certainly doesn’t feel like a victory”, said Corporate Watch. The post Labour “putting deportation machine into overdrive”, shows Corporate Watch analysis appeared first on Freedom News.

STAFFORDSHIRE BECOMES FIRST UK HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION TO REMOVE BOTH SECTORS FROM ITS INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO ~ Cristina Sykes ~ Student campaigners have hailed a significant first after Staffordshire University committed to exclude fossil fuel companies from its investment portfolios as well as those involved with border surveillance, incarceration and forced migrant deportations. Although the student-led network People & Planet University League has already achieved 111 wins for its Fossil Free campaign over 12 years, and five for Divest Borders four years on from its launch, Staffordshire is the first UK university which has jettisoned the interlinked industries. “Students are unequivocal in their position that we must recognise that these systems of injustice are deeply interconnected, and that universities must lead by example”, said André Dallas, co-director of migrant justice at People & Planet. Cardiff Metropolitan, Kent, Northumbria and Worcester universities have already committed to divest from the border industry, while Staffordshire is the first to acknowledge the interconnection between climate and migrant justice with its action. “The exploitation of people and the planet cannot be separated”, said Dallas, “they are both symptoms of the same underlying forces privileging profit over integrity. It is the same systems of capitalism and colonialism that appropriate land, resources, and labour for profit, and that use the border industry to maintain a relationship of extraction with the Global South”. The post Dual victory as university divests from fossil fuel and border industries appeared first on Freedom News.