The NO BORDERS CAMP took place in Rotterdam between the 2nd and 10th August this year.

Around 250 people attended per day the series of workshops and discussions. Each day had its own theme, touching on topics such as: Travel (flee) and arrival – day of the refugees, Frontex and border control – crossing the sea – stowaways, Repression, Deportation & detention profiteers / blacklisting, Stop deportations!, Day against the services DT&V (Service to force return), IND (Immigration), IOM (International Organization ‘for’ immigration), immigration policeAnti-capitalism / cause of refugee movements / climate change. The camp ended on Saturday (10th) with a large demonstration through Rotterdam.

SchNEWS spoke to someone on the ground:

“Police repression was very low, the municipality backed off as soon as the camp was there (in advance, they had repeatedly threatened with evicting the camp), the location was awesome (in the heart of capitalist Rotterdam and very visible) and we even had very nice weather!"

"Of course nothing goes 100% perfect but I think we did a good job with establishing a firm, visible week of border resistance with a nice balance between fluffy and radical approach, both in the program as well during the actions. Some actions were somewhat chaotic, as we biked with 50 people through a city that isn't used to bikes and designed for 'big traffic'. At the first action day, Sunday, this went wrong. One of us got arrested after having a small confrontation with an angry car driver who got blocked by the group of bikers."

"The ending demo was nice as well. There were about 500 people, and the atmosphere was really lively and militant. There was a lot of tention in advance, because fascists had announced a counter-demo and the cops seemed to have let go of their "non-repressive" attitude they had shown during the week. They really provoked us by arresting a person who had on her t-shirt "fuck the police", and by letting a line of excited police horses push the people in the back. One of the horses actually bit a person as they came too close to the back line. The fascists were with only 20 people or so and they got sent away by the cops pretty soon, so in the end there was no confrontation with them. Anyways, all was fine in the end. We didn't respond to the police provocations and the arrested person had been released after 15 minutes already. All in all it was a good demo.”

Here are four workshops highlighted in more detail:

Militarisation of border security Deploying military personel, military tools and technology has become normal practice in border security to stop (undocumented) immigrants. In the past two decades the border between Mexico and the US has become the moest militarised border between two countries who are officially not at war. At the outside borders of Europe, a growing number of marine ships and helicopters do patrols on and  above the Meditterenean Sea, in operations that are coordinated by the EU border police Frontex to ‘wage a war against immigration’, as various NGO’s and academics have put it. With these developments, a new market for military industry has opened up. The company Visiongain estimates the value of the worldwide market for border control in 2013 at more than 19.3 billion dollars. Almost all the big weapon producers profit of the militarisation of border security.

No Borders Marocco No Borders Marocco is an attempt to build links between the European No Border Network and the self-organised solidarity networks of the tens of thousands of Sub-saharan migrants in Morocco, who regularly suffer extreme police brutality because European Union pays the corrupt Moroccan state to act as an external border protection force. See Beatingborders.wordpress.com for more info. Someone working very hard on this will come to the No Border Camp to tell us everything about this great project.

Blacklisting and research In the Netherlands, several action groups have focused their attention on companies who do work that is related to the Dutch migration policy. They also published lists with names and addresses of these companies, hoping that other individuals and groups would use this to organise their own actions. To target companies and publish these lists (or other info) is in our view a possibly effective way of organising actions and stimulating others to do their share. This form of activism, however, has also been  criticised. Not alone, as you would expect, by politicians, government and companies, but also by other activists. What is the use of blacklisting? Is it a good strategy? What can be done to call at and target the responsible ones in this system of oppression?

Deportation Resistance The Deportation Resistance Group resists openly against deportations, by means of direct action. The group aims at stopping as much deportations as possible. The members of the group believe in freedom of movement and fight against the repressive asylum policy that does not give people a
fair chance to a new life in the Netherlands, but which is aimed at jailing and deporting as much as people as possible. They will provide a workshop on how you can help stopping a deportation and to share
experiences.

For more information on the european no borders network and updates check http://www.noborder.org/ and for what's happening in the UK http://noborders.org.uk/