5 June 2023 – In Rome, on 24 June at 4.30pm we will be in front of the Repatriation Detention Center (CPR) of Ponte Galeria, to relaunch international solidarity and raise our voices against xenophobia, structural racism and the criminalization of migrants. We will make our closeness felt to those who are locked up in the CPR, to those who suffer daily violence, without knowing why or for how long.
CPR are prisons where every right is denied. Every asylum seeker can be locked up there at any moment, without charges, without a precise reason, for an unknown duration, deprived of any contact with the outside world. Whoever wants to be expelled, who has applied for asylum, who has simply fallen by chance into the police hands without having committed anything, is detained. The CPR is a place of arbitrary detention, of terror, where desperation leads many to suicide.
The new law 50/2023, decided in the aftermath of the Cutro State massacre, provides for the opening of 10 new CPRs, so that each region has one, and the increase in detention times (up to 6 months – but even beyond, the times already in force are not respected), violating shameless every international law on the protection of refugees.
CPRs are Italian lagers. They should be closed. These prison structures, real concentration camps, must be definitively abolished.
In the framework of World Refugee Day (June 20) Abolish Frontex, the international campaign supported by over 140 organizations, calls on anti-racist and no-border collectives, groups fighting for freedom of movement and people’s rights, and all individuals and groups who strongly believe that Fortress Europe must fall, to unite in an international action day.
No to the Italy-Libya Memorandum. No to any agreement by the states of the European Union and Frontex with Tunisia, Morocco, Niger, Rwanda, Turkey, Senegal, Bosnia, North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, for the blocking of migrants on their territories.
Frontex is the European army in the war against migrants and asylum seekers, guardian of Fortress Europe, responsible for illegal deportations and returns. We fight to Abolish Frontex.
One year ago, precisely on June 24th, the massacre of Melilla was perpetrated. The attempted group crossing of the Morocco-Spain border was coldly and brutally rejected in blood by the Moroccan guards, paid by the EU (€550 million) to close that border (Nador-Melilla). On June 24 in Melilla, activists from many parts of the world will gather for the first anniversary of this state massacre, which it is not yet known how many deaths it caused.
Enough with this scheme of death at sea, at the border and in prison.
The Mediterranean Sea is the largest cemetery in Europe. At least 1074 people died or went missing there in the first 4 months of 2023.
From the anti-NGO decree to the new Piantedosi-Meloni Law, the policies to combat immigration, already racist and therefore illegal, have become a veritable and unscrupulous war. The fascist government, after letting more than 100 people drown a few meters from the shore, reduced rescue at sea, imposing conditions of navigation, rescue and disembarkation on NGOs that emptied the Mediterranean of ships from the civilian fleet. The new law passed in Cutro is a despicable insult to the victims of the massacre and their families and sinks fundamental human rights, the rules of international law and every value of civilization.
We will not be silent accomplices of these colonialist, imperialist and murderous states, which legitimize racism, torture and the exploitation of the weakest part of society.
As in many other squares in Europe and elsewhere, on 24 June we fight against this racist system in front of the CPR in Ponte Galeria, one of the symbols of the exclusion of foreigners and the denial of all rights.
For freedom of movement and inclusion #AbolishFrontex