First Invitation for a Transnational Chain of Actions culminating in September 2025. Free Movement! Open Borders. End Deaths.
Wanneer: 17/02/2025 - 17:31
https://trans-border.net/index.php/free-movement-open-borders-end-deaths/
10 Years after the Summer of Migration – First Invitation for a Transnational Chain of Actions culminating in September 2025
2025 marks the anniversary of the most dystopian and utopian events we have seen at the borders of Europe. We want to recall these events to denounce the lethal European border regime, and to reclaim the possibility that it can be overcome by freedom of movement for all and solidarity with people on the move. We want to invite for a collective process, in which we aim for a decentralized transnational mobilization with multifaceted actions in summer and autumn 2025.
On April 18, 2015, the catastrophe that was waiting to happen after Italy and the EU ended proactive rescue operations, materialised. A fishing vessel capsized in the middle of the night in the waters between Libya and Italy. More than 1,100 people (from across Africa and the Indian subcontinent) sunk within minutes. This shipwreck caused the largest loss of life in recent Mediterranean history. The families of the deceased and disappeared continue to mourn their loved ones. We have not forgotten either. Their memory strengthens our determination to struggle against the EU’s deadly border regime!
Following this policy-driven catastrophe, the EU did not end it’s discriminatory and militarised migration policies, which force illegalised migrants from most of the world to embark on dangerous journeys, and neither did it reinstate proactive rescue missions. As a result, border deaths have continued, and more than 30.000 deaths have been recorded over the last 10 years across the sea. But this shipwreck did spark the outrage of ordinary citizens, who decided to act in solidarity with migrants and to try and fill the lethal rescue gap created by state policies. In the summer of 2015, they deployed civilian rescue vessels which soon became a veritable flotilla! The flotilla has persisted in it’s action to this day, despite the increasing criminalisation of rescue. At sea, as on firm land, the multiple practices and infrastructures of solidarity that have emerged are essential to support migrants movement and to fight deaths!
In summer 2015, in the Eastern Mediterranean, people on the move, mainly Syrians, but also Afghans and migrants of other nationalities, began crossing in greater numbers. From the Greek coasts, they trekked across the Balkans and continued to overcome one border after another on their way to North-West Europe. At the beginning of September 2015 – with the historical “march of hope” from Budapest – the European border regime temporarily collapsed. For a few months, migrants moved freely across Europe, even using public buses and trains to reach their destinations, where they were welcomed by solidarity movements in many cities. During this summer of migration, open borders and freedom of movement for all were no longer slogans or distant utopias but a lived reality. And while there were shipwrecks in the Aegean, because migrants crossed a shorter maritime space, their travel was self-organised and happened in broad daylight, the Mediterranean was safer that summer than at any point in the last decades.
The Summer of Migration taught us a simple lesson: Migrant death are not inevitable! They could become history tomorrow! Without the EU’s segregating visa- and border regime nobody would use unseaworthy boats or dangerous routes. Smugglers would cease to exist, as their service would no longer be necessary. This lesson was confirmed in 2022, when refugees from Ukraine could move and settle freely all over Europe. No death at borders, no smugglers needed. Open borders = end deaths! This is the powerful equation we derive from our experience.
The Summer of Migration was unexpected. It created a temporary reality that only months before seemed nearly unimaginable. Today, in a context of mounting racism and fascist movements and as the EU deploys it’s war on migration across Europe’s borders, these memories appear as something from another time and world. It is our imagination itself that seems bordered by the violence of our dystopian present.
But 2015 is still with us! The composition and fabric of our societies has been deeply transformed, and made more diverse and beautiful for that. Self-organised movements, solidarity networks and support projects that emerged 10 years ago still exist and persist despite criminalisation. Freedom of movement is seized and practiced by migrants every day as they cross borders at the risk of their lives.
We want to raise our voices together, as loud as possible, to break the normalization of migrants’ deaths. We mourn our brothers and sisters, and we refuse to accept that these deaths continue! We want to make visible the continuous struggles for the right to move and stay, to come and to go! We may be a minority in increasingly racist societies, but we exist, and together we can fight back against racism and fascism! We want to come together, and through common struggle, create a space for joy and hope in these dark times. Struggling in solidarity with people on the move must be a central component of the struggle against fascism today!
With this vision of struggle we want to invite all refugee and migrant selforganisations, all networks of solidarity and support to join and to prepare a transnational chain of decentralized activities throughout coming summer and culminating in September 2025.
10 years after the 18 April shipwreck and the Summer of migration, we want to say: We refuse this deadly and unjust border regime! We refuse and resist against deportations and detention, against push backs and the criminalization of migration. Migrant deaths are not inevitable! Freedom of movement is a possibility, we saw it, and we see it every day in the cracks of Europe’s borders! Solidarity still exists and can be the basis for a beautiful society in which all can live free and equal!
3rd of February 2025
Coalition for Free Movement
Composed by members of Afrique Europe Interact, Border Forensics, LeaveNoOneBe-
hind, Louise Michel, Maldusa, migration control, Mediterranea Saving Humans, no one is
illegal, Refugees in Libya, Sea Watch, WatchTheMed Alarm Phone, Welcome to Europe,
We`ll Come United
Join the process.
Contact: chain-of-action@tsc25.net