Bus tour journey of 21-24 april in Kiel, Oldenburg and Hannover Kiel 21.4 In Kiel we met the people from the “Network Anti-racist work in Kiel”. They were very well prepared with flyers and had already informed refugees about our coming. With them we went to different Lagers to invite people to the Event in the evening. We went to them to a German class and 4 LAgers. One of them was a Container-Lager where 60 people are living. There are always 2 people in a room of 11m2 and they cannot choose who to share the room with.
Bremen 22.4
22 April. We visited 4 lagers all together and brought them to the evening discussion, the discussion took place with around 150 refugees and supporters. Afterwords the refugees got connected with supporters and some of them joined the football club.
Oldenburg 23.4
A group of refugee activist and supporters are building up the “Stop deportation group” in Oldenburg. We visited 2 lagers and invited refugees to have dinner with us and to get to know stop deportation group of Oldenburg. The refugees in the first lager showed a big interest to us. In the beginning we talked to 3-4 people and they went inside the buildings and bring the people outside. This lager was very isolated, and outside of the city. With the car it took us more than half an hour to reach there and they said that they even don’t receive a bus ticket to come to the city. So most of the people have to stay inside there for day and night and be disconnected from the rest of the city. It was even hard for them to come to our meeting place in the afternoon so we picked them up with the car. The second lager was more inside the city and it was also less people in it. They said that many people are outside in the city.
Later in the afternoon more than 20 refugees joined us and we had a warm meeting for two hours. We introduced ourselves and our political fight, and discussed the political problems that refugees are facing specially Dublin laws and the new Asyl law in germany. Later we had dinner together.
The general mood in the bus tour is good. People feel generally positive about it and like to continue. In our reflection round we talked about how should we represent ourselves when we meet people. Because it is different when we meet political activists which already know a lot about the fight, or we meet people who are new to the discussion, and might not feel connected to what we are representing, or misunderstand us. The other point was to make it clear to the people that we are not officials and doesn’t have enough power to help on the single cases, so that we don’t give false hope to people. Everybody felt positive productive about inviting refugees from lagers and connecting them to the local group. In this bus tour we don’t like to have the focus all in Berlin, but would like to focus more on local groups.
Our next stop is Hanover. We stay there for two days and going to visit the refugee tent action there. They already made a lot of plans for us and we are excited to join them and see how are they working together. If you like to join also, you can call on our phone number to get information.
We are still in urgent need of money, busses and drivers, and are asking around for support. Somehow it looks like that we can make it for the next week, but if some problem happen then we might end up in trouble!
We arrived at 14 to Hannover and got a warm welcome from the refugee tent action in weisseroteplatz. In half an hour we started a meeting in the tent between Berlin and Hannover refugee activists. We talked about our problems and plans. Some people in Hannover have been in Oplatz before and afterwards they started the group in Hannover. One big topic was, What is the future of oplatz and how will the movement continue in Berlin. Activists believed that oplatz has got evicted by force, but the people are still active and there are many groups in berlin who continue the fight. From the people of Hannover asked how do they manage their finances and how is their relationship with political authorities. They said that for them it is very important to be independent and self-organized so that the decisions get done by refugees.
We organized an interview with Hannover Allgemeine Zeitung and one journalist came to the camp when we were eating lunch. We had food together and she asked questions about bus tour and also our friends from Hannover talked about their situation here.
Afterwards at 6pm there was a big circle outside with 50 people to talk about our situation and our common strategy. We believe that the refugee movement is a connected movement, because every refugee in every country in the world is facing the same problems. The people who die in the
Mediterranean see , and the new laws in Germany which are coming to force will be big problem for us to face in future.
We had activities for the discussion about the new laws and exhibition. There will be meeting on the 27th of April at 8 pm.
- In Hannover they are going to make action every month.
- They are going to make a demonstration on the first or the second week of June.
Tomorrow we are going to visit some Lagers around the city of Hannover and meet refugees in order to exchange our experiences between each other.
Contact: bustour@riseup.net / 015214451277
20.04. Rostock
21.04. Kiel
22.04. Bremen
23.04. Oldenburg
24.04. Hannover
25.04. Hannover
26.04. Osnabrück
27.04. Köln
28.04. Frankfurt
29.04. Hanau
30.04. Trier
01.05. Trier
02.05. Munich
03.05. Regensburg
04.05. Jena
05.05. Dresden
06.05. Dresden
07.05. Leipzig
08.05. Krumpa
09.05. Halle
10.05. Göttingen
11.05. Magdeburg
12.05. Potsdam
13.05. Berlin
