SHUTDOWN PONTE GALERIA
Never more detention centers – Rights and Welcome for everybody
Saturday 15th February 2014, demonstration to the Center for Identification and Deportation (CIE) of Rome-Ponte Galeria
After the mobilizations of last autumn for house and basic income, the “Mestiza Rome” retook the square the 18th of december. A big and determined parade crossed the streets of the capital city during the “international day for migrants” to ask an organic law on political asylum, the closing of the detention centers (CIE), a decent welcome and the cancellation of all the laws that attack the people freedom of movement and right to choice where to go and live. Indeed, the transnational mobility of the migrants challenge the neoliberal policies of austerity and confinement, setting the issue of building a new social model, a new way of common life, that force the narrow borders of the national states and the rhetoric of center-right and center-left parties about welcome and multiculturalism.
While in piazza del Popolo some member of the “forconi movement” [an anti-european movement appeared in Italy on december 2013, ndt] was asking an “italian solution” to the crisis, we strongly affirmed that the “struggles against austerity have not borders”. Some days later, in different important nodes of the system of government of the migratory fluxes started self-organized protests. In Mineo, in the biggest European Center for welcome of asylum seekers, the asylum seekers restart the mobilization against the indecent life conditions and against the infinite waiting times. In Lampedusa, the migrants trapped on the island and treated like animals in the Center of First welcome asked dignity and the immediate transfer. In Ponte Galeria, several detained sewed their mouths and started a hunger strike against the unfair and illegitimate detention and for the liberation of all the migrants imprisoned in the CIE.
Also in the political debate the issues linked with migrations and with the mestizo character of our society are on the agenda since the beginning of last autumn. On the one side, Lega Nord party and neofascist organizations continue to use the color of the skin of one Minister to promote and get visibility to the anti-migrants positions. On the other side, after any new massacre in the sea or any “scandal” about the management of the detention centers, the government parties make promises, without the real intention to change something.
At this moment, here in Italy more than half detention centers for migrants have been closed by the revolts and the protests of the people detained. The time has come to close also Ponte Galeria! A few days ago the detained migrants sewed again their mouths and restart the hunger strike [ended few ago because of exhaustion, ndt]: because the promises made by the representants of the institutions after the december protest have not been respected, because the CIEs can’t be reformed or humanized, but they must be closed forever. We want to support this mobilization, opening a collective campaign to shutdown Ponte Galeria. We want to do it with the self-organized migrants of the squatted houses, the movement for the right to the house, the anti-racist networks and associations, the community of migrants and all the people that believe that there is no space for CIEs and for discriminatory laws. We want to start this campaign on february, also towards a 1st March of mestiza mobilization that we won’t leave to the politics, getting back the original meaning of participation and practice of rights realized by migrants.
We invite everybody to take part to the public assembly on Wednesday the 5th February at Nuovo Cinema Palazzo [a squatted cinema, ndt], to discuss together the campaign that will bring us to the 15th February demonstration in front of Ponte Galeria detention center to state “never more CIE” and “rights and welcome for everybody”.
[Here the full streaming of the public assembly: http://bambuser.com/v/4334061]
- Anti-racist networks
- Movement for the right to the house
Look also [italian]:
Da Lampedusa a Ponte Galeria: chiudere i CIE, aprire le frontiere