From July 23rd to August 5th, Women in Exile and Friends, undertook a summer bus tour through southern Germany and Switzerland to network with other initiatives and groups who fight against racism and discriminatory asylum laws and regulations.

Our tour focused on:

• Flight reasons, dangerous routes that refugees take on their way to Europe, criminalisation of refugees, deportations ending in deaths and the police brutality accompanying them.
• “Anker” camps and Seehofer the interior minister, the master mind behind the “AnkER” policies which are based on racism and discrimination.
• The trauma and the inhuman conditions refugees are living in these lagers.

Testimony

We talked with a young women who is now living in Bamberg “AnkER” , who narrated how to us, how after surviving the dangerous routes and her arrival in Germany she has been moved from one “AnkER” (before known as Arrival centres but had same conditions as “AnkERs”) to another. Here is a summary of her story:

“I came through the desert to Libya and was imprisoned for about three months. I got in a boat in Libya, I was lucky to survive but some of the people drowned. I woke in an Italian beach to find some corpses lying next to me.

In Germany I have been transferred from different camps twice and now I am living here with my child. As you can see he is sick, he does not eat or sleep, I take him to the doctor who comes in the camp once a week and he says he is alright. Look at him, he is so thin, is this a child who is well? I am so worried; I live in stress not only for my situation but also for my child. I am living in trauma, nobody want to know about me or my child, nobody cares.”

To proof this, we asked her if we can take a picture of her child and publish it on our blog. She permitted us to do so and publish it wherever we want, this way she thinks someone will see it and come to the rescue of her child.

Final charges from Women in Exile

The so-called refugee crisis has been represented as the main problem for European countries. But what Europe is doing is genocide against refugees. We call it genocide, because of allowing of well-known systematic killing of thousands of people not only in the Mediterranean Sea, but also in the “return route”, in the desert. These deaths are caused by conscious decisions made by Germany and the European Union.

Therefore we accuse Germany and European Union of genocide and of complicity and support with millions of Euros to governments where human rights are systematically violated and where people fleeing suffer all kinds of mistreatment;

We denounce camps promotion in African countries with the intention of stopping the arrival of refugees on European territory so that the needs of refuge is invisible, and the increased investment in FRONTEX for building fortress Europe to justify externalising of the European borders. These negative aspects of Europe are bound up with capitalism. This is about domination, expropriation and profit making. It is about the economy, as well as societal privileges.

The European system is in crisis and unable of maintaining its welfare state. This is causing the extreme right discourses which is finding support of a large part of society, who are voting political parties such as AfD or CSU. These parties with the support of less conservative parties, are directly responsible of developing laws based on racism and discrimination against refugees. This populism is coming up with policies such as building of ANKER centres which are ghettos where refugees are isolated and exposed to the violence of security and police. The police are enforcing violent deportations, come in the middle of the night or early morning with dogs in the lagers, waking refugees up and taking them without warning to airports. Meanwhile, refugees basic human rights such as education, health coverage, decent housing are not mentioned. We have been witness of this during the visits we have made to the lagers during the Bus Tour “Women* breaking borders”, there is an increasing degradation of the living conditions of refugees in these “AnkER” lagers.

During the Bus Tour, the fact of racial profiling from the police was exposed, which shows once more the racism in German and Europe as a whole. Women connected racism to the violence and expropriation of colonialism which reveals patriarchy and puts women in a particularly sensible situation when fleeing or migrating. They become victims of trafficking, prostitution, sexual violence, underpayment, policies which put all kinds of obstacles in the way of family reunification and causing separation from children.

We accuse Germany and the European Union of being aware and promoting the politics of death to refugees and missing the courage to admit it and to provide freedom of movement for people and not only for goods.