Dear supporters and readers, dear community,
We look back on an action-packed year 2020. For almost a year now, the Corona pandemic and the associated restrictions have followed us into almost all areas of life, work and politics. Even our political activities and original plans have been partially affected by it. However, we can and could somehow flexibly arrange ourselves, adapt various projects and develop alternative ideas together. For people on the move, who were forced to stay in the camps and forests of Europe’s external borders, the corona pandemic has added another factor that only exacerbates the humanitarian catastrophe. In the camps of the Aegean islands of Lesbos, Samos and Chios, for example, it has not been possible for months to maintain the necessary distances or to acquire hygiene items for all residents, nor are there enough masks available to protect themselves and others from infection. The disastrous isolation conditions for infected persons and their contacts as well as the general medical conditions in times of the pandemic once again point out for whom the EU health protection applies and for whom not [1],[2].
However, inhumane conditions are also manifesting themselves in other EU hotspots, such as the french northwest coast or the so-called Balkan route. For example, provisional camps in the coastal regions of the English Channel in France have been brutally evicted by local repressive authorities for months. Human rights observers recently documented how the cops destroyed tents and tarpaulins with knives and destroyed other personal belongings such as clothes, bags and cell phones. Through such repressive strategies, over 984 evictions have been carried out in and around Calais as of December 8. In the process, the work of human rights observers was regularly disturbed and attacked by the authorities, sometimes under the pretext of Corona regulations [3]. The situation is similar on the so-called Balkan route. The Border Violence Report, for example, monitors monthly on continuous (illegal) pushbacks from Croatia or even neighboring states, such as Slovenia. The Croatian cops, however, stand out with their torture practices and physical abuse [4]. For years, there has been documentation on how refugees are illegally pushed back to Bosnia or Serbia. This is accompanied by deliberate, strategically planned, wanton and collectively organized bodily harm to the refugees, as well as the destruction of all their personal belongings [5],[6]. Moreover, this year, cases were published in the international press in which Croatian police marked refugees with paint before the illegal pushback to Bosnia was completed [7].
We as No Nation Truck want to counter these continuities. For more than a year we have been organizing our first mission, which will not lead to a radical transformation of Europe’s border racism, but will bring the necessary practical solidarity to respond to these conditions. At the moment, the last construction measures are being taken on our truck, so that our operation can start soon. As we have announced since the beginning of the project, we will be able to cook a lot of hot meals in our 7.5t box, provide medical first aid and provide a strong power system to charge about 50 terminals at once. Despite some delays, we are finally very proud that our original plans could be successfully implemented and that the practical work at the external border can finally begin. After spending a lot of time in the past months discussing crewing, current tasks as well as internal structures and exploring future strategies and scope of action together, we start the new year with a high motivation. Besides providing the basic needs mentioned above, we will focus on documenting and publishing border violence together with other networks. We welcome the founding of other grassroots networks alongside or together with us, which also contribute to ensure that the racist injustices of European migration policy are not accepted without comment or action. Ruling political actors have to be put under pressure and people in emergency situations simply cant be left behind.
We would also like to emphasize that it is possible and necessary to launch political projects and to make oneself capable of acting through self-organization, autonomy and collective structures and to initiate processes of self-empowerment.
We would like to thank the many supporters, all the energetic and solidary hands, who organize soliparties and platforms, through which we can finance and promote our project. A big part of our (still not perfectly developed) current professionalism results from the great support we have received on many different levels.
Stay tuned, stay rebel – you will hear from us! In Solidarity, your No Nation Truck!
[1] – https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/corona-migrantencamps-moria-hilfsorganisationen-100.html
[2] – https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/camps-fuer-fluechtlinge-in-griechenland-hier-koennen-wir-nicht-leben-a-b13c66e2-fc41-4ec3-b639-e496e470ed43
[3] – https://calais.bordermonitoring.eu/2020/12/09/auf-dem-weg-zur-tausendsten-raeumung/?fbclid=IwAR1rNADiuekEEP1Nb2FQtiKp6UTvtiMBOIfJbmxkFGq_83kKrYw5oaryzDk
[4] – https://www.dw.com/de/kroatien-pushbacks-im-interesse-der-eu/a-55702940
[5] – https://www.borderviolence.eu/background/
[6] – https://www.borderviolence.eu/category/monthly-report/
[7] – https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/12/croatian-police-accused-of-shaving-and-spray-painting-heads-of-asylum-seekers
