Antti Rautiainen denied Russian visa request

June 23, 2012 Avtonom

On Thursday, the 14th of June anarchist and member of the Moscow - Autonomous Action, Antti Rautiainen, was denied his Russian visa request. The refusal was not exaplained.

Rautiainen had a Russian temporary residence permit, but it was annulled at the end of March. According to authorities, he had made "calls to violently overthrow constitutional order or Russian Federation." He was given 15 days to leave the Russian Federation.

In Helsinki, Rautiainen applied for a tourist visa for the month of August through a tourist agency. However, this visa request was denied. No explanations were given, but one may assume, that the reasons are political - that is, Rautiainen's anarchist activity in the ranks of Autonomous Action.

Deportation means a five year ban on entering the Russian Federation. Rautiainen, however, was not deported, and there are no legal barriers against admitting him etrance to the Russian Federation. So one may assume, that he is either blacklisted by Russian secret services, or embassy denied him a visa on an individual basis. However, Rautiainen does not expect to be able to enter the Russian Federation anytime soon.

Rautiainen promises to continue attempts to overthrow the constitutional order of Russian Federation, and any other state, outside Russia.

Back articles on the issue:  http://avtonom.org/en/people/antti-rautiainen

A Palestinian in Indefinite Detention -- 10 Years Ago in the United States

March 24, 2012 by David L. Wilson MR Zine

The 66-day hunger strike of Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan brought overdue attention to Israel's practice of detaining Palestinians for lengthy periods without criminal charges. It also brought attention to the same practice in other countries, including the United States, where, as Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald pointed out, indefinite detention is "now firmly in place" for terrorism suspects.

It's important to remember that the U.S. government detains people for indefinite periods without bringing charges, but Greenwald misses an equally important point: the United States was doing this long before 9/11 and the "War on Terrorism."

On any given day, the Department of Homeland Security is holding some 33,000 non-citizens in federal detention centers, in federal prisons, or in county jails. Although politicians and much of the media regularly call these immigrants "illegals" or "criminal aliens," the detainees aren't facing criminal charges. Many are suspected of being in the United States without authorization -- a civil violation -- and are waiting for their cases to be heard. Some detainees are being held while they try to win political asylum or fight their deportation orders. A number have already been ordered deported and are waiting for the authorities to arrange their removal from the country.

The majority stay in detention for less than a month. The wait is much longer for some -- for example, detainees with a final order of deportation who can't find a country willing to accept them. Some of these come from places like Cuba which don't routinely cooperate with U.S. deportation policies; others, including many Palestinians, simply don't have a country.

Immigration's "Lifers"

Until 2001 the U.S. government maintained that it could hold "unremovable" detainees indefinitely, and immigration advocates and lawyers came to refer to them as "lifers." In June 2001 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Zadvydas v. Davis that this practice was unconstitutional. In general, the court said, immigration authorities shouldn't hold such detainees for more than six months unless there is a reasonable expectation that they can be deported in the foreseeable future.

The Zadvydas ruling was a step forward, but it didn't mean that the indefinite detentions had ended. Nothing forces the government to release a detainee after six months; it's up to the detainee to challenge a prolonged detention through a federal habeas corpus petition. But filing a habeas petition isn't an easy job even for a U.S. citizen with financial resources and a good command of English; an immigrant in detention is unlikely to have these advantages. An immigration detainee is also unlikely to have a lawyer. In a sort of ultimate Catch-22, the government says it can imprison immigrants just as if they were facing criminal charges, but since their cases are civil, the government isn't obligated to provide an attorney.

Even when the detainees get legal representation, the U.S. government has many ways to keep them in detention for months or even years beyond the six months established in the Zadvydas decision.

An Activist Without a Country

The Palestinian-born New York-based activist Farouk Abdel-Muhti worked in a variety of political causes for years, but his activities became much more public with the start of the second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000 and the anti-Muslim hysteria that followed the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. During the spring of 2002 he began working with the morning program at WBAI, the New York affiliate of the Pacifica group, arranging live phone interviews with people in Gaza and the West Bank. A few weeks later, on April 26, a joint task force of immigration and New York City police agents arrested Abdel-Muhti at his home, ostensibly to enforce a 1995 deportation order.

Abdel-Muhti was placed in administration detention in the Middlesex county jail in central New Jersey to await his removal from the United States. But the United States couldn't deport him, as immigration officials knew perfectly well: they had tried twice already, once in the 1970s and again in the 1990s.

Abdel-Muhti was born near Ramallah on the West Bank in 1947, when the Palestinian territories were under British rule. He was living in South America in 1967 when Israel occupied the West Bank, so Israel didn't register him as a West Bank resident. Jordan, which administered the West Bank after the end of the British Mandate, provided him with a birth certificate in the early 1960s but didn't recognize him as a Jordanian citizen. He was stateless, and no country was required to accept him.

Abdel-Muhti's activism was probably the reason the United States decided to detain him, but his activism also gave him advantages other detainees lacked. His political experience provided him with the skills he needed to organize much of his own defense, to give interviews and write articles from inside prison. Friends and fellow political activists formed a committee for his release and began organizing protests, petition drives, and fundraising events. The case got attention from both independent and mainstream media, and Japanese-American filmmaker Konrad Aderer made a short film on the case (later he produced a moving full-length documentary, Enemy Alien, connecting Abdel-Muhti's imprisonment to Aderer's own family history and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II).

Unlike most detainees, Abdel-Muhti also had pro bono legal representation. Attorney Joel Kupferman, executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, agreed to represent him, with the assistance of MacDonald Scott, a Canadian paralegal and activist who was then working for the National Lawyers Guild in New York.

But progressive lawyers with immigration experience were already swamped with other cases of Muslim and Middle Eastern men rounded up after 9/11, so it was several months before the committee could enlist Kupferman and Scott for the case. And U.S. justice doesn't move quickly in the best of times. Abdel-Muhti's legal team wasn't able to file the petition for habeas corpus until November 6, 2002.

Abdel-Muhti had now been in prison for more than six months.

The "Proven Track Record"

The United States had one month to respond to the petition. Since Abdel-Muhti was imprisoned in New Jersey, the case was filed in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey, where the government was represented by U.S. Attorney Chris Christie -- now the state's Republican governor and a favorite of billionaire right-wing activists Charles and David Koch. Christie assigned the Abdel-Muhti case to Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas R. Calcagni, who has since become the director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs.

On December 9 Calcagni filed a 28-page response denouncing Abdel-Muhti as a "convicted criminal several times over" with "a 40-year history of flouting United States immigration laws and hiding his true identity" with "at least 10 different aliases." The Palestinian's "countless attempts to thwart removal efforts by providing false or insufficient information" were the real reason the government had failed to deport him, Calcagni wrote. The government held it was justified in holding Abdel-Muhti until he had provided "the information needed to verify his nationality."

There were elements of truth in the government's response. Abdel-Muhti did have one serious conviction: in 1993 he pled guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge arising from a domestic dispute, and he served 27 days in jail. But his other convictions were for minor offenses, such as selling rugs and neckties on the street without a license or "resisting arrest" at a demonstration. It was also true that Abdel-Muhti first entered the country with false papers -- in 1963 at the age of 16 -- presenting a clumsily forged Honduran birth certificate and claiming to be George (or Jorge Alberto) Muhti Nasser. But at least since 1975 he had consistently identified himself as the Palestinian Farouk Abdel-Muhti. The many "aliases" cited by the government appeared to be mostly due to Abdel-Muhti's uncertainty on how to transliterate his name from Arabic or, more often, the sort of spelling and typing errors routinely made by government clerks faced with non-English names.

There was no real question that Abdel-Muhti was Palestinian. In addition to the birth certificate issued by Jordan, he had presented the government with an affidavit from an elderly Palestinian man living in New Jersey who had been a friend of the family on the West Bank, and with letters and affidavits from New York-area residents showing that the local Palestinian community recognized him as a Palestinian and as an activist for Palestinian causes.

Why then did immigration authorities need "information to verify his nationality"?

Assistant U.S. Attorney Calcagni gave the government's game away when talking to a reporter for the New Jersey Law Journal in March 2003. "Curiously," the Journal noted, "even Calcagni admits that Muhti [sic] may eventually win his freedom." "We have a proven track record of not being able to repatriate someone there [to Palestine]," Calcagni told the reporter.

In other words, the authorities simply wanted to hold Abdel-Muhti in detention for as long as possible, and since they knew his status as a stateless Palestinian meant they would have to release him, they decided to contest his nationality.

"Wreaking Havoc" With Transfers

But the government's efforts to protract Abdel-Muhti's detention weren't limited to writing imaginative legal briefs.

Immigration authorities' many powers over detainees include the ability to move them around at will, sometimes shipping them hundreds of miles, at the taxpayer's expense, to facilities far from their families and their lawyers (if they're lucky enough to have lawyers). The government claims this is a purely administrative matter intended to ensure efficient use of prison space. But as Human Rights Watch's Alison Parker told the New York Times in 2011, "[o]ne transfer is enough to wreak havoc with a detainee's case in immigration court."

By February 2003 Abdel-Muhti had been in prison for 10 months, and District Judge Faith Hochberg was finally starting to consider scheduling a hearing on his habeas petition. He had already been moved three times within New Jersey, but now he was moved a fourth time: on February 19, without warning, immigration authorities transferred him to the county jail near York, Pennsylvania, 180 miles from New York City. U.S. Attorney Christie's office then asked for the habeas petition to be moved to the federal court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which includes York. On May 8 Judge Hochberg ordered the case transferred to that court, located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

A little more than a year after his arrest, Abdel-Muhti now had to restart the whole process of suing for his release from administrative detention.

Abdel-Muhti's health was deteriorating. Now 55 years old, he suffered from high blood pressure and a thyroid condition. The immigration service provided him with medication, but he sometimes missed his daily dosage because of his frequent moves; at other times, correction officers withheld the medicine as a form of punishment.

His situation worsened in Pennsylvania. On February 26, one week after he was moved to York, prison authorities placed Abdel-Muhti in a segregation unit. They gave no explanation for the solitary confinement, which continued for seven months. The prisoner was alone in a small cell for 23 hours of each day; the remaining hour was the only time when he could shower, exercise, or make phone calls. Since his one hour outside the cell was often at night, he went for long periods without exposure to sunlight. "Get me out," he would tell his friends when he was able to use the phone. "I don't want to die here."

The Legal Team Grows

Despite his health problems and the stress of solitary confinement, Abdel-Muhti continued to write and speak for his own release and to protest the mistreatment of other detainees. Meanwhile, hundreds of people were signing petitions for his release, his supporters were holding weekly vigils in front of the Federal Building in Manhattan, and his legal team was growing.

Philadelphia legal activist Danielle Redden joined as a legal assistant after Abdel-Muhti's transfer to York. Paula Knudsen, then a new staff attorney with the Harrisburg office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania, agreed to assist Abdel-Muhti with his complaint against an immigration agent who had drawn a gun on him in July 2002. Buffalo-based attorney and law professor Joanne Macri, an expert on conditions of confinement who now heads the Criminal Defense Immigration Project of the New York State Defenders Association, began working to get Abdel-Muhti out of segregation. Jeffrey Fogel, then the legal director at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), decided that the Center should join the case; new CCR staff attorney Shayana Kadidal -- now senior managing attorney of CCR's Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative -- was assigned to be the lead attorney.

By the beginning of September 2003, Abdel-Muhti had been in prison for 16 months and in solitary for five, but he now had a pro bono legal team of a size and a quality that is usually available only to the very wealthy.

On October 9 Shayana Kadidal filed an updated habeas petition with federal district judge Yvette Kane in Harrisburg. Later in the month Knudsen, the ACLU attorney, set a November date for Abdel-Muhti to take a lie detector test to prove he was telling the truth in his complaint against the immigration agent. Macri scheduled a November meeting with immigration authorities at York and made it clear she expected them to produce the required documentation of their reasons for keeping Abdel-Muhti segregated. (The authorities were supposed to review his segregation on a weekly basis, and only continue it if they could show cause.)

The government's response to Knudsen and Macri's efforts was almost immediate: on October 30 Abdel-Muhti was transferred back to New Jersey, where he was placed in the general prison population. This sabotaged the lie detector test by moving Abdel-Muhti out of Knudsen's jurisdiction, and saved immigration authorities from having to answer to Macri for Abdel-Muhti's segregation, but at least it ended his seven months' stay in solitary.

Movement on the habeas petition was less swift. Although the government didn't try to transfer the case a second time, officials continued to stall, managing to delay Abdel-Muhti's hearing before Judge Kane until March 30, 2004, a year and 11 months after his detention began.

Even then, the authorities tried one last delaying tactic. Less than an hour before the hearing was to begin, they sent the court an affidavit from an immigration official, Lisa Hoechst, claiming that the US was talking to Israel about expedited repatriation for Palestinians "listed in the population registry for the Palestinian territories" and that this would "bring about the likelihood of . . . removing Mr. Abdel-Muhti in the reasonably foreseeable future." Despite knowing that Abdel-Muhti was not in fact listed in the population registry, and after a year and a half of trying to cast doubt on his claim to be Palestinian, now the U.S. government said it didn't see any real obstacles to sending him back to the West Bank.

Ending the "Kafkaesque Exchange"

Once a judge had finally heard the two sides in court, the decision came quickly. On April 8 Judge Kane ordered the government to "release Petitioner Farouk Abdel-Muhti forthwith under reasonable conditions of supervised release."

In an accompanying memorandum Kane supported all of Abdel-Muhti's principal claims. She dismissed the government's recital of his criminal convictions as something that "can only serve to cloud the issues before the Court and place Petitioner in a bad light." She rejected the government's pretense that Abdel-Muhti might not be Palestinian, and she ruled that after two years the government's last-minute claim about the "likelihood" of deporting him didn't "pass Constitutional muster." She derided as a "Kafkaesque exchange" the government's repeated demands for Abdel-Muhti to provide more information on his nationality. "The law does not authorize [the government] to continue Petitioner's detention until he supplies answers it likes," she wrote.

But Abdel-Muhti's lawyers and supporters couldn't give him the good news. He had disappeared -- or, as they say in countries like Argentina or Chile, he had been disappeared.

The government had carried out a last series of arbitrary transfers for the activist in the days before and after the March 30 hearing. Instead of taking him directly to the Harrisburg court, officials first moved him to the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia on March 23, and then to Harrisburg six days later. Judge Kane ordered Abdel-Muhti returned to detention in New Jersey after the hearing, but the government kept him at the county jail in Harrisburg until April 5, when they flew him to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta -- 725 miles in the wrong direction. There they wouldn't allow him to use the phone until the afternoon of Friday, April 9, a day after the judge's decision and too late to arrange his release before the weekend.

Immigration authorities never offered an explanation for this last transfer, which allowed them to keep the activist in detention for three extra days.

Did the System Work?

Farouk Abdel-Muhti was finally released on April 12, 2004, two weeks before the second anniversary of his arrest. Supporters and other activists celebrated his return to New York, and the release was covered in such media as the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Democracy Now!

Some people will undoubtedly say Abdel-Muhti's legal victory shows that the system works. But the process took two years, and Abdel-Muhti had resources that few immigration detainees could even imagine -- his own talents, persistence, and determination as an activist, a network of friends and supporters constantly publicizing his case, and a legal team of five highly qualified lawyers and two activist paralegals. What happens to other detainees in Abdel-Muhti's position? The government admits that some 2,000 immigration detainees remain in prison for a year or more. How many of these prisoners are trapped like Abdel-Muhti in a "Kafkaesque exchange"?

And we can hardly say that the system worked for Abdel-Muhti, whose health was seriously compromised by the time he was freed. On the evening of July 21, 2004, three months after his release, Abdel-Muhti suffered a massive heart attack as he was finishing a political talk at a meeting in Philadelphia. He died that night without ever recovering consciousness.

---

David L. Wilson is co-author, with Jane Guskin, of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, Monthly Review Press, July 2007. He also co-edits Weekly News Update on the Americas, a summary of news from Latin America and the Caribbean. He worked with the Committee for the Release of Farouk Abdel-Muhti from 2002 through 2004.

Detaining Africans latest step in making Israel an ethnocracy

2 March 2012Sophie Crowe The Electronic Intifada

Israel is moving to criminalize and detain asylum-seekers.

(Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

Levinsky Park sits just across from Tel Aviv’s central bus station, a rundown, bustling neighborhood in the city’s south known for its large migrant worker community and municipal neglect.

For years Levinsky Park itself has been a hub for homeless asylum seekers. On any given day there can be up to 250 persons living in the park, according to Nick Schlagman, program manager at the African Refugee Development Center.

The African asylum-seekers, hoping for a solution to their limbo status, have fled impossible situations at home — mostly Eritrea and Sudan. They were greeted upon arrival in Israel with a hostile government that offers them no support or protection and wants them out.

Indefinite detention

The climate in Israel for refugees has grown increasingly harsh. The border with Egypt is heavily patrolled by soldiers who pounce on new arrivals, shuttling them to a detention center, where they are registered, held for a number of weeks, then left to fend for themselves. Most receive a month-long visa, which must be renewed on a rolling basis, Schlagman explained.

The trend was cemented in January, when the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration law was amended. The amendment allows the state to detain refugees without trial for three years, or indefinitely if they are from an “enemy” country such as Sudan.

This puts Israel at first place among western states for the longest jail time for asylum seekers, according to Amnesty International (“Israel: new detention law violates rights of asylum seekers,” 10 January 2012).

To help realize this provision, a refugee detention center is being planned that will hold 10,000 persons. Those that offer support to refugees, the law says, may face up to 15 years in prison.

The Infiltration Law was originally intended to block the efforts of Palestinians uprooted during the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing leading to Israel’s foundation in 1948, who might try to return and lay claim to their homes. It allowed the state to imprison “infiltrators” — anyone, namely Palestinians, who crossed Israel’s boundaries without official permission.

The law was imagined as part of the Zionist project of keeping Israel Jewish by excluding Palestinians. Today it has the same purpose, this time targeting people fleeing an oppressive dictatorship in Eritrea, and Sudan, where large scale human rights abuses have occurred in the province of Darfur and in fighting between the north and south.

The Israeli government has described its anti-refugee policies as “deterrence.” If the state’s 50,000 refugees relay to their families and friends the awful treatment meted out to them in Israel others like them will go elsewhere, the logic goes.

Israel cannot deport the refugees due to its signing of the 1951 Refugee Convention, according to which states must provide refuge to those fleeing danger in their home country. Israel manages to circumvent this obligation by refusing to acknowledge people as refugees, instead labeling them “migrant workers.”

The conditional release visa that refugees receive does not allow them to work. “We went to the high court to fight this,” explained Yohanes Bayu, director of ARDC, “which decided the state could not fine businesses that employed asylum seekers.”

Denying right to work

In reality it is still extremely difficult for refugees to find work. While the government cannot overturn the court’s decision, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Eli Yishai are saying on television that employers of refugees will be punished, Bayu said.

In January, it was reported that contractors employed by the Tel Aviv municipality fired 800 asylum seekers working as street cleaners, under orders from municipal authorities (“Tel Aviv orders subcontractors to stop employing asylum seekers,” Haaretz, 23 January 2012).

Blankets confiscated

Conditions in Levinsky Park this year, with a particularly cold winter, were tough. One man sleeping there told The Electronic Intifada that municipal authorities had been making rounds of the park each morning, clearing away blankets donated by locals to help the homeless men through the cold nights.

One 40-year-old Eritrean, Yohanes Barko, did not survive the experience. Barko had lived in a tent in the park during the summer’s “tent protests” but was made homeless again when his tent was torn down by municipal authorities last October. In mid-January he was found in the park, having died from the cold (“Tel Aviv refugee froze to death. ‘Go back to Africa, it’s warmer,’” +972 Magazine, 22 January 2012).

“It was this man’s death that galvanized the community to take immediate action,” Schlagman noted. Tel Aviv locals, shocked by the state’s total apathy, began bringing bags of clothes and blankets to the park. Some came every night with warm meals.

In late January, Sons of Darfur, a group of Darfuri refugees, set up a small shelter for the refugees in an old bar, meters away from the park’s boundaries. The space can fit about 150 individuals. The organizers cannot afford to maintain the shelter, which costs 12,000 shekels ($3,200) a month to rent, but worry what might befall their lodgers should they close down.

The group, along with the Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom, managed recently to find temporary housing for all of Levinsky Park’s refugees. This is the first time since 2006 that the park is empty at night, Schlagman said.

Preserving apartheid

Once again, demography is being wielded by the establishment with great bluster and urgency. If Israel offers sanctuary to downtrodden Africans, soon its Jewish majority will be jeopardized, the argument goes.

Israel’s demographic fear has already fueled much racially-biased legislation, most recently the high court’s upholding of a law denying citizenship to West Bank and Gaza spouses of Israeli citizens and nationals of Arab “enemy” states.

While the security line is often employed to buttress policies denounced as racist and discriminatory, Israeli leaders are not attempting to disguise the amendment to the Infiltration Law as anything but another means of ensuring ethnic homogeneity — or, in other words, Jewish supremacy.

In December, Netanyahu spoke of a forthcoming trip to Africa and planned discussions with African leaders about how to stem the continuing stream of their citizens into Israel. “These are very important steps to ensure the future of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” he said. “If we do not act to stop this illegal flood, we will simply be inundated” (“Netanyahu to go to Africa to return infiltrators,” Israel National News, 11 December 2011).

The Infiltration Law, in its criminalization of asylum seekers, is just another example of racism and apartheid motivating Israeli legislation.

Sophie Crowe is a journalist based in the West Bank. She can be reached at croweso [at] tcd [dot] ie.

Mexico rounds up 71 Guatemalan squatters on border

Jan. 9, 2012 Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — Mexican immigration officials and police on Monday
rounded up 71 Guatemalans who had been living in a tent camp near the two
countries' border since August.

The National Immigration Institute said the men, women and children were
living in unhealthy and unsafe conditions. It said they were taken to
immigration offices for better care and a review of their immigration
status.

The Guatemalans had camped out on land belonging to a Mexican communal
farm since August, when they were expelled from squatters camps they had
set up in a Guatemalan forest reserve.

The institute said the Mexican farmers had asked for their land back. It
said unarmed officers, psychologists and female immigration workers helped
the Guatemalans move out of the improvised tarp-covered shelters.

The Miguel Agustin Pro human rights group condemned the raid and demanded
the squatters not be sent back to Guatemala.

Mexico gave refuge to thousands of Guatemalans during that country's
1960-1996 civil war, and officials had previously provided food and other
supplies to the squatters removed Monday. The Guatemalans have been in
talks with their government about returning, but reportedly don't want to
do so until they have guaranteed housing in their home country.

Immigration and Mass Incarceration in the Obama Era

The New Operation Wetback

Aug. 4, 2011 By JAMES KILGORE Counterpunch

Last week Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) joined a demonstration in Washington D.C. to protest the refusal of President Obama to use his executive powers to halt the deportations of the undocumented. Gutierrez’ arrest came only two days after Obama had addressed a conference of the National Council of La Raza. Conveniently forgetting the history of the civil right struggles that made his Presidency a possibility, Obama reminded those attending that he was bound to “uphold the laws on the books.”

With over 392,000 deportations in 2010, more than in any of the Bush years, many activists fear we are in the midst of a repeat of notorious episodes of the past such as the “Repatriation” campaign of the 1930s and the infamous Operation Wetback of 1954, both of which resulted in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Latinos.

But several things are different this time around. A crucial distinction is that we are in the era of mass incarceration. Not only are the undocumented being deported, many are going to prison for years before being delivered across the border. While the writings of Michelle Alexander and others have highlighted the widespread targeting of young African-American males by the criminal justice system, few have noted that in the last decade the complexion of new faces behind bars has been dramatically changing. Since the turn of the century, the number of blacks in prisons has declined slightly, while the ranks of Latinos incarcerated has increased by nearly 50%, reaching just over 300,000 in 2009.

A second distinguishing feature of the current state of affairs is the presence of the private prison corporations. For the likes of the industry’s leading powers, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, detaining immigrants has been the life blood for reviving their financial fortunes.

Just over a decade ago their bottom lines were flagging. Freshly built prisons sat with empty beds while share values plummeted. For financial year 1999 CCA reported losses of $53.4 million and laid off 40% of its workforce. Then came the windfall - 9/11.

In 2001 Steven Logan, then CEO of Cornell Industries, a private prison firm which has since merged with GEO, spelled out exactly what this meant for his sector :

"I think it's clear that with the events of Sept. 11, there's a heightened focus on detention, both on the borders and within the U.S. [and] more people are gonna get caught…So that's a positive for our business. The federal business is the best business for us. It's the most consistent business for us, and the events of Sept. 11 are increasing that level of business."

Logan was right. The Patriot Act and other legislation led to a new wave of immigration detentions. By linking immigrants to terrorism, aggressive roundups supplied Latinos and other undocumented people to fill those empty private prison cells. Tougher immigration laws mandated felony convictions and prison time for cases which previously merited only deportation. Suddenly, the business of detaining immigrants was booming. PBS Commentator Maria Hinojosa went so far as to call this the new “Gold Rush” for private prisons.

The figures support Hinojosa’s assertion. While private prisons own or operate only 8% of general prison beds, they control 49% of the immigration detention market. CCA alone operates 14 facilities via contracts with ICE, providing 14, 556 beds. They have laid the groundwork for more business through the creation of a vast lobbying and advocacy network. From 1999-2009 the corporation spent more than $18 million on lobbying, mostly focusing on harsher sentencing, prison privatization and immigration.

One significant result of their lobbying efforts was the passage of SB 1070 in Arizona, a law which nearly provides police with a license to profile Latinos for stops and searches. The roots of SB 1070 lie in the halls of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a far right grouping that specializes in supplying template legislation to elected state officials. CCA and other private prison firms are key participants in ALEC and played a major role in the development of the template that ended up as SB 1070.

For its part, GEO Group has also been carving out its immigration market niche. Earlier this year they broke ground on a new 600 bed detention center in Karnes County, Texas. At about the same time the company bought a controlling interest in BI Corporation, the largest provider of electronic monitoring systems in the U.S. The primary motivation for this takeover was the five year, $372 million contract BI signed with ICE in 2009 to step up the Bush initiated Intense Supervision Appearance Program. (ISAP 11). Under this arrangement the Feds hired BI to provide ankle bracelets and a host of other surveillance for some 27,000 people awaiting deportation or asylum hearings.

Sadly, the Obama presidency has consistently provided encouragement for the likes of CCA and GEO to grow the market for detainees. While failing to pass immigration reform or the Dream Act, the current administration has kept the core of the previous administration’s immigration policy measures intact. These include the Operation Endgame, a 2003 measure that promised to purge the nation of all “illegals” by 2012 and the more vibrant Secure Communities (S-Comm). Under S-Comm the Federal government authorizes local authorities to share fingerprints with ICE of all those they arrest. Though supposedly intended to capture only people with serious criminal backgrounds, in reality S-Comm has led to the detention and deportation of thousands of people with no previous convictions.

At the National Council of La Raza’s Conference Obama tried to console the audience by saying that he knows “very well the pain and heartbreak deportation has caused.” His words failed to resonate. Instead Rep. Gutierrez and others took to the streets, demonstrating that “I feel your pain” statements and appeals to the audacity of hope carry little credibility these days. It is time for a serious change of direction on immigration issues or pretty soon, just as Michelle Alexander has referred to the mass incarceration of African-Americans as the New Jim Crow, we may hear people start to call the ongoing repression of Latinos a “New Operation Wetback.”

James Kilgore is a Research Scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois. He is the author of three novels, We Are All Zimbabweans Now, Freedom Never Rests and Prudence Couldn’t Swim, all written during his six and a half years of incarceration. He can be reached at waazn1@gmail.com

Border Patrol Headquarters Occupation Protesters Found Not Guilty

June 30, 2011 Infoshop News

NEWS RELEASE
DATE: Thursday June 29, 2011
Contact: Alex Soto
Phone: 602-881-6027
Email: stopbordermilitarization@gmail.com

Border Patrol Headquarters Occupation Protesters Found Not Guilty
Reaffirms Call to End Border Militarization

Chuckson (Tucson), AZ – The six protesters who locked-down and occupied
the United States Border Patrol (BP) – Tucson Headquarters on May 21, 2010
were found not guilty on the remaining count of a disorderly conduct “with
serious disruptive behavior” charge. The legal defense, William G. Walker
and Jeffrey J. Rogers, argued that the remaining charge of disorderly
conduct did not apply because it did not meet any of the statutes of the
charge. After three hours of deliberation, the judge found the six not
guilty.

The city prosecutor had attempted to re-introduce the previously misfiled
criminal trespassing as a misdemeanor charge, but this charge was
dismissed after the first trial date for the occupiers in February. After
an objection by the defense, the state’s motion was denied.

“Today’s not guilty verdict shows that we, as O’odham, are not the ones
who are disorderly. It is the Border Patrol, the Department of Homeland
Security, and the various levels of government that perpetrate the
violence in our communities,” stated Alex Soto, Tohono O’odham, one of the
protesters and member of O’odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective.
“When will the institutions, whose conduct continues for more than 500
years of trespassing, that terrorize indigenous and migrants communities,
be held accountable?”

“No state entity can deny peoples’ inherent right to freedom of movement,”
said Marisa Duarte, one of the protesters standing trial. “Borders are a
colonial weapon used to continue the genocide of indigenous people and
their culture. Through trade they exploit natural resources and use the
profits to further the progress of neo-liberal infrastructure projects
such as CANAMEX and NAFTA. This results in the criminalization of those
who defy borders through living their lives traditionally. You see the
forced relocation of families from borders all around the world. Today we
say no more to this criminalization of people.”

O’odham Elders and community members attended the court proceedings to
demonstrate their support.

“Today we celebrate our victory in court, but understand this is just one
step in ending border militarization. We took action last May in order to
directly confront the issues in our communities by physically intervening
and occupying the Border Patrol station.

Since that time, many have answered the call to end border militarization,
and victories like today have inspired more action,” said Franco Habre.

As the six waited for the state’s decision, 16 angry community members
targeted the prison firm G4S (formally Wackenhut) and were cited criminal
trespassing charges. The 16 declared in no uncertain terms their
opposition to the company’s profiteering at the expense of immigrant
communities in Tucson, across the nation and throughout the world. Their
action, which was organized autonomously by Tucson community members, was
carried out under the banner of Direct Action for Freedom of Movement.

The six still stand firmly with their commitment and demands to end border
militarization and their initial demands are listed below:

- Immediately withdraw National Guard Troops from the US/Mexico border

- Immediately halt development of the border wall

- Immediately remove drones and checkpoints

- Decommission all detention camps and release all presently held
undocumented migrants

- Immediately honor Indigenous Peoples rights of self-determination

- Fully comply with the recently signed UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples

- Respect Indigenous People’s inherent right of migration

- End NAFTA, FTAA and other trade agreements

- Immediately end all CANAMEX/NAFTA Highway projects (such as the South
Mountain Freeway)

- Immediately repeal SB1070 and 287g

- End all racial profiling

- No BP encroachment/sweeps on sovereign Native land

- No raids and deportations

- Immediate and unconditional regularization (“legalization”) of all people

- Uphold human freedom and rights

- Uphold the rights of ALL Indigenous People – repeal HB 2281, support the
UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People

- Support dignity and respect

- Support and ensure freedom of movement for all people

Soto concluded, “This action was a prayer. We’d like to thank those who
stood with us during this process and to all who firmly stand with us to
end border militarization. The occupation of the Border Patrol station was
never about any group/organization, or us, it was about directly
confronting the terror that the state unleashes upon indigenous and
migrant communities, so we can critically challenge border militarization.
As an O’odham, I always think back to my grandparents’ teachings: We as
O’odham people have always traveled freely, regardless of the border. It’s
our land, who we are, and we will defend it.”

To view the occupation video and for additional resources please visit:

http://www.oodhamsolidarity.blogspot.com

http://www.survivalsolidarity.wordpress.com

Rioters torch Australian immigration centre

Dozens of asylum-seekers torched nine buildings at a Sydney detention centre.

21 Apr 2011 Al Jazeera

Asylum seekers have torched nine buildings at a Sydney detention centre in
a night of wild riots with a handful of protesters remaining on rooftops
on Thursday as police worked to regain control.

The riots kicked off late on Wednesday at the Villawood Detention Centre
with an estimated 100 detainees involved at the height of the drama.

Protesters set an oxygen cylinder alight, which led to an explosion, and
nine buildings,  including a medical centre and dining hall, were gutted
by fire. Firefighters brought the blaze under control early on Thursday
and no one was injured.

Around 400 people are held at Villawood. Many of them are asylum seekers,
but the facility also houses people who have overstayed their visas.

On Thursday, seven detainees remained on the roof of one of the complex's
buildings, next to a large sign that read: "We need help."

Immigration department spokesman Sandi Logan said he could not confirm
reports the men were protesting because their visa applications had been
rejected.

“But any suggestion that they're not being informed of the progress of
their claim is nonsense. ... I don't know the motivation,” Logan said.
“But it's clearly not going to help, in terms of endearing their
settlement in Australia.”

Detention policy

Those still on the roof reportedly want a meeting with the immigration
department, but Logan told reporters this would not happen.

"Until they come down, we won't be negotiating, but we are working and
managing to get them down from the roof," he said.

Criminal charges could be filed against the rioters, some of whom threw
roof tiles and pieces of furniture at officials trying to get the blaze
under control, Logan said.

“This is obviously unacceptable behavior that will have to be
investigated,” Acting Prime Minister Wayne Swan said.

The protest started with just two inmates, apparently upset at the
immigration department denying their applications for visas to remain in
Australia.

Australia has a policy of mandatory detention for asylum seekers while
their claims are processed, and generally holds detainees on remote
Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.

But the increasing number of people arriving by boat has seen mainland
centres also being used, including Villawood, which houses about 400
people.

Last month the Christmas Island facility endured days of riots, with about
250 inmates setting fire to accommodation tents and hurling makeshift
explosives at police, prompting them to respond with tear gas.

Radio Interviews with Chapel Hill Prison Books Collective, Denver ABC and UnmaskNWDC

Interviews recorded at Free Radio Olympia by DJ Questionmark on April 18,
2011

Interview with Chapel Hill Prison Books Collective

21 mins 20 seconds MP3 (18.5 mb)

Download at:

http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2011/04/19/chalephillprisonbooks041811.mp3

Interview with Monica of the Chapel Hill, NC Prison Books Collective.
Monica talks about prison abolition and restorative justice as
alternatives to the prison system. She describes the collective's effort
to send books and zines to prisoners in the Southeast US, political
prisoner writing nights and maintaining a zine catalog of radical
literature. The group publishes monthly political prisoner birthday
posters for over a year that are free on the internet to download. The
posters encourage people to write to political prisoners on their
birthday. The collective also actively supports prisoners organizing in
North Carolina and reports on solidarity efforts.

For more information visit http://prisonbooks.info



Interview with Denver Anarchist Black Cross

12 mins 45 Seconds MP3 audio

Download at:

http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2011/04/18/dabc041811.mp3

Interview with Whitney from Denver Anarchist Black Cross about the group,
movement defense and the many mutual aid programs they have started.
Whitney talks about the updated political prisoner database, the war chest
program that raises funds for political prisoner's basic needs, the mutual
aid fund where local people get emergency loans for basic needs, the
Nurturing Liberation program that provides free childcare, political
prisoner writing nights and more.

Whitney elaborates on movement defense by commenting on internal and
external repression. How opposing snitch-jacketing and shit talking within
the movement is part of fighting government repression and supporting
political prisoners and people targeted by the state.

Denver Anarchist Black Cross is organizing a nation-wide conference in
August 2011.


Radio Interview on the North West Detention Center

Interview with Francine and Clere about the Northwest Detention Center in
Tacoma WA. They talk about the private immigration center as a source of
revenue for the city and profits for private investors. They also talk
about how current immigration policy detains people not convicted of a
crime. Resisting the detention center, they explain, is part of a greater
struggle to abolish national boundaries and prisons.

A conference called "No Border! No Nation! Stop Deportation!" happens
Saturday April 23 in Tacoma.

Visit https://unmasknwdc.wordpress.com for more info.

Download at: http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2011/04/18/nwdc041811ed.mp3

About UnmaskNWDC from the blog:

One of the three largest private immigration detention centers in the
United States sits hidden amongst warehouses and parking lots in the port
of Tacoma, WA. This Northwest Detention Center, owned and operated by GEO
Group, began detaining undocumented people in 2004. This year the NWDC
expanded their facility, with the go-ahead from the City of Tacoma, and
can now detain 1500 people at any given time. This facility detains your
neighbors, co-workers, family members and friends. The large majority of
the folks being detained at this facility have never been convicted of a
crime. They have come to this country to escape poverty and persecution.
They have come here as a means to trying to provide better lives for
themselves and their families. The company that owns the Northwest
Detention Center, GEO Group, makes a profit off of the detainment and
deportation of people. The City of Tacoma, Pierce County, Washington State
and the federal government benefit financially off of this facility. This
company and these governmental bodies perceive the people being held at
the NWDC as commodity. When the motives behind oppressive and exploitative
acts are exposed, they can no longer be normalized. We can begin to draw
connections and make black and white what was formally gray. No longer can
we hope that the government will seize current immigration policies or
that the city will shut down the Northwest Detention Center. The hope is
that this blog will provide an avenue to unmask these unforgivable truths
and shed light on the fact that we cannot sit back and wait for those who
oppress to do what we must do ourselves. These matters are in our own
hands; it is our responsibility to act.

Tacoma Conference: No Border! No Nation! Stop Deportation!

Unmask NWDC April 5, 2011

The No Borders! No Nations! Conference is coming from a place of no
compromise—we harbor no false hopes that the government will tear down its
borders as much as we know the City of Tacoma will never shut down the
Detention Center. This conference will be a space for dialog surrounding
common enemies: ICE, borders, deportation, raids, and detention centers;
as well as common desires: the complete destruction of detention centers,
end to raids and deportation, and end to all borders from a perspective of
self-organization.

Presentation Topics:
- U.S. Immigration Policies: Past & Current
- Raids and Deportation
- GEO Group / I.C.E.
- Background & History of NWDC
- Corporate Involvement

Speakers include individuals from
groups such as El Comite, No More
Deaths, and the Bill of Rights Def-
ense Committee

SATURDAY APRIL 23rd
12 - 5pm

Location:
King's Books
218 St Helens Avenue
Tacoma, WA 98402

Poster:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?4fxs2vgq4j2mcbu

PDF for printing:
http://www.mediafire.com/?t2d0l7cgh7v5p43

schedule for event TBA; check website for updates:

UNMASKNWDC.WORDPRESS.COM

Rioters try to escape Australian detention center

By ROD McGUIRK, Associated Press March 17, 2011

CANBERRA, Australia – More than 200 rioters torched buildings and tried to
escape a crowded Australian offshore detention center in an escalation of
protests there to gain asylum in the country, officials said Friday.

More than 100 police firing non-lethal so-called bean bag rounds and tear
gas canisters regained control over the detention center on Christmas
Island after the riot started Thursday night, Immigration Minister Chris
Bowen said.

Two administration buildings were burned as well as seven accommodation
tents after more than 200 asylum seekers armed with bricks and polls and
throwing rocks charged police and the perimeter fences, Australian Federal
Police Deputy Commissioner Steve Lancaster said.

Some rioters breached the perimeter wall and police were not yet sure
whether all had been recaptured, he said.

Two asylum seekers were taken to hospital, one with chest injuries and
another suffering chest pains, Immigration Department official Sandi Logan
said.

The riot follows a week of sometimes violent protests at immigration
detention centers on the Indian Ocean island and on the Australian
mainland over delays in processing asylum applications. Authorities are
struggling to cope with increasing numbers of asylum seekers from
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Sri Lanka who attempt to reach Australia by
boat.

"A small group of detainees have made it clear that they would continue
violent action until they were granted visas," Bowen told reporters.

"We don't let that sort of behavior influence our consideration of visa
applications," he added.

Authorities were responding to the riots by accelerating plans to relocate
hundreds of the 2,500 detainees on Christmas Island to mainland detention
centers to reduce crowding and by bringing in police reinforcements.

A total of 105 detainees, none of whom was involved in the fracas, were
flown from the island Friday, while 70 police were flown in, bringing
total police strength to 188.

"This is a very tense and serious situation," Bowen said.

Police would investigate charging the rioters. Bowen warned that the
culprits could fail their refugee test on character grounds.

An asylum seeker broke his leg in another Christmas Island protest this
week that police quelled.

The detainees include asylum seekers whose refugee applications have yet
to be judged, those who have had their applications rejected but refuse to
return to their homelands and those who have been accepted as refugees but
are pending security clearances before they are freed in Australia.

Human Rights Commissioner Catherine Branson, the federal government's
rights watchdog, is concerned about processing delays which have left most
of the 6,500 asylum seekers currently in Australia in detention for more
than six months.

The hunger strike of the three-hundred migrant workers has ended

March 10, 2011 Occupied London

The hunger strike of the three-hundred migrant workers has ended. The
struggle for a world of equality, solidarity and freedom continues…
Thursday, March 10, 2011

Greek original

The hunger strike of the three-hundred migrant workers has ended. The
struggle for a world of equality, solidarity and freedom continues…


On January 25th, 2011 three-hundred migrants in Athens and Thessaloniki
commenced a fierce hunger strike, claiming the most basic things: equal
rights with the local workers and the legalisation of all migrants living,
working and moving across the country.

44 days later and after more than 100 strikers were hospitalised with
serious health issues, the state was forced to drop its intransigent
attitude along with previous threats of deportation of the strikers and to
negotiate officially with them, meeting a significant part of their
demands:

   * Decrease of the required residence time of migrants in the country
in order to submit applications for residence permits to 8 years, down
from 12 years before (this applies to every single migrant living in
the Greek territory)
   * Decrease of the required work credits to 120, from 200 before (same
as for local workers)
   * Decrease of the work credits required for insurance cover to 50,
from 80 before (this applies to all workers, local and migrant)
   * For the three-hundred hunger strikers in particular, the allowance
has been given for them to indefinitely renew their 6-month “state of
tolerance” status until the time when they reach the time and
conditions to receive a residence permit. During that time they will
be allowed to travel freely to and from their country of origin.The
three-hundred migrant strikers risked their lives not on the basis of
individualistic or utilitarian motives but for a collective right, in
a struggle that asserted rights concerning the dignity of the entire
working class. This hunger strike is a social struggle against the
illegality of all migrants, a struggle addressing the entire class of
workers. It comes as a continuation of struggles of the recent past,
from the farmer-migrants in Manoliada, Ilia and Skala, Lakonia to the
strike of the fishermen-migrants in Michaniona, Thessaloniki.The
struggle of the three-hundred migrant workers proves nothing is
impossible.

     If the three-hundred achieved this, imagine what thousands of
migrants-workers-repressed can achieve together

Assembly of solidarity of
anarchists/anti-authoritarians/libertarians/comrades

Italy: Revolts and riots in migrant detention centres

Mar 6 2011 Libcom.org

1 March: after a revolt that has gone on for days, the detention centre in
Gradisca is in a state of collapse: one single cell left for the 100
detainees, people eating and sleeping in the corridors and in the canteen,
one bathroom for everyone. You can see some pictures here.

The detainees’ revolt almost completely destroyed the building, but the
detainees couldn’t be transferred, as the other detention centres were
packed full. Revolts and riots are not new to this detention centre;
things have been worsening over the last couple of years. In September
2009, a similar revolt was brutally repressed by the police.

The revolts are spreading to the rest of Italy, from North to South: in
Trapani’s detention centre in Sardinia the riots started on 23 February,
when a group of Tunisians detainess started smashing up their dormitory in
protest at conditions. A week later everything was still in pieces, but at
least there were no arrests and the detainees were allowed to apply for
humanitarian leave because of the situation in Tunisia. Trapani’s
detention centre is based in an old building that was once a care home.
It’s a bunch of dormitories facing a corridor locked up by iron bars.
Nothing else, not even a yard. A few days later a similar revolt exploded
in Modena, when 42 Tunisians just transferred there from Lampedusa started
throwing mattresses out of their dormitories and burning them. Activist
groups in Bologna occupied the centre on 1 March in solidarity with the
detainees. And Turin was in flames too, where it got so big that the Fire
Brigade had to be called. 30 Tunisian detainees went on hunger strike for
5 days, and only finished yesterday because one of them felt seriously
unwell and started to vomit blood. In several centres in Puglia (Southern
Italy) some detainees have managed to escape, unfortunately only to be
arrested: a trial has just started in Brindisi against 3 Tunisians
arrested for attempting to escape, and another similar one will soon start
in Bari where a group of detainees clashed with the police and then tried
to escape.

The last few years have seen a wave of revolts in detention centres: the
first time in the summer of 2009, just after the introduction of the new
‘security package’ that extended detention time for “illegal” inmigrants
from 2 to 6 months. And then last summer: see my previous posts. This time
the “leaders” of the revolts have mainly been the Tunisians recently
transferred all over Italy from Lampedusa in Sicily. Right now they
represent the biggest community in Italian detention centres. The revolts
started at the end of the transferrals, when the 300 and more Tunisians
were randomly transferred to either detention centres or “welcome centres”
for asylum seekers (which aren’t classed as prisons). The latter just left
straight away and many managed to get to France, while the rest ended up
locked up in detention centres.

The main source of this translation is an article published on the
‘Fortress Europe’ blog which has pages in several languages: check out the
English page for more articles and information.

http://italycalling.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/revolts-and-riots-in-migrant-detention-centres/

10th of March: Worldwide solidarity action day with the 300 hunger strikers immigrants-workers in Greece

March 6, 2011 Anarchist News

Latest Greece travel advises:

You might have heard that Greece is a beautiful country to visit with
delicious food and people with great hospitality. Be careful: this is not
the whole truth. The reality for hundreds of thousands of visitors is
completely different. There is a general threat of human rights’
violations. Expatriates and visitors, who cross the Greek borders, can be
departed or transferred in detention centres for 2–4 months or longer. If
and when these visitors are released, they are forced to work in
agriculture, local industry, organized crime, or as street salesmen,
without documents or any civil rights whatsoever. Visitors of Greece are
warned about abuse, intolerance, hatred, slander and indiscriminate
violence by the Greek State.

Greece is exploiting approximately 500,000 illegal immigrants and refugees
to raise the nation’s miserable economics. Last year, nearly 140,000
immigrants crossed the Greek borders in a hope of better life. Most of
them are going to be illegalized for years and treated as unwelcome
contemporary slaves.

Since the 25th of January, 300 immigrants who work and live in Greece for
many years started a nationwide hunger strike in Athens and Thessaloniki.
They claim the legalization of all undocumented immigrants of Greece.
Their struggle is a struggle of all immigrants, workers and citizens of
the world.

The 10th of March will be the 45th day of their hunger strike, but the
Greek State has not yet responded to their rightful claims!

We call people in Greece and throughout the world to carry out civil
disobedience actions on the 10th of March in solidarity with the 300
hunger strikers. We ask everyone to target their actions against Greek
soft spot-tourism: 15% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product is coming
from tourism. In fact, tourism and migration are two sides of the legal
right of freedom of movement.

We suggest an easily attainable target that you people can find almost in
every country: Greek National Tourism Organization. You can e.g.
demonstrate, blockade, squat, spread leaflets or carry out other creative
actions in front, inside or around GNTO offices.

The addresses of the GNTO offices aboard are here:
http://internezia.net/addresses.html
If you don't have a GNTO office at your city, you can target your actions
against the Greek embassies or enterprises, or simply demonstrate in
crowded public places or on media.

300 MURDERS OR LEGALIZATION

[ More information about the hunger strike of 300:
http://hungerstrike300.espivblogs.net ]

'All Immigrants of the World'

banner picture: http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2011/03/114291.html

Solidarity gatherings with the hunger strikers in Athens, Chania, Thessaloniki, Volos, Mytilene, Kozani, Iraklio, Xanthi.

To the streets! For solidarity, for dignity

Jan. 27, 2011 Occupied London

#484 | Solidarity gatherings with the hunger strikers in Athens, Chania,
Thessaloniki, Volos, Mytilene, Kozani, Iraklio, Xanthi. To the streets!
For solidarity, for dignity.

10pm GMT+2 Negotiations are taking place the last two hours. The hunger
strikers  set several conditions in order to leave the Law School but the
government does not seem ready as yet to agree with all of them so the
huger-strikers and several hundred of  supporters incl. some university
teachers, students, human rights groups and activists are ready to defend
the academic freedom by the police. Cops have  surrounded the School and
do not allow to people to approach.

The hunger strikers in the Law School

People who gathered in solidarity to the hunger strikers and the rest of
the people in the Law School

Cops in front of the Athens Law School gate, behind them activists.

As the police operation against the migrant hunger strikers in the Athens
Law school seems imminent, impromptu solidarity gatherings have been
called at the following Greek cities (list to be updated). All gatherings
at 7pm GMT+2

   * Athens (Exarcheia Square)
   * Chania, Crete (Agora)
   * Thessaloniki (Labour Union)
   * Kozani (main Square)
   * Xanthi (Polytechnic)
   * Volos (Migrant Haunt, 9pm)
   * Mytilene (Bineio, 8.30pm)



#483 | Decision by the assembly of the 300 hunger strikers of the Law School

Rough translation of the full text of the migrant hunger strikers’
assembly which has triggered, as it seems, the immenent police operation
in the Law school.

Greek original

DECISION BY THE ASSEMBLY OF THE HUNGER STRIKERS

Us, the 250 hunger strikers

Who are already on the 3d day of hunger strike in the Law School,
demanding the legalisation as our given right, have been hearing about the
discussions around our demand, the inaccuracies, lies and intentional
distortion of the truth. We do not know if it is the government or mass
media responsible for this situation, however it is unacceptable for such
lies to be told since we have issued press releases, we had made the site
of the hunger strike accessible to journalists from day 1 and we have sent
representatives of ours to the university community and the government.
And so, wanting to restore the truth, we declare the following:

   * · We are not what the media present us to be, that is the poor
migrants who are penniless, without houses, work, clothes and so on.
We have homes, relatives, work in the cities we left behind. We were
not looking for shelter here in Athens but rather, we came to struggle
(for as long as our bodies can take it) for our legalisation, our
rights and for dignified life conditions.
   * We did not wish to bother anyone. From the beginning we knew that
the site we had chosen in the Law School was not used for educational
purposes. We respect and protect the site hosting our struggle and
were very happy to hear that the school is operating as normal once
again.
   * · We decide on our own and unaffected by anyone, through our
assemblies (the assembly of the hunger strikers). There is no-one
hiding behind us, neither in front of us. And we will not take
guidance [orders] by anyone! We asked for help and from the beginning,
Greeks and foreigners stood in solidarity, a fact for which we thank
them very much. We will never forget how much they aid our struggle.
   * We declare our solidarity to all the migrants who are on hunger
strike demanding their legalisation (in Propylea and the Athens
Polytechnic) and we ask the government to meet their demands.
   * Today we were offered a relocation under given conditions. The main
reasons for which this relocation is not possible are the following
three:

a)    the proposed site would only be accessible by the hunger strikers
and not those in solidarity

b)    that site would be guarded by police, a fact that would not only not
only solve any problems but create further tension too.

c)    The suggested solution is temporary and offers no permanent solution.

Us, the migrants, who are forced to wander around the entire world, do not
want to be forced to wander around during our hunger strike too.

We nevertheless declare we remain open to suggestions that will however
meet our struggle’s demands.

Also, we know there is no Asylum issue. We therefore ask the Government
not to deal with this matter but rather to focus on our just demand and
meeting this.

Finally we ask all those in solidarity who wish so, to attend tomorrow’s
solidarity assembly at 6pm outside the Law school.



#482 | Police completely cordon off Athens Law School; raid is imminent;
people gather in Exarcheia and Propylea in Athens; Leftist party
Synaspismos denounces the hunger strikers

19.15 GMT+2 There are approximately 300 hunger strikers and another 300
people in solidarity in the Law School of Athens which is now completely
cordoned off by heavy police forces who are only awaiting, it seems, the
final signal to start off their raid operation.

People have also gathered in solidarity behind the police cordons and also
in Exarcheia and Panepistimio in Athens and in Thessaloniki.

Unconfirmed reports that the riot police have already entered the building.

#481 | Riot police encircle the Law School in Athens in apparent
preparation for a raid as migrant hunger strikers vow to stay – constant
updates

At this moment (17.45 GMT+2) heavy riot police forces have encircled the
Law School building in Athens, immediately after the decision by the 300
migrants in hunger strike to stay in the building. The migrants’ assembly
decided they would stay despite the demand by university authorities and
the government that they move out. The assembly justified the decision
based on the fact that the building used by the migrants is unused by the
university (under construction) and that the building proposed for the
transfer does not meet basic huigenic conditions.

It is very likely that the riot police will now attempt to violate the
academic asylum and raid the Law School.

More updates as they come.


#480 | Call for solidarity to the 300 migrants hunger strikers in Greece

Call for Solidarity to the 300 Migrants Hunger Strikers in Greece

On January 25, 300 migrant workers went on hunger strike in Athens and
Thessaloniki.
Their main demand is to be legalized.

At this moment, when the financial crisis has violently erupted and
ultra-right political forces have come to the fore, this may sound as a
maximalist demand.

For this reason, we need to pay attention to their demands so as to create
symbolic cracks in the system and achieve political victories.

-The political establishment and mainstream media in Greece have already
started putting pressure to the migrants’ struggle and to those in
solidarity.

It is urgent to vow now the broadest support possible!

Below the call for signatures.

Those that wish to sign are welcome to send their name and profession in
the following address:
ypografes.allilegyi.stin.apergia@gmail.com

Solidarity to the struggle of the 300 hunger strikers

How many times do they have to risk their lives in order to confirm their
and our existence?

In order to have the right to live with dignity and hope, in a country
that seeks for scapegoats in those who are the most vulnerable and weak.

For the migrant who, with his/her own blood, his/her poorly paid work and
his/her creativity, make the country’s economic machine move on.

For those who’re seeking for freedom and fleeing from neediness, war or
some other short of «peaceful» occupation, cross the borders in search of
a better life.

For the migrants who lost their lives at the national borders of the
European countries, for the 13.000 certified victims of the security
doctrine since 1993 and the thousands of persons still missing.

For the migrants’ children who from their early age grow with legal and
social constraints and exclusions.
In order to bring forward and establish to the common consciousness, as
struggle and cause, the joint social interests of Greeks and migrants who
produce the social wealth in every short of services, in constructions, in
factories, in the fields, in domestic works – as well as the common social
interests of the unemployed people.

For the reasons mentioned above and other unmentioned here:

- We express our solidarity to the 300 migrants, hunger strikers
- We demand the unconditional legalization for all migrants
- We support the migrants’ demands for equal political and social rights
and duties with the Greek workers

January 2011

Solidarity Assembly to the Migrants Hunger Strikers

It is also important that individuals, assemblies, groups and
organizations express their support through letters of support, press
releases and actions of solidarity.
MORE INFO:

http://allilmap.wordpress.com/category/english/
http://hungerstrike300.espivblogs.net/category/%CE%B3%CE%BB%CF%8E%CF%83%CF%83%CE%B5%CF%82/english/


Greece: Hunger strikers end campus occupation

By DEREK GATOPOULOS, Associated Press Derek Gatopoulos, Associated Press –
Thu Jan 27, 9:49 pm ET

ATHENS, Greece – More than 200 immigrants on hunger strike ended a
five-day occupation of Athens University's Law School early Friday,
following a tense standoff with police that underscored the country's
ongoing illegal immigration crisis.

The immigrants, on hunger strike since Tuesday, were joined by scores of
Greek demonstrators and left the university building before marching
across the city center to a private building rented by pro-migrant
campaigners.

The hunger strikers, most from north African countries, are demanding
legalization — an appeal that was flatly rejected by the country's
Socialist government, which is grappling with a growing illegal
immigration problem.

Scores of police — included special forces — had surrounded the central
Athens campus building during more 10 hours of negotiations that finally
ended at 3:30 a.m. Friday (0130 GMT) when the immigrants walked out
carrying rolls of blankets and thin mattresses. They filed past police,
raising their arms to make the victory sign, as onlookers chanted slogans
against the government and police.

Some protesters briefly attacked photographers and reporters outside the
campus, accusing them of siding with police in the dispute.

Under Greek law, police are barred from entering university campuses, but
academic authorities had lifted the university asylum Thursday, handing
police the rarely granted power to intervene.

Several hundred protesters gathered outside the police cordon, chanting
"Greek and foreign workers are united," while the standoff chocked evening
rush-hour traffic in central Athens.

Greece is the European Union's busiest transit point for illegal
immigration, and it has promised to take a tougher line against
trafficking. About 90 percent of immigrants caught entering the bloc
illegally are apprehended in Greece, according to European Union figures.

The country is planning to build a fence along a 12.5-kilometer
(eight-mile) section of its northeastern border with Turkey, and use old
army bases to detain illegal immigrants.

On Thursday, Greek Public Order Minister Christos Papoutsis had ruled out
using force to end the Law School occupation.

"A political decision has been made — my decision — that under no
circumstances will we contribute to the tension, clashes or even bloodshed
that certain people may have wanted," Papoutsis said after meeting with
French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, who was visiting Athens.

Hortefeux said his government is backing Greece's border fence plan.

"We support the creation of obstacles to counter immigration pressure," he
said. "Of course this cannot be compared to the Berlin Wall or anything
like that."

But the proposed fence has been met with criticism by human rights groups
and a lukewarm response from the European Union.

Hortefeux said he also discussed a recent spike in violence by far-left
groups in European countries.

France is seeking information on violent groups before hosting G-8 and
G-20 summits later this year, he said.

"Traditionally, these summits attract protests ... We are looking into
ways of sharing information and various preventive measures," Hortefeux
said.

___

AP writers Elena Becatoros and Nicholas Paphitis contributed.

Nationwide hunger strike of 300 immigrants, on 25 January

Jan. 25, 2011 Contra Info

We are immigrants and refugees from across Greece. We came here persecuted by poverty, unemployment, wars, and dictatorships. Western multinational companies and their political servants in our countries, left us with no choice but to risk our lives ten times to get to the door of Europe. The West which robs us of our home places to achieve far better standards of living, is our only hope to live like humans. We entered Greece (normally or in other ways) where we work to feed ourselves and our children. We remain at the indignity and the darkness of lawlessness, for the benefit of employers and the State’s agencies by the wild exploitation of our work. We live by our sweat and with the dream to have equal rights with our Greek colleagues, at some point.

Lately, things have become very difficult for us. Wages and pensions are reduced; everything becomes more and more expensive; so the immigrants are presented as if they were the culprits, as they are to blame for the misery and wild exploitation of the Greek workers and minor entrepreneurs. The propaganda of fascist and racist parties and organizations has become the State’s official talk about the immigration issue. Their phraseology is being reproduced unaltered by the mass media when they refer to us. Their ‘proposals’ are enshrined as governmental policies: wall at Evros, navigable army camps and European military forces in the Aegean Sea, crackdowns and assault squads in cities, mass deportations. They try to convince the Greek working-class people that we suddenly constitute a threat against them, that we are to blame for the unprecedented attack they endure by their own governments.

The lies and brutality must be answered immediately; we immigrants and refugees will give this answer. We move forward with our lives now to stop the injustice against us. We demand the legalization of all immigrants, equal political and social rights and obligations like the Greek employees. We ask our Greek fellow workers, everyone who suffers from the exploitation of their efforts, to stand beside us; to support our struggle, so that lies and injustice, fascism and totalitarianism of political and economic elites do not prevail in their home place as well. All these have prevailed in our own countries, and forced us to migrate to be able to live with dignity, we and our children.

We have no other way to make our voice heard, our rights to be spread. Three hundred (300) of us begin nationwide hunger strike in Athens and Thessaloniki on 25 January 2011. We put ourselves at risk, because this is no decent life. We prefer to die here, rather than our children to live what we suffered.

Assembly of immigrant hunger strikers in Greece
January 2011

Anarchists initiate immigrant solidarity march to commemorate the deaths of three youths

Sunday, January 23, 2011 firesneverextinguished.blogspot.com

Phoenix area anarchists kicked off the new year by calling for a march in
the arts district of downtown Phoenix for the monthly "First Friday"
artwalk. The call was in response to the deaths of two immigrant youths
who were found in a canal after fleeing from a Maricopa County Sheriff
Deputy near Gila Bend, and the murder of a third youth who was shot and
killed by a Border Patrol agent while climbing the border wall in Nogales.
Nearly two dozen anarchists, anti-authoritarians, and O'odham and Dine'
indigenous comrades, all assembled for this unpermitted manifestation of
outrage. This also being a First Friday (FF) our small group attracted the
attention and participation of many in the crowds wandering between
galleries and bars, as well as from the youth who often come down to FF to
get out of the house, check out some art, and to flirt and meet other kids
hanging out.

The march took to the streets with banners and statements against the
"poliMigra," prisons, all borders and police. We shouted into the night
"Out of the galleries, into the streets!" Naturally we garnered the
attention of the police, not a special distinction as on any given FF they
maintain a very heavy presence, even though a demonstration like this has
probably not occurred in sometime, aside from an organic confrontation
with the authorities a couple years back. After a few shoving matches with
the Phoenix cops, the march was pushed to the sidewalks, but after losing
the police, the march returned to moving in and out of the streets,
throwing traffic barricades into street, and making a detour into one of
the more notoriously yuppie galleries downtown. We lost some of our
numbers when we marched down to the Suns game, but we also shook our
police tail and were able to march in the streets unimpeded (aside from
the occasional police vehicle that would pull up, use their bullhorn to
tell people to get off the streets, and then drive off). We encountered
the most reactionary and nationalistic sentiment of the night outside the
Suns game, but we shook it off and mobbed onto a light rail train for a
free ride back to the arts district.

So, what does this mean for the future? The mainstream movement voices
were once again silent during this latest outrage, the "human rights
movement" raised a number of eye brows around town after their total
absence in any forum when young Danny Rodriguez was murdered by Phoenix
cop Richard Chrisman in his mother's trailer last October. The high
profile killing of this young man came amid a shit storm of corruption and
brutality allegations against the Phoenix police department, specifically
the notorious South Mountain precinct, but perhaps the mainstream hacks
were too concerned about upsetting their friends in the mayor's office to
actually hold one consistent political position. Or maybe someone should
have told them there's money to be made from the non-profit industrial
complex in organizing against police violence, that seems to get their
attention.

What I saw in the streets the night of this march is a sight becoming
increasingly common in Phoenix, a gathering of indigenous, latin@, and
anarchist people ready to take to the streets and to move beyond the
boundaries put forth by the mainstream immigrant movement's leadership, as
well as the laws of the authorities. I believe that in these alliances lay
the future for a broad based movement of resistance, built upon mutual
respect and participation in confronting this system of death, repression,
and incarceration until there is total freedom for all.

Below is the text of the flier handed out during the solidarity march,
along with a couple more images from this procession.


  Where are the voices of disbelief and anger now that SB1070 is law?
Where have the crowds gone who were in the streets in the spring and
summer? This writing is addressed to you who weep with clenched fists
when another immigrant is found dead trekking across the desert, shot
dead by a border patrol agent, or drowned in a canal after fleeing the
authorities. This is to you, who tires of a political movement that
demands your patience for a political solution all the while this
O'odham (the indigenous people of this region) land is militarized by
the border patrol, building more new checkpoints, and nothing ever
gets better.

  Why now, why without the responsible, reasonable movement leadership?
Because it’s come to this: Three children, presumed immigrants by the
state, found dead in a canal on Christmas eve, just one week before
that five other immigrant brothers and sisters were discovered by the
authorities, forced to conceal themselves in cow manure. Just
yesterday a 17 year old Nogales resident was shot dead by a border
guard on the U.S. side after climbing the border fence. Where is the
outcry from the human rights activists, or even the mainstream
immigrant groups?

  http://www.azcentral.com/community/pinal/articles/2010/12/16/20101216pinal-county-arrests-abrk.html

  http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2010/12/24/20101224canal1224.html

  http://www.nogalesinternational.com/articles/2011/01/07/news/doc4d272fc9733a6461195366.txt

  This is a call to all those who oppose the tyranny of law and order,
this cold business of institutions that place freedom and dignity
underfoot to preserve power and control for the few. There will be
people in the streets tonight, decrying this sick order that places
property, law, and the will of a few over the lives, dreams, and
freedom of human beings.

  Another night of wandering the sidewalks of downtown admiring the art
that lampoons Arpaio, or defends immigrants, and then home, content to
believe that a moral duty has been exercised, justice against the
oppressors has been served in Phoenix this First Friday. Of course we
appreciate this art, but to pretend that the representation of a
struggle is in fact a struggle is lunacy!
  
  There is active solidarity, or there is complacency! Observers of art,
become participants in your own life! Join us tonight as we take the
streets to stand with all those murdered by the laws and institutions
on this stolen indigenous land.