AbolishFrontex organises against Frontex, EU’s border regime Dec 18

Abolish Frontex, a decentralised and autonomous network of groups, organisations and individuals is inviting individuals and groups to join its plan to organise against Frontex and the EU’s border regime on or around the 18th of December.

“You are also invited to integrate our demand to #AbolishFrontex into actions you are already planning,” AbolishFrontex said.

Below is the invitation for interested individuals and groups.   

Frontex out of Africa! Join our International Action Day on 18/12/2023

Dear Abolish Frontex supporters,

In 2006 Frontex deployed Hera, its first joint operation outside Europe, in an attempt to stop migration from Senegal to the Spanish Canary Islands. This made an already dangerous journey even more difficult and included the involvement in illegal pushbacks. Since then, the EU has doubled down on its endeavor to turn African countries into EU border outposts and stop migrants before they even have a chance to claim asylum. In 2023, Frontex had liason officers stationed in 3 West African countries, was negotiating status agreements (that would enable Frontex missions on the ground) with 2 of them – Senegal and Mauritania –, and had set up ‘risk analysis cells’ in 8. And that’s only what we know of, since Frontex makes an effort to keep this kind of information secret from the public. 

The externalisation of EU borders to African countries has led to preventable deaths and immense suffering. In Libya, Frontex cooperates with militias that force migrants into detention centres notorious for severe human rights violations including slavery and sexual abuse. In Northern Niger, the EU helped draft a law that illegalised regional migration, leading to the deaths of thousands of people in the desert and destroying the traditional transport economy. In Tunisia, the EU wants to pay a racist autocrat to crack down on migration, which means deporting people to the desert where they die from heat and thirst. While Israel is bombing Gaza, the EU’s biggest worry is not how to protect Palestinians from genocide and war crimes, but how to keep them away from EU borders in the unlikely case they manage to escape their open-air prison. For that purpose, the EU now seeks to replicate its Tunisia deal with Egypt.

Under EU pressure, and with money and equipment donated by the EU and its member states, African countries reinforce and militarise borders that were once drawn by colonial powers eager to extract the continent’s riches. The ruthless exploitation of natural resources and human labour continues to today and is one of the root causes that forces people to flee their homes in the first place. Others are the Western support of authoritarian regimes, arms exports, unfair trade agreements and debt burdens, and the consequences of climate change: Man-made crises that could be tackled if only the political will existed.

This 18 December, International Migrants Day, we will draw attention to the havoc wreaked on African countries by the EU’s obsession with stopping migration. And we want to advocate for a different vision, one that has long been practiced by many communities on the African continent: freedom of movement, solidarity, the idea that mobility and migration are natural, that they are a solution and not a problem. 

For our next International Action Day we invite you and your local groups to organise against Frontex and the EU’s murderous border regime on or around the 18th of December. You are also invited to integrate our demand to #AbolishFrontex into actions you are already planning. 

Some of the past actions included handing out flyers, dropping banners, grafs, street posters, gatherings, speeches, art installations, demonstrations, occupations, blockades, sabotages, forcing barrages, and more. There are many ways to take action and we can be creative! Find more information about the Abolish Frontex movement and ideas for actions as well as a list of Frontex institutional and operational locations here (https://abolishfrontex.org/take-action/).    

Please inform us if something may happen in your city on this occasion so that we can integrate it in our media work. 

You can read more about Frontex’s activities in Africa on this blog: https://abolishfrontex.org/blog/2023/10/31/frontex-in-africa/

In solidarity, 

Abolish Frontex