United against Racism: For Safe Havens and Cities of Solidarity

  • Over 1,700 counted fatalities in the Mediterranean this year
  • We’ll Come United Parade in Hamburg
  • Developments in all three Mediterranean regions
  • Summaries of 61 Alarm Phone distress cases
© Sea Watch

‘Maybe it was the most beautiful day of the year – maybe even the most beautiful parade since parades exist’. What the organisers of the We’ll Come United Parade wrote a day after 30.000 people marched the streets of Hamburg, was not an exaggeration. Under the motto ‘united against racism’, the largest migrant-led demonstration in the history of Germany brought demands for equal rights for everyone, the end of violent borders, deportations, and racist marginalisation to the streets. The Alarm Phone was present and part of the ‘Sea-Rescue’ truck to collectively protest the ongoing dying in the Mediterranean Sea. As it reads in the We’ll Come United list of demands:

In the Mediterranean, Europe shows that human dignity and human rights apply only to those who have a European passport or the right skin colour. Europe is murdering in the Mediterranean and criminalising solidarity. We call for an end to the dying at sea, in camps and on Greek islands, where thousands have been waiting for their rights for years. We call for safe escape routes, the right to protection, migration and asylum and an immediate end to the obstruction and criminalisation of civil sea rescue. We call on all city governments to create solidarity-based cities and safe havens and to counterbalance the right-wing governments of Europe.

Across the three Mediterranean regions we can see how pressing these demands are. Over the last 4 weeks, the period that this report covers, the Alarm Phone assisted in 61 distress situations in the Mediterranean Sea and had to witness, once again, several shipwrecks that caused the loss of many lives. […]

Alarm Phone | 05.10.2018

Alarm Phone 4 Week Report, 3. – 30. September 2018