700 deaths for freedom in the Sicilian channel

[passa alla versione in italiano] Seeing the massacre in the Sicilian Channel, we migrants, on the front lines of the daily struggle against the government of mobility and movement, declare that in the war of borders we side with the women and men who seek freedom. Whatever the reason: escaping war, dictatorial regimes, persecution or simply the desire to change life.

We fight every day to guarantee our rights against institutional racism, which seeks to silence us and make us no more than labor force to be silently exploited. Through assemblies, demonstrations and strikes we organize to demand freedom for all, against exploitation, precarity and racist laws like the Bossi-Fini legislation. We are here and here we fight. But we know that our condition comes from having crossed a border, a border that continues to follow us in the residency papers in our pockets and the daily racism we face. For this reason we struggle so that all the women and men who like us must move to conquer a future for themselves can do it without being blackmailed or forced to seek help from criminals to reach their objective.

Seeing the massacre in the Sicilian Channel we say clearly that the “organizations without principles” are many: human traffickers, The European Union, the Italian State, the governments that use migrants as an exchange commodity. European policies, which continue deny freedom to thousands of women and men, are the main reason it is today impossible to reach the Italian coast safely. Those who want to go on vacation can take a ferry, those who wish to find a better life must seek out human traffickers.

If the Mare Nostrum operation had for a time limited the number off deaths, the effects of its end and the beginning of patrolling operations of the Schengen area’s southern borders coordinated by Frontex are evident. Those who now express sadness on camera that speak of migrants as a European problem are the same that said that Triton would be a step forward: merchants of death and killers of freedom. If the rumors of a naval blockade of the Mediterranean were to be confirmed, the result would be that we migrants would end up as the expendable pawns of a game of cops and robbers, between the “forces of good” of the democratic EU and the “evil agent” human traffickers. Two different sides, but both without moral principles.

Faced with the political crimes committed by governments on both sides of the Mediterranean we demand the right to move across borders by any means, without dying.