No Border Camp 2024, August 21-25, Netherlands

Today, a demonstration from the No Border Camp through the city of Utrecht squatted the infamous Galaxy Tower, an unfinished prestigious construction project on the Jaarbeursplein, and transformed it into a pop-up information point about the migration and housing struggle. A demonstration with speakers, music and information took place here during the afternoon. The action is aimed at the divide-and-rule policy of the government, and in particular the new government, which is partly selling its racist, dehumanizing migration plans by designating migrants as scapegoats for its own failing housing policy.

The construction of the Galaxy Tower, a multi-million dollar project that would house a hotel and apartments, has been at a standstill for a long time and is a symbol of the inflated, stalled real estate capitalism. Due to conflicts and financial problems, the project has become a millstone around Utrecht’s neck. In times of great housing shortage, it is unsellable to leave such a building unfinished.

Sasha, spokesperson for the No Border Camp, says: “The government has pursued a policy of demolition in the social housing stock for years. Speculators are driving up house prices. The result: you can only find a home if you are rich. The government is making scapegoats of migrants, but they are just as much victims of the housing shortage as anyone who is not rich.”

Last week, several hundred people gathered at the No Border Camp to take action, attend workshops and make plans for the fight against borders and for freedom of movement for everyone. A solidarity demonstration was held at Kamp Zeist, a prison for refugee families, among others, and a picket line was held at the company Rohde & Schwarz, which supplies equipment for border surveillance and control.

The speech of Bo Salomons of the Bond Precaire Woonvormen, during the demonstration:

“Friends,

I’m Bo and I’m with the BPW. I was asked to share with you a story about the failing of the current housing situation and what that has to do with migration. As it turns out, the housing crisis has everything to do with migration, just in completely the opposite way the far right tries to frame it.

So, to tell you the story of the Dutch housing market is to tell the story of this street, the Croeselaan. A year ago, brave squatters occupied these buildings to force the municipality to house refugees here. For generations, social housing like this dotted the Dutch landscape. While tenants were still subject to the leeching known as ‘rent’, those rents were relatively low. Over 90% of rental housing was social.

Of course, low rents are a mixed blessing. For people like us, low rents mean you have less to worry about if you lose your job, or if you have medical expenses. Low rents allow you to have relatively more freedom in your life. On the other hand, low rent social housing also means that the Economy Number, the Country High Score, is not as big as it could be.

And that is unacceptable.

So, the government cut off funding from the social housing associations. “Be more like a company”, they said, and the associations obliged. Marred by incredible corruption, social housing was sold cheaply to private investors. These investors soon discovered that people will pay whatever in order not to be homeless. So they jacked up the price, just as the Dutch government privatised healthcare, the Railways, and for good measure, the Postal Office.

Much to the delight of the bosses who have made themselves rich off of the back of migrant labour. They supply their workers with housing while subtracting huge rents from their pay. With the implicit warning: you have nowhere to go but here. Take another pay cut. Don’t take a vacation. Your workload has been doubled. I have altered the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further. It is the same power dynamic that keeps many tenants, migrant or no, chained to their employer: where else would they go?

It is no wonder that around this time, politics began to blame migration for everything. As a society we were confronted with the enormous cost of privatisation, and what did the newly-empowered feudal landlording class say? Those who had become rich as kings? Of course they blamed migration, and the left more generally. All problems would be fixed, if only they could charge more rent. If only they could evict tenants with no reason. If only they could build more so called luxury housing, whose only luxury is that their wealthy tenants can afford the *expensive* IKEA furniture.

And while more and more luxury apartments rise, the number of homes goes down. Those who cannot pay 1000, 2000 euros per month now have to live in ‘temporary housing’, built to rot away in ten or twenty years so that, one day, the fields they stand on may be gentrified and racially segregated. Refugees have it worse: in the 90s the government cut them off of housing subsidies. So they either pay a premium to get one of the few social houses left, or they get placed in the growing number of concentration camps the government insists on calling ‘facilities’. All the while, enough homes stand empty to house every refugee, unhoused person and prisoner three times. But they are for those who can pay.

Our comrades in camps are showing us our future too. As social housing becomes more scarce, more and more people will be forced to live in leaky shipping containers in half-grassy fields, waiting for the day that those fields too may one day be gentrified and turned into white ethno-neighhbourhoods by racist municipalities.

We can draw but one conclusion. The housing market is incompatible with our fundamental freedom. As long as governments want to use lack of housing as a weapon against migrants, we will have fascist policies. As long as there are people who want to make money off of housing, there will need to be those who are homeless. The housing market is a machine that consumes fear and turns it into profit. This cannot stand.

Our fight is clear. We are with those of all passports and those without. We fight against the fascist; not only the racist FRONTEX guard and their Israeli murder drones, not only the military police happily deporting people because they are ‘just following orders’, but also the fascists in suits and ties who are ready to burn every single migrant, every single refugee, if it increases their bottom line. Our fight is with them, and we will strike that which they love above human life itself: their property. For the sake of our friends, here and abroad, whose lives we stand ready to defend.

No borders, no nations, fuck deportations!

Thank you!”

Today, a big banner with the text ‘Abolish Borders’ was hung from the bridge over the Amsterdam Rhine Canal, next to the camp.

This morning from the No Border Camp in Utrecht, Stop the War on Migrants held a picketline at the nearby branch of the German electronics company Rohde & Schwarz (Ptolemaeuslaan 900). With a large banner with the text ‘Abolish Borders’, noise and flyers, it was made clear that the company must stop making money from border control and security. Rohde & Schwarz supplied, among other things, surveillance technology and border control scanners paid for by EU countries to the authoritarian regimes of Tunisia and Libya.

In recent years, for example, the company supplied radios for patrol vessels donated by Italy to the Libyan coast guard for border control. This coast guard is known for committing violence against refugee boats trying to cross from Libya to Malta or Italy. Often informed by the EU border control agency Frontex about the location of boats, they are towed back to Libya. There, refugees disappear into the notorious detention centres.
Rohde & Schwarz supplied Tunisia with body scanners, border control authorities were trained by the German police in their use. In Tunisia, violence against refugees, both at the borders and in domestic racist attacks, is a common phenomenon, fuelled by the authoritarian president Saied and European pressure to keep refugees away from the EU’s external borders.

“We are here today to make Rohde & Schwarz hear that it must stop profiting from violence against refugees”, says Luca, spokesperson for the action. “The European policy of increasingly shifting border control to countries outside Europe results in an increase in violence and human rights violations, while it strengthens authoritarian regimes in countries such as Libya and Tunisia.”

Rohde & Schwarz also supplied communication equipment for border control to Italy and Australia, among other things. The company took part in an industry day of Frontex, which has been heavily criticised for involvement in pushbacks for years. In addition, Rohde & Schwarz collaborates in the military field with shipbuilder Damen, a global major supplier of border patrol vessels.

From the No Border Camp in Utrecht about 50 persons went to demonstrate at the detention center Kamp Zeist in Soesterberg this afternoon. Kamp Zeist has been a location for many years where refugees are locked up, awaiting deportation or being thrown back on the streets. The site includes a special prison for families with minor children. This is where children such as the recently in the news Mikael (11 years old) and his mother Gohar, who are at risk of being deported to Armenia, are locked up.

At Kamp Zeist we expressed our solidarity with the people locked up and our resistance against the system that keeps them there. We hit tennis balls over the large walls surrounding the prison area, with a phone number that people can call for support.

[Nederlands beneden]

– tomorrow solidarity demonstration at family prison Kamp Zeist
– week with actions, workshops and culture in resistance against migration policy

August 20, 2024 – This morning, No Border Camp 2024 started with the occupation of a terrain in Utrecht (a meadow on the Mercatorlaan (directly opposite P&R Papendorp), next to the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal at the Prins Claus Bridge). Until Sunday, several hundred people from the Netherlands and abroad will gather on this terrain to resist the current migration policy through actions, workshops and culture. Tomorrow afternoon, from 5 p.m., a noise demonstration against the detention and deportation of refugees will take place from the camp at the Judicial Complex Zeist (Kamp Zeist, Richelleweg 13, Soesterberg), where refugee families with children, among others, are locked up.

Kamp Zeist has been a location for many years where refugees are locked up, awaiting deportation or being thrown back on the streets. The site includes a special prison for families with minor children. This is where children such as the recently in the news Mikael (11 years old) and his mother Gohar, who are at risk of being deported to Armenia, are locked up. “Kamp Zeist has been the target of actions against the inhumane refugee policy for years,” says Sasha, spokesperson for the No Border Camp organization, “and tomorrow we will be there again to support imprisoned people and to make a clear voice for the abolition of borders and for freedom of movement for everyone.”

The No Border Camp targets both the increasingly repressive Dutch migration policy and developments at European level, where militarization of borders, pushbacks and other human rights violations are the order of the day. The new Schoof cabinet is adding plans to lock up more refugees, deport more people, make asylum applications more difficult and severely restrict the right to legal assistance.

MiGreat, the Bond Precaire Woonvormen, SOS Humanity, the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Stop Wapenhandel are among those contributing to the camp with workshops. Connections with climate change, racism and women’s and trans struggles are also on the programme.

Previous No Border Camps were held in Rotterdam (2013 and 2022), Wassenaar (2019) and Groningen (2023).

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[NEDERLANDS]

No Border Camp 2024 van start met bezetting terrein in Utrecht
– morgen solidariteitsdemonstratie bij gezinsgevangenis Kamp Zeist
– week met acties, workshops en cultuur in verzet tegen het migratiebeleid

20 augustus 2024 – Vanochtend is het No Border Camp 2024 van start gegaan met de bezetting van een terrein in Utrecht (een weiland aan de Mercatorlaan (recht tegenover P&R Papendorp), naast het Amsterdam-Rijnkanaal bij de Prins Clausbrug). Op dit terrein zullen tot zondag enkele honderden mensen uit Nederland en het buitenland samenkomen om door middel van acties, workshops en cultuur in verzet te komen tegen het huidige migratiebeleid. Vanuit het kamp vindt morgenmiddag, vanaf 17 uur, een lawaaidemonstratie tegen het opsluiten en deporteren van vluchtelingen plaats bij het Justitieel Complex Zeist (Kamp Zeist, Richelleweg 13, Soesterberg), waar onder meer vluchtelingengezinnen met kinderen worden opgesloten.

Kamp Zeist is al jarenlang een locatie waar vluchtelingen worden opgesloten, in afwachting van deportatie of het weer op straat gezet worden. Op het terrein bevindt zich onder meer een speciale gevangenis voor gezinnen met minderjarige kinderen. Het is deze plek waar kinderen als de recent in het nieuws zijnde Mikael (11 jaar) en zijn moeder Gohar, die uitgezet dreigen te worden naar Armenië, worden opgesloten. “Kamp Zeist is al jaren doelwit van acties tegen het onmenselijke vluchtelingenbeleid”, zegt Sasha, woordvoerder van de organisatie van het No Border Camp, “en morgen staan we daar weer om opgesloten mensen een hart onder de riem te steken en om een duidelijke stem te laten voor het afschaffen van grenzen en voor vrijheid van beweging voor iedereen.”

Het No Border Camp richt zijn pijlen zowel op het steeds repressiever wordende Nederlandse migratiebeleid als op de ontwikkelingen op Europees niveau, waar militarisering van grenzen, pushbacks en andere mensenrechtenschendingen aan de orde van de dag zijn. Het nieuwe kabinet-Schoof gooit daar nog plannen bovenop om meer vluchtelingen op te sluiten, meer mensen te deporteren, asielaanvragen moeilijker te maken en het recht op juridische bijstand fors in te perken.

Onder meer MiGreat, de Bond Precaire Woonvormen, SOS Humanity, het Transnational Institute (TNI) en Stop Wapenhandel dragen met workshops bij aan het kamp. Ook staan connecties met onder meer klimaatverandering, racisme en vrouwen- en transstrijd op het programma.

Eerdere No Border Camps werden gehouden in Rotterdam (2013 en 2022), Wassenaar (2019) en Groningen (2023).