In 2013 I was active with the Aktion Against Deportation collective in Sweden, these are some of their postings on Facebook. You can visit the Aktion Mot Deportation facebook page for more.
(10) 2013-2014 Aktion mot
Deportation (Sweden)
I first came across the
work of the Aktion mot Deportation network on Facebook. In 2013 the
Swedish government ordered the police to actively work to aprehend
undocumented immigrants. Police were deployed to stop random people
on the streets and in the subway in Stockholm asking for papers. In
context of the ID checks, the police engaged in racial profiling in
order to decide who to stop. This was clearly a racist methodology.
The Aktion mot Deportation network movilized to warn undocumented
immigrants via social media about places where the police had set up
checkpoints in the city. It also organized demonstrations to protest
the round up and to protest subsequent deportations of captured
Afghans and Iraqis.
A scripture that inspired me to become involved with Aktion mot Deportation was Exodus 23:9: "You shall not oppress a foreigner. You know the heart of a foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt." The Bible in many other passages expresses the will of God as being manifest against the oppression of "the stranger" and "the foreigner".
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| Demonstratiojn in solidarity with immigrants in detention. |
The Aktion mot
Deportation network defines itself as "a social movement
working for the release of all refugees imprisoned in detention
centres and against deportations." The
network denounces the systematic use of repression by police to
enforce deportations: "It's a common practice that
when you are to be deported from the detention centres of the
Migration Board [Migrationsverket], police officers wake you up in
the middle of the night when you're unprepared, to prevent you from
mustering any resistance. It is also common for the police
to use coercion, violence, drugs, shackles and other means of
restrictions to get you onto the plane. Since 2009, the
Migration Board, the police and the government have escalated the use
of force: they declared a "year of readmission" with
increased persecution and specially chartered planes for mass
deportations." The Swedish
government decides to not pay any attention to human rights issues as
they aply to refused asylum seekers. Abuses of the human rights of
refused asylum seekers and the undocumented are rampant in the
system: "Sweden has continued the forced deportations
to Iraq, despite criticism from human rights organizations and
despite repeated pleas from the Iraqi government to cease. During the
last three years, 1691 people have been deported to Iraq from Sweden.
The ones who are incarcerated before the deportation have
been arrested at their work places, on the way home from school,
going out to get groceries or similar situations. These
are people who have made their lives in Sweden, people who work or
study, who have built families and social circles and in other ways
have become part of Swedish society. Only to be torn away from their
lives and thrown out of the country." The
Aktion mot Deportation network works towards changing immigration and
asylum laws and policies to conform to human rights and the values of
solidarity. It specifically works to raise awareness about the human
rights situation of people incarcerated in detention centers:
"Aktion mot deportation is a social movement for migration and
asylum policies that are open and based on solidarity, against the
practice of forced deportations and incarceration in detention
centres."
Aktion mot deportation
demands: "(1) An immediate stop of this violence and
dehumanization, (2) That all deportations cease, and (3) The release
of all those incarcerated in detention centres."
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| Stop Deportations to Afghanistan. |
The Aktion mot Deportation network advocates the use of direct action tactics in order to stop deportations: "We also want to emphasize the responsibility of all human beings, as keeping silent means an approval of the deportation machinery. Protests, blockades and dissemination of information are some of our tools, but we are constantly looking for new ways. We therefore urge police officers, pilots, airport staff, staff at detention centres, travel agents, bus companies and others who take part in the transportation of refugees: Lay down arms! Refuse, defect or talk your colleagues out of participating in deportations, incarcerations or preparations for the deportations!" Although I respect the viewpoint of the Aktion mot Deportation network in seeking to appeal to the sense of moral solidarity with immigrants of those involved in the mechanism of deportations, it is my personal opinion that appealing to individual police officers to not collaborate with deportations is naïve. The police under capitalism are the armed fist of the state, they exist primarily for the purpose of repression. Their job is to brutally repress the undocumented.
In a
letter I emailed to Aktion mot Deportation in context of the
protests; I made a positive non-violent direct action proposal to
fight against the police ID checks in Stockholm. I presented the idea
of organizing a one week immigrant (and citizen allies), boycott of
the Stockholm Tunnelbanan (subway) system modeled on the 1957
Alexandra Bus Boycott (South Africa), the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963
(United Kingdom) and the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1965 (United
States). I pointed out that historically, these boycotts of the local
transportation system constituted the spark of civil right movements
that led to the eventual downfall of oppressive social segregation
systems in South Africa, Britain and the United States. I proposed
that we need an immigrant "Rosa Parks" type figure
(preferably an African Muslim Woman) to be the face of the boycott to
the media and that such an action would demonstrate to the government
and to public opinion in general the collective economic power of the
immigrant population in Stockholm, it would also depress the profits
of the subway system placing more pressure on the government to back
off the controversial ID checks until courts rule on their legality.
I proposed that we approach the churches to help organize the boycott
as well as a series of legal challenges to test in court the legality
of the policy of ID checks. This combination of boycott action and
legal challenges is what led the way to the eventual demolition of
Jim Crow segregation in the southern United States in the 1960's. I
argued that the police ID checks were ethically objectionable from a
social justice perspective because they were premised upon racial
profiling and potentially violate civil liberties; because the police
cannot ask for ID’s unless a person is suspected of criminal
activity. Being undocumented is not a crime; it is only an
administrative infraction.
The
Human Rights Case Against Deportations:
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| Stop Deportations to Afghanistan. |
In my view, the fundamental problem is that Nation States operate on the premise that they have a "sovereign right" to ignore and declare ''non-binding'' fundamental human rights guaranteed by the United Nations Human Rights Charter. Under the current system of international law, the sovereign rights of states are considered above the human rights of persons. The forced removal of Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers to a war zone is in fact a crime against human rights. The asylum seekers human rights movement should call for a moratorium on deportations to Afghanistan until the war is officially over as well as an amnesty for Afghan asylum seekers under the age of 18. Everyone, including all migrants and asylum-seekers, have the right to liberty and freedom of movement. In principle, migrants and asylum-seekers should not be detained for migration control purposes. Seeking asylum or being in an irregular undocumented situation is not a crime. The policy of detention must be abolished.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is very clear on the issue of immigration and seeking asylum. Deportations are contrary to Human Rights of Immigrants:
Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
The police repression being meted out to asylum seeker activists in Europe (specifically during the 2013 asylum seeker protests in Munich, Germany and Brussels, Belgium), is a direct attack upon the political rights of migrants, rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There is nothing contrary to the purposes and principles of the UN in seeking asylum.
On the issue of Afghan asylum seekers who have converted to Christianity and risk being killed if deported to Afghanistan the UDHR is again very clear on the matter:
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
The work of the Aktion mot Deportation network and protests by immigrants against deportation and other abuses is also protected by the UDHR:
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
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| Encourages passengers on commercial flights to act in protest of deportations. |
The reason nation states consider the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 'non-binding', is that its enforcement would spell the end of the arbitrary system of power relations which sustain the elite status of the political classes who administer the international nation state system. The ''legitimacy'' of nation-state power is based upon monopoly of violence; i.e. the assemblies of armed men called police and military. The nation states of Europe in particular are administered by technocratic bureaucracies and an entrenched professional political class; these elements constitute an elite strata similar to the 'nomenklatura' in the former Soviet Union. The facade of ''parliamentarism'' is in fact an oligarchy. The power of the nation-state rests upon its ability to deploy armed force in order to impose the political will of the state over persons. ''Social cohesion'' is maintained on the basis of the threat of force and through mass surveillance. The obsolete nation-state system rests on a throne of bayonets. The nation-state is in fact a concentration of political and economic power that claims ''soveregnity'' on the premise of socially constructed national myths. The protection of the national myth is the basis for the convenient declaration of universal human rights standards as ''non-binding''.
If those who govern the European nation state system consider the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be 'non-binding'; then those who struggle for a world without borders and for the rights of the undocumented and of refused asylum seekers are justified to deploy the tactics of direct non-violent civil disobedience against the police state tactics of the government; repressive tactics which serve as the foundation for the migration control regime. The struggle against deportation is the struggle for human rights, against the abuse of state power by the political class and a struggle against the police state.
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