This morning we had the honor of receiving a phone call from the head of the Finnish Foreign Ministry's Department for Press and Culture and responsible for the press department for the EU summit in Tampere. Apparently, EU representatives do not enjoy our site, which they may feel infringes on their lack of humor. We were kindly asked to replace the appropriated frameset of our site.
http://www.contrast.org/borders
Today, with the start of the official EU summit in Tampere, various actions are going on all over Europe and specifically in Tampere: more about the Counter summit and the demonstration in Tampere from tomorrow on and almost in real time on our site.
Our aim is to collect and publish on the net all available informations about the ongoing activities against Fortress Europe and for the freedom of movement. Here some spotlights:
- In Frankfurt, early morning today activists blocked the Frankfurt airport by hanging large bunches of air balloons, wrapped in aluminum foil, all around the airport. With these 150-meter high 'agitators' hanging in the entry and exit ports of the runways, they protested against the everyday reality of deportations at the Frankfurt airport.
- In Poland, an action against the headquarters of the Polish border police for the Western region took place in Krasna Ojanskya near Zielona Gora. Demonstrators shouted anti-repression slogans and put up posters throughout the town. A small group made a small attack on the border police headquarters with tear gas grenades.
- In Berlin a few dozen activists held a rallye in front of the departure gate of the airport Berlin Schoenefeld. Simultaneously a 15 meter long banner was fixed on the roof for more than one hour.
- In Koblenz (Germany) around two hundred activists demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the german border police (BGS).
- In Paris 120 people invaded the international zone of the airport Paris Roissy. Other actions were planned all over France.
- In Switzerland rallies were held in seven different cities.
- In Italy there were actions at least in in Milano, Firenze and Caserta.
This is only a very preliminary overview. We expect much more actions to have happened all across Europe. Please send to us reports, pictures and all material about the different actions.
Cross the border is an international group of activists - actually from Finland, Bulgaria, FR Yugoslavia, Britain, Italy and Germany. Our european action map is a project, which means basically a first attempt, in order to represent the europe-wide grassroots activities in a decentralised, but nevertheless effective and coordinated way. Of course, we have to struggle with a lot of difficulties and all the problems of synchronisation, but we hope it might reveal a new dimension of networking, activism and concrete media work.