No Border Camp 2024
August 20-25, 2024
Netherlands (middle of the country)
https://nobordercamps.eu/
This year we are organizing another No Border Camp to take action, exchange knowledge and further build the movement. This concerns all aspects of the repressive migration policy in the Netherlands and Europe, such as border externalization and militarization, the exploitation of migrant workers, the situation in AZCs, detention and deportations, and the rise of the extreme right.
With the victory of the PVV in the Netherlands and other far-right parties in Europe, migration policy is becoming increasingly strict, inhumane, violent and dangerous. In the Netherlands, the reception of refugees remains substandard. Restricting immigration is central to the current coalition negotiations. The European Union is increasingly focusing on externalizing European borders to countries such as Libya and expanding Frontex, the para-military border control organization in Europe that carries out illegal pushbacks. The EU is also working on plans to detain large groups of asylum seekers directly at Europe’s external borders.
Worldwide, militarization is further intensified with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the genocide in Palestine and large-scale European armament plans. More and more weapons, with increasing risks of armed conflicts that force large groups of people to flee. All these conflicts touch on many areas that people are taking action against, such as the continued emissions of greenhouse gases, the fossil fuel industry, the exploitation of people in Congo and elsewhere, human rights violations in Palestine, Libya and the Mediterranean.
During the No Border Camp we want to bring together groups and activists who campaign for change to make a joint stand and exchange knowledge and skills. By joining forces we can work together towards a world without borders and with freedom of movement for everyone, but also towards a world where people are not forced to flee.
August 20–25, 2024, somewhere in the middle of the country. Keep an eye on the website and socials for more information.
Children
If there is demand for it, we may offer a children’s programme. If you are interested, please let us know well in advance, including the children’s ages and the days involved in your email.
Pets
Please leave your pets at home. If that is not possible for you, only bring pets that are well-behaved, quiet, and friendly towards people and other animals. Please do not take pets to workshops or actions, and make sure they are supervised at all times.
New far-right attack on refugees calls for resistance
The Main Line Agreement 2024-2028 that the intended government parties PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB presented in May reads primarily as an incoherent, thrown together collection of points with an extreme right-wing signature. While all kinds of policy areas are ignored or dismissed with platitudes, the parties' own hobbies are extensively discussed. The resentment drips from the whole thing. In a column in NRC, Hassnae Bouazza aptly wrote: “We are heading towards the democratic abyss with a coalition that, with fanfare and all, wages war against knowledge, art, culture, literature, science, free speech, media, bicultural Dutch, Muslims and the LGBTI community.”
The longest chapter of the agreement is devoted to the point of agreement: “The strictest admission regime for asylum and the most comprehensive package for control over migration ever.” It is filled with a long line of intentions to make life difficult for refugees. The responses to this have been remarkably lackluster in most cases; the continued hammering on the anvil of xenophobia for years has long since normalized an increasingly strict migration policy, and the extreme right in general. The parliamentary left sputters here and there on the most extreme points; Although larger NGOs speak out more clearly, in practice they have already resigned themselves to a course that is only aimed at smoothing off the sharpest edges. We will have to work hard on more serious, fundamental resistance to the concrete plans of this new cabinet and to the anti-migration discourse that is shared much more widely politically and socially.
Creating crisis
The foundation of government policy must be laid by declaring an acute state of emergency, activating an exception provision of the Aliens Act and creating an Asylum Crisis Act. Part of this is the repeal of the Distribution Act, so that refugees in Ter Apel with inadequate reception and registration options will be forced to stay at the gates again. Images that should add luster to the crisis situation thus created in order to implement even stricter policies.
Emergency measures should make it easier to suspend existing procedures and legal protection and to establish new powers, such as suspending the processing of asylum applications, abolishing asylum permits for an indefinite period and further cutting back on reception.
For refugees, this means a life of long-term uncertainty in poor conditions. A series of additional intentions should make it even more difficult for them: adjusting the burden of proof, reading mobile phones, limiting legal assistance, shortening the appeal period, abolishing the possibility of appeal and keeping official messages secret.
Criminal policy
In addition, punitive measures become an even more prominent aspect of the entire policy. So-called 'disadvantaged asylum seekers' are placed in a 'restricted and partly closed regime as much as possible'. This echoes the EU Migration and Asylum Pact, where detention at the borders becomes the standard for the 'disadvantaged' category. Increasingly austere reception is also becoming the motto for people who repeatedly apply for asylum, a punishment for using legal options.
In any case, more refugees will be locked up - not a new intention, the resigned cabinet also agreed on this - and more will have to be deported. Failure to cooperate with deportation is punishable. The options for issuing declarations of undesirability will be expanded and it should be possible to stop asylum procedures and to declare residence permits canceled at an earlier stage.
To block
Many parts of migration policy are increasingly taking shape at European level, especially when it comes to border surveillance and control, cooperation with third countries and deportations, with the EU border control agency Frontex playing an increasingly important role. The outline agreement pays relatively little attention to this. The new government is committed to further tightening of EU regulations and wants to work with other EU member states on the reception and processing of asylum applications in countries outside the EU. This is also not new: following the British plans to outsource asylum procedures to Rwanda, several EU countries, including Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, have already expressed their wish to do so. Italy has now concluded a deal with Albania to the same effect. And in May, fifteen EU members, including the Netherlands, sent an urgent letter to the European Commission calling on them to work more expeditiously on agreements on processing asylum applications outside Europe.
However, the new government is in more cases opposed to the EU, in the sense that it wants to go further on everything. An opt-out clause for the EU migration policy should help make this possible, although the chance that this will succeed is considered very small, because all EU member states must agree to granting such an exceptional position. In any case, it must be made clear that the Netherlands wants a stricter-than-strict policy: compliance rates must be reduced, more countries (or parts thereof) must be designated as safe for return, fewer options for family reunification, surveillance at national borders with direct sending people back to Germany and Belgium, deportation of refugees who have been rejected in another EU member state, and so on.
Refugees are the enemy
Xenophobia and racism are also reflected in many other government plans, it is clear that refugees are seen as the enemy with "migration, which puts pressure on housing, healthcare, education and financial resources, and on social cohesion in our country". In this way, they remain the scapegoats who are held responsible by the true culprits for the consequences of capitalism, so that they can continue to accumulate power and money undisturbed.
Precisely the entire capitalist, nationalist approach that forms the common thread for the intentions in the main lines agreement at an international level, in general a neglected child of a coalition that is closing itself behind rising walls, will only contribute to fueling the reasons that people elsewhere force the flight. Strong Western militarization, more arms exports, abandonment of international climate policy and cuts in development cooperation - with all the criticism you can have of the policy in this regard - are the main points of this. Only when it comes to raising capital is the nationalistic narrowness briefly shaken off: “Companies must want to establish themselves in the Netherlands and want to stay”, so “improving the business climate is paramount”. “Fiscal measures are also being considered”. The government that would rather see refugees die at the borders than receive them is once again throwing the doors wide open to tax-avoiding multinationals.
Risk of further rightward movement
In response to the outline agreement, there is much talk about the alleged legal unfeasibility of many of the plans regarding migration. Although from a practical point of view it is indeed to be hoped that some degree of legal protection can somewhat moderate the attack on often desperate people, this offers no solace. The law often easily bends with the prevailing political wind, and even plans that do not yet appear to be feasible have at least an important signaling function by pulling policy in the extreme right direction as much as possible.
This threatens to create a win-win situation for the coalition. Every plan that can be implemented contributes to the implementation of the racist agenda, while with every obstacle to the plans the reproaches and accusations against those who would make implementation impossible - judges, the EU, the left - will increase. In this way, failing policies can be mobilized in subsequent elections to shift the course even further to the right.
Resists
There will be no fundamental opposition to the extreme right-wing anti-migration course from the parliamentary left, which is lagging behind the right in so many areas, and large NGOs. Hassnae Bouazza stated in her column: “Progressives have allowed themselves to be held hostage by right-wing frames, because they want to do things neatly and according to the rules, but this constructive attitude too often results in giving a respectable face to dehumanizing policies. Civilization sometimes also requires some demolition work.”
In this context, there are sometimes hopeful messages from refugees who themselves fight back, during their journey, at the borders or within the Netherlands. But there is also a great responsibility here for (white) people who have the privilege of the 'correct' residence papers. The no border struggle is strongly linked to the anarchist movement and will have to be a spearhead of resistance against this extreme right-wing government in the coming years.
The No Border Camp that will take place in the center of the country in August hopes to have a catalytic function for this, with clearly visible actions and opportunities to discuss together, make connections and make plans. Various organizations and groups will expressly profile themselves during the camp. They could use more support and connections for the tough battle that lies ahead.