After more than 30 days of trial there is still no decision in the so called „Schlepperei“- process against the eight accused. Thousands of recorded telephone calls, observations of the police, house searches and up to eight months of remand show how strongly repression influences people's lives. The arrest of the accused took place only few days after the protest against the deportation of refugee activists in summer 2013, some of the accused were also part of the Viennese refugee movement.
After all, the trial also shows again the racism of Austrian's justice system:
The imprisonment of the accused was prolonged for months, with the racist reason of „lacking integration“ as main argument. And the police investigation was based on “racial profiling” covered as “experience” of single policemen.
The biggest parts of the trial are held in German, the translations are much shorter. Also, it is not possible for the accused to prepare themselves independently for the trial, because the files are only in German.
§114 FPG (“Schlepperei”, “human smuggling”) criminalizes the support of illegalized border-crossing against payment, the punishment is up to ten years of prison. There is a lot of critique about the wide definition of the paragraph, but waht we want to point out is it's the role in the European border-system, in which so called “human smuggling” becomes a service necessary for many migrants. In a capitalist system often this service is payed, even if there are people who provide it for free. The criminalization of this border-cross-services and the imagination of a cruel mafia deflects from the actual problem: the racist and restrictive border-regime. Behind the notion of protecting refugees with paragraphs like §114 control and prevention of migration is hidden.
Especially at the moment news about “floods of refugees” to EU are again headlines in the media. “Solutions” discussed on official level are reintroducing border controls inside the EU and enforcing a homogeneous EU-policy. In this discussion news about arrests of “smuggler” play an important role.
Migration is made something criminal or at least problematic, migrants become a faceless mass, that has to be controlled and deported as soon as possible.
We will make a demonstration against this imagination and the criminalization of migration on Saturday, 18th of October. We want to show our solidarity with the eight accused.
Acquittal for the accused, smash 114 FPG!
De-criminalize migration!
No one is illegal!
Smash 114 FPG- Decriminalize migration! Demonstration/ 18.10.2014/15.00/Marcus-Omofuma-Monument (Museumsquartier) more information on solidarityagainstrepression.noblogs.org