The Revival Of No Border Camps
A Tactics Laboratories Against Borders And Control
There seem to be a revival of "no border" camps this year. 5 years
after the international noborder camp in strasbourg there are camps
announced in Ukraine and Mexico this year, now the first noborder camp
in UK is announced as well, at Gatwick International Airport.
The planned new detention centre at Gatwick goes along with the plans
to tighten inner control and surveillance in the UK by introducing
(biometric) ID cards, the SIRENE infosystem (the UK extension to the
Schengen Information System), extended laws and police action against
"Anti-Social Behaviour" such as flying police drones (now on test in
Merseyside, no joke).
Here is the text of the first invitation to the camp:
------------------------------------
No Borders – No Nations – No Prisons
An Invitation To The Gatwick No Border Camp 2007
From 19th to 24th September 07 we will gather at Gatwick Airport for
the first No Border Camp in the UK. This camp will be a chance to work
together to try and stop the building of a new detention centre, and
to gather ideas for how to build up the fight against the system of
migration controls.
Gatwick Aiport - The Border Point
Gatwick is a border in the middle of Britain. People arrive here
everyday. People are forcibly deported from here everyday. It is
a place where people are imprisoned for unlimited lengths of time
without trial, where people are forced to hide underground and be
invisible, where people are treated as criminals for the 'crime' of
crossing the border.
In Britain, the government has recently announced its intention to
build a new detention centre, near Tinsley House, another detention
centre at Gatwick airport. This will be another in a long line of
barbarous prisons across the world, imprisoning people who migrate.
Unless we stop it from being built.
Not far from Gatwick there are other border fortifications: the
immigration reporting centre at Croydon, the airline companies who
charter deportation flights and the ID Interview centre in Crawley.
And a few miles away are the border posts at Dover and Folkstone,
where fear of detection by the border police forces people to risk
their lives hiding under lorries, or in suffocating containers.
While the physical borders get fortified, governments also tighten
up the internal controls: from international databases to video
surveillance, biometric ID cards to electronic tagging. Just recently,
the UK government has announced the introduction of the Sirene System.
This will grant Britain access to the SIS (Schengen Information
System), a EU wide police database for refugees and migrants, planned
to be extended to keep protesters from moving around.
A Tactics Laboratory
How does daily life, from the need to work for survival to the welfare
system, reinforce these borders? How can we fight against the common
acceptance of borders, the idea of an inside and outside? How can
we claim freedom of movement as a basic right? How do we assert our
ability to decide whether to go or stay, according to our needs and
desires, not the needs of the state or the economy? How can we escape
control, and start building a movement powerful enough to challenge
the divisions between people?
We need to share knowledge with those who have broken these borders,
the hackers who escape control, those who survive without work and
money, those who fight the detention system , those who question
identities, those who have learnt to organise themselves without
hierarchy or divisions.
Camp(aign)ing Against Borders
This camp is continuing the tradition of the No Border camps across
the world since the late 1990s, and like the camps taking place
this year in the Ukraine in August and on the US/Mexican border in
November. It will be a space to share information, skills, knowledge
and experiences. A place to plan actions together against the system
of borders which divides us.
We are aware that the struggles for "no borders" reach far beyond
"open borders". Without borders the idea of states will become
obsolete, without states the national economies will be history. In a
world without borders, nobody will ask for papers anymore.
The camp will also be a laboratory of political and practical
self-organisation. The camp will consist only of people's
contributions to this. We are aware of the borders which divide
ourselves from each other, be it sex, class, race, nationality, or
whatever. The border camps are experiments in how to overcome these
artificial and separating identities.
No Borders
No Borders is a network of groups struggling for the freedom of
movement for all and an end to all migration controls. We call for
a radical movement against the system of control, dividing us into
citizens and non-citizens.
We demand the end of the border regime for everyone, including
ourselves, to enable us to live another way, without fear, racism and
nationalism.
We move, we meet. We talk, we fight.
Come camp with us.
Web (soon) : http://noborders.org.uk
Contact: g-anbc2007@riseup.net
List: Please subscribe the public mailing list at
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/gatwick07
Meetings: A public meeting for those who want to get involved in the
preparation, around the end of June, will be announced soon.
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg
body
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
posted by thevacuumcleaner at 25.5.07
0 comments
