For more than four months activists from the Refugee Protest Vienna are
imprisoned on remand (Untersuchungshaft) after they had been arrested in
the end of July under the accusation of human smuggling (“Schlepperei”).
These accusations are a clear act of criminalization of a protest
movement, which is fighting for the freedom of movement and residence,
for an improvement of the Austrian asylum-system and against the EU
border regime with many different actions.
In this specific case the statements of the ministry of interior and the
media about “ruthless smuggling bosses” turned out to be completely
unfounded, which was even proven by the content of the court files,
which were partly published by the newspaper “Falter“.
The legal paragraph on human smuggling has to be seen in the context of
a growing illegalization of migration and the closing off of European
borders, which kills people every day.
Within the limitation of the freedom of movement and the illegalization
of migration, the criminalization of solidarity actions of individual
people and protest movements, that demand freedom from the border
regime, has an important role. It is used to justify structural
oppression, to heat up racist discourses and to strengthen the border
regime itself.
A system, in which certain people don’t even have the possibility to
move “legally”, produces constructs like “human smuggeling”, “Scheinehe”
and “illegal entry and residence”.
By discussing these matters, the real problem – national borders – is left out. Freedom of movement and residence everywhere has to apply to everybody, not only to privileged EU-citizens. Police controls for transnational marriages, the prosecution and punishment of border-crossing-support, selective identity checks in everyday life, racist trials and (deportation-) prisons, are all parts of the power machinery of this border regime, which builds up repression through laws and borders. This is an attempt to justify a system, that divides people into those with and those without papers. But resistance exists everywhere. Solidarity breaks all chains and fences. Together we fight for unconditioned freedom for all people and against racist border regimes. We demand to stop all deportations immediately and to end all racist controls, arrests and imprisonments.
We demand freedom for all refugee activists, who are incarcerated under
the accusation of “Schlepperei”!
solidarityagainstrepression@riseup.net UNTIL EVERYONE IS FREE