#caravan

Rapport de l’#Observatoire_des_expulsions_collectives_des_lieux_de_vie_informels

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A Genève, la pandémie de Covid-19 révèle une misère sociale jusqu’alors invisible

https://i.imgur.com/UcNl8ls.jpg

Plus de 2 000 personnes, sans papiers et travailleurs précaires, ont pu bénéficier d’une aide alimentaire d’urgence en plein centre-ville.

Jamais Genève, l’une des dix villes les plus riches au monde, n’avait imaginé accueillir une telle distribution de vivres. Une file, longue d’un kilomètre, soit près de 2 200 personnes, s’est formée samedi 2 mai aux abords de la patinoire des Vernets, en plein centre-ville. Au bout de trois heures d’attente, le Graal : des sacs qui contiennent des denrées alimentaires essentielles, riz, pâtes, huile, deux boîtes de sauce tomate et des produits d’hygiène courants, offerts par des particuliers et distribués par les bénévoles de l’association de La Caravane de la solidarité. Leur valeur n’excède pas 20 francs (19 euros). « C’est dire le dénuement de ces personnes, s’alarme un volontaire. On n’a jamais vu ça depuis la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale. »

Depuis le début du semi-confinement à la mi-mars en Suisse – fondé sur la discipline individuelle plutôt que sur des mesures coercitives –, les associations ont observé la vague des besoins humanitaires monter. Rien qu’à Genève, La Caravane de la solidarité a offert 150 sacs de vivres lors de la première distribution début avril. Puis 800, et enfin près de 1 300. Les Colis du cœur, qui distribuent des bons alimentaires, comptabilisent plus de 7 000 bénéficiaires, contre 4 000 au début de la crise. Genève n’est pas la seule à observer cette augmentation. A Lausanne, dans le canton de Vaud voisin, la soupe populaire distribuait chaque jour 250 repas jusqu’en décembre 2019. Elle en sert désormais près de 900 quotidiennement.

►https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2020/05/05/geneve-la-pandemie-de-covid-19-revelateur-d-une-misere-sociale-invisible_603

#coronavirus #solidarité #France #pauvreté

Voir compile des effets délétères indirects de la pandémie :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/832147

Food Line in Geneva Stretches To More than 1,500 People

In one of the world’s richest and most expensive cities, poor and migrant workers are suffering under coronavirus restrictions.

►https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000007131162/geneva-food-line-coronavirus.html

#coronavirus #solidarité #Roms

Voir compile des effets délétères indirects de la pandémie :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/832147

#Mayens_de_Chamoson #réfugiés #asile #migrations #Temps_de_vivre #Valais #Suisse #radio #montagne #Caravane_FM #paix

Quand je pense à caravane, c’est désormais l’image des violentes destructions d’habitats précaires qui supplante celle des vacances prolétaires. Je crois va falloir faire attention à cette notion.

see as well:
“You can’t make a living here anymore.” The Honduran climate-movers
►https://seenthis.net/messages/805208

La discussion sur le vocabulaire pour décrire #migrants et #réfugiés est là :
►http://seenthis.net/messages/414225

#Honduras #migrations #caravane #marche #Mexique #frontières #migrants_honduriens

#Polly_Pallister-Wilkins sur la marche de migrants qui a lieu en Amérique centrale...

Dear media reporting on the Central American migrant caravan, can you please be attentive to how you talk about it? 1/n
People are walking, walking not pouring, flowing, or streaming. Walking. They are walking along roads, they will be tired, hungry, their feet will hurt, they will have blisters and sore joints. They are not a natural liquid phenomenon governed by the force of gravity. 2/n
Their walking is conditioned by the infrastructures they move along like roads, the physical geographies they traverse like hills and rivers and the human controls they encounter like border controls and police checkpoints. 3/n
All of these things are risky, they make the walk, the journey more difficult and dangerous, esepcially the police checkpoints and the border controls. These risks are the reason they are travelling as a caravan, as a large group attempting to minimise the risks of controls 4/n
And the risks from gangs and criminals that migrants on their journeys routinely face. Their journey is a deeply embodied one, and one that is deeply conditioned both by the violence they are leaving and the violence of the journey itself. 5/n
So media please try and reflect this in your storytelling. These people are not a river obeying gravity. They have made an active yet conditioned choice to move. When they encounter a block in their path this can be deadly. It can detain, deport, injure, rape, or kill. 6/n
And these blockages are not boulders in a riverbed around which the river flows. These blockages, these #checkpoints, border controls or police patrols are human blockages, they are not natural. So please try and reflect the political structures of this journey. Please. End/
Addendum: there is a long history of caravans as a form political resistance in Central America.

▻https://twitter.com/PollyWilkins/status/1054267257944227840
#marche #migrations #Honduras #Amérique_centrale #mots #vocabulaire #terminologie #média #journalisme #presse #caravane #métaphores_liquides #risque #gravité #mouvement #contrôles_frontaliers #blocages #barrières #résistance #Mexique

Migrants travel in groups for a simple reason: safety

A caravan of Central American migrants traveling to through Mexico to the United States to seek asylum is about halfway through its journey.

The caravan began on Oct. 13 in Honduras with 200 people. As it has moved through Honduras, Guatemala and now Mexico, its ranks have grown to over 7,000, according to an estimate by the International Organization of Migration.

The migrants have been joined by representatives from humanitarian organizations like the Mexican Red Cross providing medical assistance and human rights groups that monitor the situation.

Journalists are there, too, and their reporting has caught the attention of President Donald Trump.

He has claimed that the caravan’s ranks probably hide Middle Eastern terrorists. Trump later acknowledged there is no evidence of this, but conservative media outlets have nevertheless spread the message.

It is reasonable for Americans to have security concerns about immigration. But as a scholar of forced migration, I believe it’s also important to consider why migrants travel in groups: their own safety.
Safety in numbers

The Central Americans in the caravan, like hundreds of thousands of people who flee the region each year, are escaping extreme violence, lack of economic opportunity and growing environmental problems, including drought and floods, back home.

Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico have some of the world’s highest murder rates. According to Doctors Without Borders, which provides medical care in crisis zones, 68 percent of the migrants and refugees it surveyed in Mexico had experienced violence. Nearly one-third of women were sexually abused.

Whether crossing Central America, the Sahara desert or the mountains of Afghanistan, migrants are regularly extorted by criminals, militias and corrupt immigration officials who know migrants make easy targets: They carry cash but not weapons.

Large groups increase migrants’ chance of safe passage, and they provide some sense of community and solidarity on the journey, as migrants themselves report.
Publicizing the dangers they flee

Large groups of migrants also attract media coverage. As journalists write about why people are on the move, they shed light on Central America’s many troubles.

Yet headlines about huge migrant caravans may misrepresent trends at the U.S.-Mexico border, where migration is actually decreasing.

While the number of Central American families and children seeking asylum in the U.S. has increased in the past two years, Mexican economic migrants are crossing the border at historically low levels.

And while most migrant caravan members hope to seek asylum in the U.S., recent history shows many will stay in Mexico.

In response to Trump’s immigration crackdown, Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised to welcome Central American refugees — and try to keep them safe.

https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1055459911620939776/ljMtLuOh?format=jpg&name=600x314#.jpg

#sécurité

Trump’s Caravan Hysteria Led to This

The president and his supporters insisted that several thousand Honduran migrants were a looming menace—and the Pittsburgh gunman took that seriously.

On Tuesday, October 16, President Donald Trump started tweeting.

“The United States has strongly informed the President of Honduras that if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped and brought back to Honduras, no more money or aid will be given to Honduras, effective immediately!”

“We have today informed the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that if they allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States, with the intention of entering our country illegally, all payments made to them will STOP (END)!”

Vice President Mike Pence also tweeted:

“Spoke to President Hernandez of Honduras about the migrant caravan heading to the U.S. Delivered strong message from @POTUS: no more aid if caravan is not stopped. Told him U.S. will not tolerate this blatant disregard for our border & sovereignty.”

The apparent impetus for this outrage was a segment on Fox News that morning that detailed a migrant caravan thousands of miles away in Honduras. The caravan, which began sometime in mid-October, is made up of refugees fleeing violence in their home country. Over the next few weeks, Trump did his best to turn the caravan into a national emergency. Trump falsely told his supporters that there were “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” in the caravan, a claim that had no basis in fact and that was meant to imply that terrorists were hiding in the caravan—one falsehood placed on another. Defense Secretary James Mattis ordered more troops to the border. A Fox News host took it upon herself to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen whether there was “any scenario under which if people force their way across the border they could be shot at,” to which Nielsen responded, “We do not have any intention right now to shoot at people.”

Pence told Fox News on Friday, “What the president of Honduras told me is that the caravan was organized by leftist organizations, political activists within Honduras, and he said it was being funded by outside groups, and even from Venezuela … So the American people, I think, see through this—they understand this is not a spontaneous caravan of vulnerable people.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s Twitter account “confirmed” that within the caravan are people who are “gang members or have significant criminal histories,” without offering evidence of any such ties. Trump sought to blame the opposition party for the caravan’s existence. “Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!” Trump tweeted on October 22. “Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally.”

In the right-wing fever swamps, where the president’s every word is worshipped, commenters began amplifying Trump’s exhortations with new details. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida wondered whether George Soros—the wealthy Jewish philanthropist whom Trump and several members of the U.S. Senate blamed for the protests against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and who was recently targeted with a bomb—was behind the migrant caravan. NRATV, the propaganda organ of the National Rifle Association, linked two Republican obsessions, voter fraud and immigration. Chuck Holton told NRATV’s viewers that Soros was sending the caravan to the United States so the migrants could vote: “It’s telling that a bevy of left-wing groups are partnering with a Hungarian-born billionaire and the Venezuelan government to try to influence the 2018 midterms by sending Honduran migrants north in the thousands.” On CNN, the conservative commentator Matt Schlapp pointedly asked the anchor Alisyn Camerota, “Who’s paying for the caravan? Alisyn, who’s paying for the caravan?,” before later answering his own question: “Because of the liberal judges and other people that intercede, including George Soros, we have too much chaos at our southern border.” On Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, one guest said, “These individuals are not immigrants—these are people that are invading our country,” as another guest asserted they were seeking “the destruction of American society and culture.”

Peter Beinart: Trump shut programs to counter violent extremists

In the meantime, much of the mainstream press abetted Trump’s effort to make the midterm election a referendum on the caravan. Popular news podcasts devoted entire episodes to the caravan. It remained on the front pages of major media websites. It was an overwhelming topic of conversation on cable news, where Trumpists freely spread disinformation about the threat the migrants posed, while news anchors displayed exasperation over their false claims, only to invite them back on the next day’s newscast to do it all over again.

In reality, the caravan was thousands of miles and weeks away from the U.S. border, shrinking in size, and unlikely to reach the U.S. before the election. If the migrants reach the U.S., they have the right under U.S. law to apply for asylum at a port of entry. If their claims are not accepted, they will be turned away. There is no national emergency; there is no ominous threat. There is only a group of desperate people looking for a better life, who have a right to request asylum in the United States and have no right to stay if their claims are rejected. Trump is reportedly aware that his claims about the caravan are false. An administration official told the Daily Beast simply, “It doesn’t matter if it’s 100 percent accurate … this is the play.” The “play” was to demonize vulnerable people with falsehoods in order to frighten Trump’s base to the polls.

Nevertheless, some took the claims of the president and his allies seriously. On Saturday morning, Shabbat morning, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 people. The massacre capped off a week of terrorism, in which one man mailed bombs to nearly a dozen Trump critics and another killed two black people in a grocery store after failing to force his way into a black church.

Before committing the Tree of Life massacre, the shooter, who blamed Jews for the caravan of “invaders” and who raged about it on social media, made it clear that he was furious at HIAS, founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a Jewish group that helps resettle refugees in the United States. He shared posts on Gab, a social-media site popular with the alt-right, expressing alarm at the sight of “massive human caravans of young men from Honduras and El Salvador invading America thru our unsecured southern border.” And then he wrote, “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

The people killed on Saturday were killed for trying to make the world a better place, as their faith exhorts them to do. The history of the Jewish people is one of displacement, statelessness, and persecution. What groups like HIAS do in helping refugees, they do with the knowledge that comes from a history of being the targets of demagogues who persecute minorities in pursuit of power.

Ordinarily, a politician cannot be held responsible for the actions of a deranged follower. But ordinarily, politicians don’t praise supporters who have mercilessly beaten a Latino man as “very passionate.” Ordinarily, they don’t offer to pay supporters’ legal bills if they assault protesters on the other side. They don’t praise acts of violence against the media. They don’t defend neo-Nazi rioters as “fine people.” They don’t justify sending bombs to their critics by blaming the media for airing criticism. Ordinarily, there is no historic surge in anti-Semitism, much of it targeted at Jewish critics, coinciding with a politician’s rise. And ordinarily, presidents do not blatantly exploit their authority in an effort to terrify white Americans into voting for their party. For the past few decades, most American politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, have been careful not to urge their supporters to take matters into their own hands. Trump did everything he could to fan the flames, and nothing to restrain those who might take him at his word.

Many of Trump’s defenders argue that his rhetoric is mere shtick—that his attacks, however cruel, aren’t taken 100 percent seriously by his supporters. But to make this argument is to concede that following Trump’s statements to their logical conclusion could lead to violence against his targets, and it is only because most do not take it that way that the political violence committed on Trump’s behalf is as limited as it currently is.

The Tree of Life shooter criticized Trump for not being racist or anti-Semitic enough. But with respect to the caravan, the shooter merely followed the logic of the president and his allies: He was willing to do whatever was necessary to prevent an “invasion” of Latinos planned by perfidious Jews, a treasonous attempt to seek “the destruction of American society and culture.”

The apparent spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a midterm election. There is no political gesture, no public statement, and no alteration in rhetoric or behavior that will change this fact. The shooter might have found a different reason to act on a different day. But he chose to act on Saturday, and he apparently chose to act in response to a political fiction that the president himself chose to spread and that his followers chose to amplify.

As for those who aided the president in his propaganda campaign, who enabled him to prey on racist fears to fabricate a national emergency, who said to themselves, “This is the play”? Every single one of them bears some responsibility for what followed. Their condemnations of anti-Semitism are meaningless. Their thoughts and prayers are worthless. Their condolences are irrelevant. They can never undo what they have done, and what they have done will never be forgotten.

▻https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/caravan-lie-sparked-massacre-american-jews/574213

Latin American asylum seekers hit US policy “wall”

Trump’s new restrictions mean long waits simply to register claims.

The movement of thousands of Central American asylum seekers and migrants north from Honduras towards the southern border of the United States has precipitated threats from US President Donald Trump – ahead of next week’s midterm elections – to block the group’s entry by deploying troops to the US-Mexican border.

Under international law the United States is obligated to allow asylum seekers to enter and file claims. However, immigration officials at the country’s southern border have for months been shifting toward legally dubious practices that restrict people’s ability to file asylum claims.

“Make no mistake, the administration is building a wall – one made of restrictionist policy rather than brick and mortar,” said Jason Boyd, policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).

As a result, hundreds, possibly thousands, of asylum seekers have been left waiting for extended periods of time on the Mexican side of the border in need of shelter and basic services. Firm numbers for those affected are difficult to come by because no one is counting.

Some of those turned away explore potentially dangerous alternatives. Aid and advocacy groups as well as the Department of Homeland Security say the wait has likely pushed some to attempt to enter the United States illegally, either with smugglers or on their own via perilous desert routes.

While some of those in the so-called “migrant caravan” are searching for economic opportunity, others are fleeing gang violence, gender-based violence, political repression or unrest – all increasingly common factors in Central America and Mexico that push people to leave their homes.
Menacing phone calls

When people from the migrant caravan reach the southern border of the United States, they may find themselves in a similar position to Dolores Alzuri, 47, from Michoacan, a state in central Mexico.

In late September, she was camped out with her husband, daughter, granddaughter, and aunt on the Mexican side of the DeConcini port of entry separating the twin cities of Nogales – one in the Mexican state of Sonora, the other in the US state of Arizona.

Alzuri and her family were waiting for their turn to claim asylum in the United States, with only a police report in hand as proof of the threats they faced back home. Camping beside them on the pedestrian walkway just outside the grated metal door leading to the United States, nine other families waited to do the same.

Over the preceding month Alzuri had received several menacing phone calls from strangers demanding money. In Michoacan, and many other parts of Mexico where criminal gangs have a strong presence, almost anybody can receive calls like these. You don’t know who’s on the other end of the line, Alzuri explained, but you do know the consequences of not following their orders.

“If you do not give [money] to them, they kidnap you or they kidnap your family,” Alzuri said. “They destroy you. They kill you. That is why it is so scary to be in this country.”

Other people she knew had received similar calls. She also knew that those who didn’t pay ended up dead – pictures of their bodies posted on Facebook as a macabre warning of what happens to those who resist.

Fearing a similar fate, Alzuri packed her bags and her family and travelled north to ask for asylum in the United States. A friend had been granted asylum about nine months ago, and she had seen on television that other people were going, too. It seemed like the only way out.

“I had a problem,” she said, referring to the phone calls. “They asked us for money, and since we did not give them money, they threatened us.”

Before leaving her home, Alzuri said she filed a police report. But the authorities didn’t care enough to act on it, she said. “They are not going to risk their life for mine.”
No way out

Despite the danger at home, Alzuri and others in similar situations face an increasingly difficult time applying for asylum in the United States. At the Nogales crossing, asylum seekers must now wait up to a month simply to be allowed to set foot inside a border office where they can register their claims, aid workers there say.

Those waiting are stuck in territory on the Mexican side that is controlled by gangs similar to the ones many are fleeing, though local aid groups have scrambled to find space in shelters, especially for women and children, so people will be safer while they wait.

The situation hasn’t always been like this.

In the past, asylum seekers were almost always admitted to register their claims the same day they arrived at the border. Since May, however, there has been a marked slowdown in registration.

US Custom and Border Protection (CBP), the federal law enforcement agency responsible for screening people as they enter the country, says delays are due to a lack of capacity and space. But asylum advocates say similar numbers have arrived in previous years without causing a delay and the real reason for the slowdown is that CBP has shifted resources away from processing asylum seekers – not just in Nogales but across the southern US border – resulting in people being forced to wait for long periods or turned away altogether.

This is happening despite the insistence of high-ranking Trump administration officials that asylum seekers present themselves at ports of entry or face criminal prosecution for crossing the border irregularly. Such contradictory policies, asylum advocates argue, are part of a broad-based effort by the Trump administration to dramatically reduce the number of people able to seek protection in the United States.

“Our legal understanding is that they have the legal obligation to process asylum seekers as they arrive,” said Joanna Williams, director of education and advocacy at the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), a Nogales-based NGO. “There’s no room in the law for what they are doing right now.”
A system in crisis

In the past decade, migration across the southern border of the United States has undergone a dramatic change. Every year since the late 1970s US Border Patrol agents apprehended close to a million or more undocumented migrants entering the country. In 2007, that number began to fall, and last year there were just over 310,000 apprehensions – the lowest number since 1971.

At the same time, the proportion of people entering the United States from the southern border to claim asylum has increased. Ten years ago, one out of every 100 people crossing the border was seeking humanitarian protection, according to a recent report published by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a non-partisan think tank in Washington DC. Today that number is about one in three.

According to Boyd of AILA, the increase is being driven by ongoing humanitarian emergencies in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, an area of Central America known as the Northern Triangle. These countries have some of the highest homicide rates in the world and are wracked by gang violence, gender-based violence, extortion, and extra-judicial killings. “Many of the individuals and families arriving at the US southern border are literally fleeing for their lives,” said Boyd.

But the system that is supposed to provide them protection is in crisis. Beginning in 2010 the number of asylum requests lodged in the United States started to balloon, mirroring an upward trend in global displacement. Last year, 79,000 people approached the US border saying they had a credible fear of returning to their home country, compared to 9,000 at the beginning of the decade.

The increase in credible-fear claims, as well as asylum requests made by people already in the United States, has strained the system to a “crisis point”, according to the MPI report. This has led to a backlog of around 320,000 cases in US immigration courts and people having to wait many months, if not years, to receive a hearing and a decision.
Crackdown

Senior officials in the Trump administration, including the president, have consistently lumped asylum seekers and economic migrants together, positing that the United States is being “invaded” by a “massive influx of illegal aliens” across the southern border, and that the asylum system is subject to “systematic abuse” by people looking to gain easy entry to the country.

People working on the ground with asylum seekers refute this. Eduardo Garcia is a communication coordinator at SOA Watch, an organisation that monitors the humanitarian impact of US policy in Latin America. He has spent time in Nogales speaking with people waiting to claim asylum.

“The stories of many of the people we have talked to… are stories of people fleeing gang violence, are stories of people fleeing because one of their sons was killed, because one of their sons was threatened, because one of their family members [was] raped,” he said. “They have said they cannot go back to their countries. If they are sent back they are going to be killed.”

Still, the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy on immigration – responsible for the recent child-separation crisis – has also included measures that have restricted access to asylum in the United States.

In May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Justice Department would begin criminally prosecuting everyone who irregularly crossed the US southern border, including asylum seekers. In June, that policy was followed by a decision that the United States would no longer consider gang and sexual violence – precisely the reasons so many people flee the Northern Triangle – as legitimate grounds for asylum. Around the same time, CBP appears to have deprioritised the processing of asylum seekers at ports of entry in favour of other responsibilities, leading to the long waits and people being turned away, according to humanitarian workers and a recent report by the DHS’s Office of Inspector General.

And even as these restrictive policies were being put in place, Trump administration officials have been encouraging asylum seekers to try. “If you’re seeking asylum, go to a port of entry,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said in an 18 June press conference. “You do not need to break the law of the United States to seek asylum.”

Nogales, Mexico

“I came here with the hope that if I asked for asylum I could be in the United States,” said Modesto, a 54-year-old from Chimaltenango, Guatemala. In mid-September he was sitting in a mess hall run a couple hundred meters from the US border run by KBI, which provides humanitarian assistance to migrants and asylum seekers.

Modesto had already been in Nogales, Sonora for several months. Like Dolores Alzuri, he fled his home because criminal gangs had tried to extort money from him. “I worked a lot and was making a living in my country,” Modesto explained. “The problem in particular with the gangs is that they don’t let you work… If you have money they extort you. If you don’t have money they want to recruit you.” And people who don’t cooperate: “They’re dead,” he added.

The situation Modesto found when he arrived in Nogales, Sonora was far from what he expected. For starters, there was the long wait at the border. But he also discovered that – as an adult travelling with his 18-year-old son – even once he entered the United States he would likely end up in a detention centre while his case slowly made its way through the overburdened immigration courts – a practice that has also increased under the Trump administration. “I don’t want to cross… and spend a year in prison when my family needs my help,” he said.

Modesto is in some ways an exception, according to Williams of KBI. Many of the people arriving in Nogales, Sonora are families with children. Once in the United States they will likely be released from immigration detention with ankle monitoring bracelets to track their movements. These people often choose to wait and to claim asylum at the port of entry when there is space.

After more than 100 people piled up to wait at the border in May, local humanitarian groups set up a system to organise and keep track of whose turn it was to submit an asylum claim to US immigration officials. They also scrambled to find spaces in shelters so people were not sleeping on the walkway over the weeks they needed to wait.

Now, only people who are likely to enter soon are camped on the walkway. When IRIN visited, about 40 asylum seekers – mostly women and children – sat on one side of the walkway as a steady stream of people heading to the United States filtered by on the other. Some of the asylum seekers were new arrivals waiting to be taken to a shelter, while others had been sleeping there for days on thin mats waiting for their turn. Volunteers handed out clean clothing and served pasta, as a CBP agent opened and closed the metal gate leading to the United States, just a few tantalisingly short feet away.

The slowdown of processing “leaves people stranded – in really dangerous situations sometimes – on the other side of the border, and completely violates our obligations under both domestic and international law,” said Katharina Obser, a senior policy adviser at the Women’s Refugee Commission, an NGO that advocates for women, children, and youth displaced by conflict and crisis.

As a result, some people arrive, find out about the wait, and leave. “We’re fairly certain that those are individuals who then end up crossing the border through other means,” Williams said.

The DHS Office of the Inspector General came to a similar conclusion, finding that the contradiction between Trump administration rhetoric and policy “may have led asylum seekers at ports of entry to attempt illegal border crossings.”
Border-wide

The situation in Nogales, Sonora is far from isolated, according to Boyd of the AILA. “Recent turnbacks of vulnerable asylum seekers have been documented throughout the US southern border,” he said, including at many ports of entry in Texas and California. In those states, asylum seekers have reported being stopped as they approach the border and told they cannot enter because immigration officials don’t have the capacity to process their claims.

“Turnbacks form part of a comprehensive set of practices and policies advanced under this administration that appears aimed at shutting out asylum seekers from the United States,” Boyd continued.

Meanwhile, people like Dolores Alzuri – and most likely some of the thousands of Central Americans who are travelling north from Honduras in the hope of claiming asylum – are left with little choice but to wait. Moving somewhere else in Mexico or returning home is not an option, said Alzuri. “The violence is the same in every state,” she said. And crossing the desert, “that’s a big danger.”

She and her family don’t have a back-up plan. “Let’s hope that I do get [asylum], because I really do need it,” she said. “You don’t live comfortably in your own country anymore. You live in fear that something will happen to you. You can’t walk around on the streets because you feel that you’re being followed.”

▻https://www.irinnews.org/news-feature/2018/10/29/latin-american-asylum-seekers-hit-us-policy-wall
#USA #Etats-Unis #fermeture_des_frontières #Mexique

Commentaire Emmanuel Blanchar via la mailing-list Migreurop:

Un article intéressant car il rappelle opportunément que la « caravane des migrants » en route vers les Etats-Unis est également composée de nombreuses personnes qui souhaiteraient pouvoir déposer des demandes d’asile. Or, si la frontières Mexique-USA est loin d’être encore mûrées, un mur administratif empêche déjà que les demandes d’asile puisse être déposées et traitées dans le respect des droits des requérant.e.s.

#mur_administratif #asile

No es una caravana, es un dolor que camina

La caravana de migrantes es sólo la primera manifestación pública y masiva de la crisis humanitaria en la que vive la mayoría de la población; negada por el gobierno, por la oligarquía, embajadas, organizaciones de la sociedad civil y por algunas agencias de cooperación que le hacen comparsa a la dictadura.

Esta crisis humanitaria es provocada por el modelo económico neoliberal impuesto a sangre y fuego, que sólo pobreza y violencia ha llevado a las comunidades, que ante la ausencia de oportunidades y ante el acoso de los grupos criminales no tienen otra alternativa que la peligrosa e incierta ruta migratoria; prefieren morir en el camino que en sus barrios y colonias.

El infierno en que se ha convertido Honduras tiene varios responsables. En primer el lugar el imperialismo, que a través de su embajada promueve la inestabilidad política en el país con el apoyo directo al dictador, que para granjearse ese apoyo les ha entregado el país, hasta el grado del despojo y de la ignominia, como puede observarse en los foros internacionales.

Otro responsable es el dictador, que además de la incertidumbre que genera en lo económico, en lo político y en lo social, ha profundizado y llevado al extremo las políticas neoliberales, despojando de sus recursos a comunidades enteras, para dárselas a las transnacionales, principalmente norteamericanas y canadienses.

La oligarquía corrupta, mediocre, salvaje, inepta y rapaz también es responsable de esta crisis humanitaria, quien se ha acostumbrado a vivir del presupuesto nacional a tal grado de convertir al Estado en su patrimonio, por medio de un ejército de ocupación, de diputados y presidentes serviles y títeres, que toman las decisiones no para el pueblo, sino que para sus insaciables intereses.

Hay otro actor importante en esta crisis y es el Ejército Nacional, fiel sirviente de los intereses imperiales y de la oligarquía, que sólo sirve para consumir una gran tajada del presupuesto nacional y más que un ejército defensor y garante de la soberanía nacional es una fuerza de ocupación; listo para asesinar, torturar y matar aquellos que se oponen al dictador, al imperio y la oligarquía.

Desgraciadamente esta caravana la conforman los miserables, los desheredados de la tierra, los parias: “los que crían querubes para el presidio y serafines para el burdel” como dijo en su poema, Los Parias, el poeta mexicano Salvador Díaz Mirón.

Estos miserables y desheredados no huyen de la patria, la aman, la adoran y la llevan convertida en un dolor sobre sus hombros, huyen de los verdugos y carniceros que nos gobiernan y de los otros responsables de esta crisis humanitaria. Los que huyen aman a esta tierra más que los que nos quedamos.

▻https://criterio.hn/2018/10/29/no-es-una-caravana-es-un-dolor-que-camina
#douleur

WALKING, NOT FLOWING : THE MIGRANT CARAVAN AND THE GEOINFRASTRUCTURING OF UNEQUAL MOBILITY

In 2015 our TV screens, newspapers and social media were full of stories about ‘flows’ of migrants ‘pouring’ into Europe, set alongside photos and videos of people packed into boats at sea or meandering in long lines across fields. This vocabulary, and the images that accompanied it, suggested that migration was a natural force: like a flow of water that cannot be stopped, governed only by the forces of gravity. Now, this same language is being used to describe the ‘migrant caravan’ of the thousands of Hondurans leaving the violence of their home country and attempting to journey to the US.

This essay began life as an angry Twitter thread, hastily tapped out with my morning coffee. I argued that people were not flowing, but rather walking. In this Twitter thread, I tried to forge a connection between the how of the journey—noting both the material and geographical aspects impacting and structuring how people move—and the physical impacts of that journey on the bodies of those on the move. I called attention to the travelers’ tired, blistered feet in an attempt to weave a thread between the material (and political) geographies of the journey and the embodied experiences of those making it. The Twitter thread drew some attention and solicited an invitation to write a short intervention for the small Dutch critical-journalism platform De Nieuwe Reporterwhere it appeared in Dutch with the title: “Dit is waarom media niet moeten schrijven over ‘migrantenstromen’” (“This is why the media should not write about ‘migrant flows’”).

Time has passed since I wrote the intervention. Since then, the caravan has journeyed to the US-Mexico border. US and Mexican authorities have responded with tear gas and closures, highlighting in clear terms the violence of the border and corresponding mobility governance. This violence is too often obscured by talk of flows: in the intervention, I worked hard to make visible what watery metaphors of ‘flow’ do to shape how we think about migrant mobilities and what is lost in their usage. I attempted to highlight the uneven politics of mobility that is shaped by and made visible through a consideration of what I want to call geoinfrastructuring, alongside the embodied effects of this uneven mobility. Here, in contrast to modernity’s quest for faster, more convenient, more efficient modes of travel to overcome the limits of the body as it encounters and moves through space, the migrant caravan’s mode(s) of travel—walking, stopping, starting, bus hopping, sitting, waiting, sleeping—bring into sharp relief the ways that for those excluded from privileged mobility regimes, the body is in intimate concert with the material world it encounters.

The remainder of this essay will first reproduce the short intervention I wrote for De Nieuwe Reporter before thinking through more conceptually how this opinion piece relates to scholarly work on mobility and infrastructures.

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What we call things matters (while often invisibilizing how they matter). A Reuters report on the status of the migrant caravan in English from October 21st had the headline “Thousands in U.S.-bound migrant caravan pour into Mexican city”, while two days earlier a report by Reuters had talked about a “bedraggled” migrant “surge” attempting to “breach” the Mexican border. Meanwhile in other news outlets, the watery theme continued with a migrant “storm” in the UK’s Daily Mail, and a “wave” in USA Today. And lest we think this was a something restricted to reporting in the Global North, the Latin American press has not been immune, with Venezuela’s Telesur talking of a “second wave of migration.” Meanwhile in the Dutch language media, De Telegraafwrote of “Grote migrantenstromen trekken naar VS”, the headline handily highlighted in red in case the emergency nature of these “migrantenstromen” was not clear.

A counterpoint was offered by oneworld.nl, who talked of the dehumanizing effects of such language use. Indeed, what we call things matters, because politicians also echo the language of the media creating a self-re-enforcing migration language. Unsurprisingly Trump has talked of flows in his condemnation of the Honduran migrant caravan, while Mark Rutte earlier this year talked about Europe not being ready for a new “migrantenstroom” (“migrant flow”). However, what we call things also matters as much for what it reveals as what it conceals. The widespread use of watery and other natural metaphors when talking about migration journeys hides both the realities of and the reasons for the people’s journeys. To talk of rivers, streams, floods, and flows masks the experiences of the thousands of people who are walking thousands of kilometers. They are walking along roads, up hills and across borders; they are tired and hungry, and their feet hurt. Many are travelling with children as people are leaving lives of poverty and deadly gang violence and looking for a safe future in the United States. Just as the British-Somali refugee poet Warshan Shire urges us to consider that “No one would put their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land”, in the case of the Honduran migrant caravan it’s very unlikely that anyone would walk thousands of kilometers unless the road was safer than their homes.

One of those travelling is Orellana, an unemployed domestic worker travelling with her two five-year-old grandsons. She declared she had no choice after the boys’ father was murdered and she “[Could not] feed them anymore”, and she is too old to get a job herself. Orellana has decided to try and get to Texas where her daughter, who migrated three years before, now lives.

What the watery metaphors also hide is the agency of Hondurans like Orellana in attempting the journey and what the decision to travel in such a large group tells us about the realities of the journey itself. While the migrant caravan is walking to ostensible safety, the northbound journeys of Central American migrants through Mexico to the US are not safe. Many thousands attempt this journey every year, encountering detention and extortion by the police and drug cartels, physical violence, rape, and death. The policing of Mexico’s southern border, undertaken with the support of the US, does not only capture migrants in its net. Mexicans of indigenous appearance, suspected of being from Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador because of crude processes of racial profiling, are routinely caught up in and detained in police patrols and at police checkpoints. In all this, women and teenagers are at particular risk. The risks of the journey are the reasons underpinning the choice of the Hondurans to travel in a caravan—the idea being that the greater the number of people, the lower the risk of capture and deportation, of physical harm from police, cartels and criminals along the route, and of being stopped by border controls. Moving in a caravan also removes the need to employ the services of smugglers who are often linked to cartels and are a source of the violence migrants face. In other words, people are reclaiming the right to move without paying large sums of money.

Talk of “flows” also hides the way the journeys of migrants are shaped by the infrastructures of their travel. Roads direct migrants in particular directions and border controls interrupt their movement and divert them into using different paths. Unlike a river, they are not a force of nature that can make their way to their metaphorical sea by the quickest and most efficient route possible. The obstacles migrants encounter on their journey are not only natural obstacles like rivers, deserts, or mountains, but also human-made obstacles like police roadblocks, border control points and migrant prisons.

And yet in the face of all this, they still walk. Faced with the difficulties of the journey and the promise of repatriation, some have already returned to Honduras. But many in the caravan have now crossed two national borders, with Guatemala and Mexico. Their numbers are growing as many people see the strength in numbers and the difficulty, both practically and politically, of preventing passage. Many others still are left sleeping on bridges, hungry and thirsty with little access to sanitation or shelter as they wait to enter Mexico. And yet they walk, they wait, and more join because “It’s even worse in Honduras.”

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In my work on humanitarian borderwork I have begun to argue for a deeper focus on the ways infrastructures and geographies intimately shape not only the risks faced by those excluded from safe and legal travel but also how the excluded move (Pallister-Wilkins, 2018, 2019). This builds on William Walter’s earlier demand that studies of migration take the journey seriously:

The vehicle, its road, its route—these particular materialities are not entirely missing from scholarship on migration politics. But… they rarely feature as a central focus in theorisation and investigation of migration worlds. This is surely a paradox. All migrations involve journeys and those journeys are more often than not mediated by complex transport infrastructures, authorities and norms of transportation. Granted, in many instances those journeys may be rather uneventful and not in the least bit life-changing or politically salient… Nevertheless, in many other instances, the journey is politically salient, perhaps even a life-or-death experience. (2015: 270)

Alongside taking the journey seriously, Mimi Sheller’s important work has shone a light on systems of ‘motility’, differential mobility capability, and mobility justice (2018) and Vicki Squire has drawn our attention to the biophysical role of deserts and seas in governing mobility (2016). Therefore, a focus on the journey and differential mobility capabilities challenges the watery metaphor of ‘flow,’ compelling us instead to understand how infrastructures and geographies—roads, bridges, deserts, mountains, border controls, police patrols, walls and fences, time and speed — make possible and condition particular types of mobility with embodied effects.

Infrastructures here, following Lauren Berlant (2016), are defined by use (and movement) coming to pattern social life. They are what organizes life. As such they are agents in the (re)production of social inequalities (Donovan, 2015) and uneven geographies (Chua et. al, 2018). Alongside the way infrastructures pattern social life, consideration of infrastructuring offers a dynamic way of understanding the how of unequal mobility beyond the crafting of policy, enabling a greater consideration of infrastructure as something dynamic and mutable in the context of use. Infrastructures are not all encountered or utilized equally. A road driven is not the same as a road walked. Moreover, in thinking about context and use, Deborah Cowen (2014) has drawn our attention to the ways infrastructure, such as complex systems of just-in-time logistics, not only works to overcome the limits of space and time, but also offers opportunities for disruption and resistance. The essays in the “Investigating Infrastructures” Forum on this site show the role of infrastructures in crafting and reinforcing uneven geographies.

With this in mind, I also want to consider the role of physical geography as an active agent working along with border, policing, and transport infrastructures in conditioning the how of unequal mobility as well as the embodied risks migrants face. The exclusive and privileged nature of various (safer) transport infrastructures and the growth of differential mobility regimes results in physical geographies and their attendant risks coming to matter to what Karen Barad would call matter (2003), in this instance to human life and well-being. In these instances, physical geographies have been politically made to matter through various policies underpinning mobility access and they come to matter at the level of the individual migrant bodies that encounter them.

Infrastructural projects—roads, railways, and shipping routes—are all attempts to overcome the limits of physical geography. Planes and their attendant infrastructures of airports, airlines, runways and air traffic control make the traversal of great distance and the geographies of seas, mountains, and deserts possible and less risky. By making air travel exclusive, not through cost alone but through border regimes that deny access to those without the correct documentation, physical geography comes to matter more. Those seeking life through movement are increasingly prevented from accessing such transport. Thus, at the level of individual bodies and the journeys they make, the physical geography of the route comes to play a greater constitutive role. As Mimi Sheller makes clear, “There is a relation between personal bodily vulnerabilities, the struggle for shelter, the splintering of infrastructural systems, and the management of citizenship regimes and borders” (2018: xiv).

Infrastructural projects such as roads, railways, and runways suggest attempts to overcome the limits of physical geography and yet are also intimately shaped by them. Mountain roads, for example, contain hairpin bends necessitated by the gradient of the slopes they cross. Bridges span rivers where such engineering can practically and safely take place. Meanwhile, a lack of roads or bridges impedes mobility, encouraging migrants to use boats, to swim, or like the Rohingya’s journeys from Rakhine into Bangladesh, to use the small narrow dykes that have shaped the environment of the wetlands of the Naf River delta.

As John Law noted in his study of the possibilities that the Portuguese ship created for long distance control and an apparent human-technological triumph over space, the physical geographies of the ocean—“the winds and currents”—are an ever-present actor working in concert with infrastructure networks (1986). According to Law, it is not possible to think about these infrastructural networks and the social, political, and economic forces they represent and bring into being without a consideration of what he calls the natural, or what I am calling physical geography. The nature of concern to Law is very different from the natural world evoked by discussion of migrant flows and the wide variety of attendant watery metaphors. In these discussions, flow is a description. For Law, flow would have and perform a relational role. This relational ontology becomes even more politically pressing when the natural has embodied effects on the lives of migrants bound up in such a relational system. Put simply, the physical geography alongside infrastructures affects how people move and the risks they encounter on their journeys.

Therefore, geoinfrastructuring, I argue, is important in considering how people exercise mobility. Geoinfrastructuring both conditions the journey of the migrant caravan and creates particular embodied effects, such as sore feet, blisters, joint pain, sprained muscles, and dehydration. Moments of enforced waiting on the journey, such as at border crossing points, generate their own embodied risks due to poor sanitation, lack of access to clean drinking water, and exposure to extreme weather, which in turn creates the need for as well as the time and space for limited humanitarian relief (see Pallister-Wilkins, 2018). However, as the migrant caravan attests, geoinfrastructure also creates the possibility for a (conditioned) resistance to exclusionary political-material mobility regimes. Infrastructural spaces and systems—roads, transit areas, buses and pick-up trucks—are being claimed and used by Honduran migrants in their journeys to the United States. In Europe and in the context of my own research, one of the key architects of Médecins Sans Frontiéres’ Search and Rescue operations has impressed upon me the important interrelation of the sea, infrastructures of surveillance and visibility, and the boat in making possible humanitarian efforts not only at saving lives but in addition the “activist” element of such search and rescue. Here, the dynamics of the sea, in concert with European border surveillance systems such as EUROSUR and the boat, make possible certain political interventions and disruptions that, it is argued, are not possible in other environments such as the Sahara and speak to Law’s idea of a relational ontology.[1]

Away from the migrant caravan and my own research on search and rescue in the Mediterranean, I have become interested in exploring the relationship between physical, infrastructural and border geographies in how migrants choose to cross the Alps from Italy into France. These crossings occur at only a few points along the border, at crossing points that are manageable to migrants with differential mobility capabilities. Importantly, they are less risky than other crossing points due to lower altitude, better transport connections and a reduced police presence, such as at the Col de l’Échelle between the Italian town of Bardonecchia and the French city of Briançon. People do not cross through these places for lack of other routes. The town of Bardonecchia, for example, is located at the Italian entrance of both the Fréjus tunnel linking France and Italy, carrying motor vehicles under the Alps, and the older Mont Cenis tunnel linking France and Italy by rail. The entry point to the Fréjus and the trains using the Mont Cenis are heavily policed. The policing of the Fréjus tunnel is further made easier by traffic having to stop and pass through toll booths. And yet, the presence of the railway and its attendant station in Bardonecchia means that it is relatively accessible for migrants travelling from the rest of Italy. Its proximity to the French border, only 7km and a relatively gentle walk away, means that this particular border region has become a particularly popular passage point for migrants wanting to leave Italy for France.

I have come to know this region well through its additional and complimentary infrastructures of tourism. The cross-border region is a popular holiday destination for people like me who are drawn there by the geoinfrastructure that makes for excellent cycling terrain. This tourism infrastructure for both summer and winter Alpine sports and outdoor activities means that the area is comparatively heavily populated for the Hautes-Alpes. This has resulted in services capable and willing to assist migrants with their journeys, from dedicated and well-equipped teams of mountain rescuers, to a large hospital specializing in mountain injuries, and solidarity activists offering food and shelter. In this region of the Hautes-Alpes, geoinfrastructuring, like with the migrant caravan, shapes not only how and why migrants make their journeys in particular ways: it also facilitates the exercising of political resistance to exclusionary border regimes by both migrants themselves and those who stand in solidarity with them.

With this short essay I have attempted to challenge the language of flows and in so doing drawn attention to the constitutive role of infrastructures and their embodied effects in how migrants, excluded from safe and legal forms of transportation, exercise mobility. I have argued that as political geographers we should also consider the role of physical geography in making a difference in these journeys that occur in concert with roads, rivers, mountains, deserts, tunnels, bridges and vehicles. These physical geographies, as Vicki Squire argues, have biophysical effects. This is not to normalize the very real bodily dangers faced by migrants in their journeys by seeking to lay blame at the foot of the mountain, so to speak. Instead, it is to suggest that these physical geographies come to matter and have very real effects because of the political role ascribed to them by human decision-making concerned with (re)producing unequal mobility. It is to make the case for what I have termed here geoinfrastructuring—the assemblage of physical, material and political geographies—that shape how migrants move and the risks they face.

▻http://societyandspace.org/2019/02/21/walking-not-flowing-the-migrant-caravan-and-the-geoinfrastructuring

Quand les caravanes passent…

Depuis l’intégration du Mexique à l’Espace de libre-échange nord- américain, la question migratoire est devenue centrale dans ses relations avec les États-Unis, dans une perspective de plus en plus sécuritaire. Sa frontière méridionale constitue le point de convergence des migrations des pays du sud vers les pays nord-américains. Les caravanes de migrants, qui traversent son territoire depuis la fin 2018, traduisent une façon de rompre avec la clandestinité autant qu’une protection contre les périls de la traversée ; elles sont aussi l’expression d’une geste politique.

Le Mexique occupe dans la stratégie de sécurisation des frontières américaines un rôle pivot, à la fois un État tampon et un relais du processus d’externalisation du contrôle des frontières dans l’espace méso-américain. Si l’attention médiatique tend à se focaliser sur les 3 000 kilomètres de frontières qu’il partage avec son voisin du nord, sa frontière sud catalyse les enjeux géopolitiques du contrôle des flux dans la région.

Depuis son intégration à l’espace de libre-échange nord-américain au cours des années 1990, le Mexique a vu s’imposer la question migratoire dans ses relations diplomatiques avec les États-Unis. L’objectif d’une régulation du passage des frontières par le blocage des flux illicites, de biens ou de personnes, est devenu un élément central de la coopération bilatérale, a fortiori après le 11 septembre 2001. La frontière sud, longue de près de 1 000 kilomètres, circonscrit l’espace de libre circulation formé en 2006 par le Nicaragua, le Honduras, le Salvador et le Guatemala. Elle constitue le point de convergence des migrations en direction des pays nord-américains.
Faire frontière

Dans les années 2000, les autorités mexicaines ont donc élaboré une stratégie de surveillance fondée sur la mise en place de cordons sécuritaires [1], depuis l’isthme de Tehuantepec jusqu’à la frontière sud, bordée par une zone forestière difficilement contrôlable. Responsable de l’examen du droit au séjour, l’Institut national de migration (INM) est devenu en 2005 une « agence de sécurité nationale » : la question migratoire est depuis lors envisagée dans cette optique sécuritaire. Des « centres de gestion globale du transit frontalier » [centro de atención integral al tránsito fronterizo] ont été construits à une cinquantaine de kilomètres de la frontière sud. Chargées de filtrer les marchandises comme les individus, ces mégastructures regroupent des agents de l’armée, de la marine, de la police fédérale, de la migration et du bureau fédéral du Procureur général. En 2014, la surveillance des déplacements a été confortée par l’adoption du « Programme Frontière sud », à l’issue d’une rencontre entre le président Peña Nieto et son homologue américain, mécontent de l’inaction du Mexique face à l’afflux de mineurs à leur frontière commune. Derrière le vernis humanitaire de la protection des personnes, la détention et l’expulsion sont érigées en objectifs politiques. Fin 2016, les placements en rétention avaient augmenté de 85 %, les expulsions doublé. Proche de la frontière guatémaltèque, le centre de rétention de Tapachula, décrit comme le plus moderne et le plus grand d’Amérique centrale [2], concentre près de la moitié des expulsions organisées par le Mexique. Avec ceux des États de Tabasco et de Veracruz, ce sont plus de 70 % des renvois qui sont mis en œuvre depuis cette région. De multiples rapports associatifs font état de l’augmentation des drames humains liés à ces dispositifs qui aboutissent, de fait, à une clandestinisation de la migration et rendent les routes migratoires plus dangereuses.

La migration a également été incorporée aux multiples programmes américains de coopération visant à lutter contre les trafics illicites, la criminalité transfrontalière et le terrorisme. Ces programmes n’ont eu d’autre effet que de faire des personnes en route vers le nord une nouvelle manne financière pour les organisations criminelles qui contrôlent ces espaces de circulation transnationale. La traversée de la frontière américaine guidée par un passeur coûterait 3 500 dollars, les prix variant en fonction de la « méthode ». Le passage par la « grande porte », à l’un des points officiels d’entrée sur le territoire américain, s’achèterait 18 000 dollars. Mais les cartels recrutent aussi des migrant·es pour convoyer plusieurs dizaines de kilos de drogue sur le territoire américain, des « mules » payées 2 000 dollars si elles y parviennent. L’extorsion, la prise d’otages et le travail forcé des migrant·es en transit vers les États-Unis figurent parmi les pratiques des cartels, avec parfois la complicité des agents de l’État. En 2011, des personnes en instance d’expulsion ont ainsi été vendues par des fonctionnaires de l’INM au cartel des Zetas contre 400 dollars par personne.

Se donnant entre autres objectifs de « construire la frontière du xxiesiècle », l’Initiative Mérida a investi plus de 2,8 milliards de dollars depuis 2007 dans le renforcement d’infrastructures, la technologie du contrôle – dont l’échange avec la partie nord-américaine des données biométriques des personnes placées en rétention – et l’organisation d’opérations policières à la frontière avec le Guatemala. Ce programme finance aussi l’expulsion de ressortissants centraméricains ou extracontinentaux par le Mexique (20 millions de dollars en 2018).

Dans une certaine mesure, ces dispositifs font système, au point que certains chercheurs [3] parlent du corridor migratoire mexicain comme d’une « frontière verticale ».
Des caravanes pas comme les autres

Du premier groupe constitué d’une centaine de personnes parties du Honduras en octobre 2018 aux divers collectifs formés en cours de route vers la frontière nord-américaine par des milliers d’individus venant d’Amérique centrale, de la Caraïbe et, dans une moindre mesure, des continents africain et asiatique, ce qu’il est désormais convenu d’appeler des « caravanes de migrants » constitue un phénomène inédit.

Dans l’histoire centraméricaine, la notion renvoie à une pluralité de mobilisations, telle celle des mères de migrant·es disparu·es au cours de la traversée du Mexique, qui chaque année parcourent cette route à la recherche de leurs fils ou filles. Le Viacrucis migrante, « chemin de croix du migrant », réunit annuellement des sans-papiers centraméricain·es et des organisations de droits de l’Homme afin de réclamer la poursuite des auteur·es de violations des droits des migrant·es en transit au Mexique, séquestrations, racket, assassinats, viols, féminicides, exploitation ou tous autres abus.

La première caravane de migrants du Honduras et celles qui lui ont succédé s’inscrivent dans une autre démarche. Elles traduisent une façon de rompre avec la clandestinité imposée par les politiques autant qu’une forme de protection contre les périls de la traversée. Le nombre des marcheurs a créé un nouveau rapport de force dans la remise en cause des frontières. Entre octobre 2018 et février 2019, plus de 30 000 personnes réunies en caravanes ont été enregistrées à la frontière sud du Mexique mais, chaque jour, elles sont des milliers à entrer clandestinement. Entre janvier et mars 2019, les États-Unis ont recensé plus de 234 000 entrées sur leur territoire, le plus souvent hors des points d’entrée officiels.

Ces caravanes ont aussi révélé un phénomène jusqu’alors peu visible : l’exode centraméricain. Depuis les années 2000, près de 400 000 personnes par an, originaires du Honduras, du Salvador, du Guatemala, migrent aux États- Unis. Fuyant des États corrompus et autoritaires, une violence endé- mique et multiforme, dont celle des maras (gangs) et des cartels, ainsi que les effets délétères du modèle extractiviste néolibéral, elles quittent des pays qui, selon elles, n’ont rien à leur offrir.

Ces migrations ne doivent pas être appréhendées de façon monolithique : les caravanes constituent une juxtaposition de situations diverses ; les groupes se font et se transforment au cours de la route, au gré des attentes de chacun. Certains ont préféré régulariser leur situation dès l’entrée sur le territoire mexicain quand d’autres ont choisi de pousser jusqu’à la frontière nord, d’où ils ont engagé des démarches auprès des autorités mexicaines et américaines.
Du Nord au Sud, la fabrique d’une « crise migratoire »

En réaction à ces différentes mobilités, le Mexique et les États-Unis ont déployé leurs armées, le premier oscillant entre un accueil humanitaire ad hoc, des pratiques de contention et l’expulsion, ou la facilitation des traversées en direction des États-Unis. Les mesures adoptées tant par les États-Unis que par le Mexique ont participé à l’engorgement des frontières, du sud au nord, créant ainsi la situation de « crise migratoire » qu’ils prétendaient prévenir.

Sollicité par le gouvernement mexicain avant même l’arrivée de la première caravane sur le territoire des États-Unis, le Haut-Commissariat pour les réfugiés (HCR) a obtenu des fonds de ces derniers pour faciliter l’accès à la procédure d’asile mexicaine. Les États-Unis ont également mobilisé l’Organisation internationale pour les migrations (OIM) pour qu’elle mette en place des campagnes de sensibilisation sur les risques de la traversée, et d’encouragement au retour. Écartant d’emblée la revendication des marcheurs de pouvoir solliciter collectivement l’asile à la frontière américaine, les agents du HCR ont insisté sur la complexité des procédures et la faible probabilité d’obtenir l’asile aux États-Unis, confortant le discours porté par l’OIM. Les organisations mexi- caines de défense des droits des étrangers ne se sont pas saisies du droit comme d’une arme politique de soutien à l’appel des marcheurs à une libre circulation au Mexique et au refuge pour tous aux États-Unis. L’ensemble des discours en direction des caravanes ont convergé en faveur de la promotion de l’installation au Mexique. « À chaque fois, on nous parle de la détention, de l’expulsion… Mais nous, on est là et on va continuer d’avancer ! » a observé l’un des marcheurs.

Depuis plusieurs années, les obstacles à la traversée clandestine du Mexique ont contribué à l’accroissement des demandes d’asile qui sont, avec la carte de visiteur pour raison humanitaire délivrée par l’INM, l’unique option de régularisation. Entre 2013 et 2018, le nombre de requêtes a augmenté de 2 332 %, passant de 1 269 à 29 600. Cette tendance se poursuit. Au premier semestre 2019, la Commission mexicaine d’aide aux réfugiés (Comar) – équivalent de l’Ofpra français – enregistrait une hausse de 182 % par rapport à la même période en 2018, sans que n’augmentent ses moyens. Elle ne disposait en 2017 que de 28 officiers de protection chargés d’instruire les dossiers. L’année suivante, le HCR a soutenu le recrutement de 29 autres officiers tandis que le gouvernement votait une diminution du budget alloué à la Comar. En février 2018, la Commission nationale des droits de l’Homme révélait que des demandes d’asile déposées en 2016 n’avaient toujours pas été examinées, de même que près de 60 % des requêtes formées en 2017. Aux 33 650 dossiers en attente de traitement, se sont ajoutées plus de 12 700 demandes depuis le début 2019.

Pour éviter d’être expulsées, les personnes n’ont d’autre choix que de « faire avec » ce système en pleine déliquescence. En décembre 2018, il fallait compter jusqu’à six semaines avant de pouvoir déposer une requête à la Comar de Tapachula, et six mois à l’issue de l’audition pour obtenir une réponse. En attendant, les postulant·es doivent, chaque semaine, attester du maintien de leur demande et, pour survivre, s’en remettre à l’assistance humanitaire offerte dans les lieux d’hébergement tenus par des ecclésiastiques. Conséquence de cette précarisation croissante, le taux d’abandon des demandes d’asile déposées à la Comar dans l’État du Chiapas atteignait 43% en 2017. Nombreux sont ceux et celles qui sollicitent l’asile et le visa humanitaire dans le même temps et, une fois le second obtenu, partent chercher un travail au nord du pays. Afin de réduire l’abandon des demandes d’asile, le HCR verse un pécule durant quatre mois aux personnes jugées « vulnérables », une appréciation subordonnée à son budget. En plus des pointages hebdomadaires auprès des administrations, les bénéficiaires doivent chaque mois attester de leur présence au bureau du HCR pour recevoir ce pécule. Dans cette configuration, la distinction entre les logiques sécuritaire et humanitaire se brouille. Parmi les personnes rencontrées à Tapachula, nombreuses sont celles qui ont souligné l’artifice d’une politique d’assistance qui n’en porte que le nom, à l’exemple de Guillermo, originaire du Salvador : « Pour demander des papiers aujourd’hui, il faut passer d’abord par la mafia des organisations. Tout le monde te parle, chacun te propose son petit discours. Cela me fait penser aux prestidigitateurs au cirque, c’est une illusion.[...] Le HCR dit que la procédure d’asile est longue et qu’on peut en profiter pour faire des formations pour apprendre un nouveau métier [...]. Mais déjà, la plupart ici n’a pas l’argent pour ça et se bat pour vivre et trouver un logement ! Ensuite moi, je dois aller signer chaque mardi à la Comar et chaque vendredi à l’INM, le HCR me propose deux jours de cours de langue par semaine pour apprendre l’anglais, mais ça veut dire quoi ? Cela veut dire qu’on peut juste aller travailler un jour par semaine ?! [...] Ils te font miroiter des choses, ils t’illusionnent ! [...] Le HCR te dit : "Tu ne peux pas sortir du Chiapas." La Comar te dit : "Tu ne peux pas sortir de Tapachula." L’INM te dit : "Si on te chope, on t’expulse." »

La formation d’un espace de contention au bord de l’implosion au sud du Mexique fait écho à la situation de blocage à la frontière nord du pays, renforcée en novembre 2018 par le plan « Reste au Mexique », mal renommé depuis « Protocole de protection de la migration ». Les États-Unis, qui obligeaient déjà les demandeurs d’asile à s’enregistrer et attendre à la frontière, ont unilatéralement décidé de contraindre les non-Mexicains à retourner au Mexique durant le traitement de leur demande d’asile, à moins qu’ils ne démontrent les risques qu’ils y encourraient.
Frontières et corruption : une rébellion globale

Ces derniers mois, les entraves et dénis des droits ont engendré de nouvelles formes de mobilisation des migrant·es originaires de la Caraïbe, d’Afrique et d’Asie, jusqu’alors peu visibles. Les personnes en quête de régularisation se heurtent à la corruption qui gangrène les arcanes de l’État : toute démarche, du franchissement de la frontière en passant par la possibilité d’entrer dans les locaux de l’INM jusqu’à l’obtention d’un formulaire, est sujette à extorsion. La délivrance de l’oficio de salida, permettant à certain·es [4] de traverser le pays en direction des États-Unis, est devenue l’objet d’un racket en 2018. Les agents de l’INM disposent d’intermédiaires chargés de récolter l’argent auprès des migrant·es pour la délivrance de ce sauf-conduit, qui donne une vingtaine de jours pour parvenir à la frontière nord. Les montants varient en fonction des nationalités : un Cubain devra payer 400 dollars, un Pakistanais 200 quand un jeune Congolais parviendra à négocier 70 dollars, 100 étant demandés aux autres Africains. Pour tenter de contourner ce système, des personnes sont restées des journées entières devant l’entrée du centre de rétention, dans l’espoir d’y accéder : le plus souvent, seules les familles finissaient par entrer. En mars 2019, des Cubains, exaspérés d’attendre depuis plusieurs mois, ont tenté d’entrer en force à la délégation de l’INM. Rejoints par des personnes originaires de Haïti, d’Amérique centrale, d’Afrique et d’Asie, ils ont été plus de 2 000 à faire le siège des locaux de l’INM, avant de décider, après plusieurs semaines d’attente vaine, de former la caravane centraméricaine et de la Caraïbe vers la frontière nord.

Aujourd’hui, l’élan de solidarité qui avait accueilli la première caravane de Honduriens est retombé. Celles et ceux qui continuent leur route en direction du Mexique et des États-Unis ne bénéficient ni de la même couverture médiatique ni du même traitement politique. Les promesses gouvernementales d’accueil sont restées lettre morte. En janvier 2019, l’INM annonçait avoir délivré 11 823 cartes de visiteurs pour raisons humanitaires au cours du mois. En mars, on n’en comptait plus que 1 024. Outre une recrudescence des expulsions, un nouveau « plan de contention » prévoit le renforcement de la présence policière dans l’isthme de Tehuantepec. Cette stratégie se déploie aussi par-delà le territoire puisque les demandes de visa humanitaire devraient désormais se faire depuis le Honduras, le Salvador et le Guatemala.

Si certains voient dans les caravanes un nouveau paradigme migratoire, une chose est sûre : la contestation des frontières et la défiance envers les États portées par ces mouvements sont l’expression d’une geste politique longtemps déniée à une migration jusqu’alors confinée au silence.

▻https://www.gisti.org/spip.php?article6226

Primer vuelo “exprés” con 129 hondureños retornados de México

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Tras meses de espera en la frontera norte de México, los hondureños solicitantes de asilo en Estados Unidos comienzan a desesperarse y están pidiendo retornar de forma voluntaria al país, tal y como lo hicieron 129 compatriotas que llegaron hoy por vía aérea a #San_Pedro_Sula.

El vuelo, organizado por la embajada de Honduras en México y financiado por la Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (#OIM), salió de la ciudad de #Matamoros (Tamaulipas), donde los hondureños llevaban varios meses de espera.

El embajador de Honduras en México, Alden Rivera Montes, informó que los retornados venían en 55 grupos familiares, constituidos por 32 hombres, 30 mujeres y 65 menores acompañados de sus padres; además, retornaron dos adultos solos.

Rivera Montes detalló que el nuevo Consulado Móvil de Honduras en Matamoros expidió los salvoconductos para que los compatriotas pudieran salir de México mediante la modalidad de Retorno Voluntario Asistido (AVR) a través de la OIM.

Aseguró que debido a los altos índices de violencia de esa ciudad mexicana se están haciendo las gestiones para que los hondureños que son devueltos por las autoridades estadounidenses a México, sean trasladados a puntos fronterizos menos vulnerables.

De la misma manera las autoridades de la embajada de Honduras en México anunciaron que los procesos de atención a los migrantes en situación de espera que deseen regresar voluntariamente a Honduras seguirán abiertos durante los próximos meses y que pronto se habilitará esta misma opción de retorno voluntario desde Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Juárez y Tijuana.

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ATENCIÓN DIGNA

El vuelo llegó al aeropuerto sampedrano a las 3:00 de la tarde y posteriormente los compatriotas fueron trasladados Centro de Atención para la Niñez y Familias Migrantes Belén, ubicado en San Pedro Sula.

En Belén los compatriotas fueron recibidos con un plato de sopa caliente; posteriormente hicieron el Control Biométrico con personal del Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) y llenaron una ficha socioeconómica para optar a los diferentes programas de reinserción social y de oportunidades que ofrece el gobierno.

Los menores retornados también reciben atención médica y psicológica; posteriormente, si son menores no acompañados, un grupo de especialistas de la Dirección de Niñez, Adolescencia y Familia (Dinaf) les brinda seguimiento para garantizar que se cumplan sus derechos.

Asimismo, con el apoyo de la Cruz Roja Hondureña se les brinda una llamada para que puedan comunicarse con sus familiares acá en Honduras, se les proporciona un ticket para que puedan trasladarse a sus lugares de origen y si lo requieren se les brinda un albergue temporal.

▻https://www.latribuna.hn/2019/10/09/primer-vuelo-expres-con-129-hondurenos-retornados-de-mexico
#renvois #expulsions #réfugiés_honduriens #IOM #retour_volontaire

Honduran Migrants Return from Mexico with IOM support

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) organized a charter flight for 126 migrants who expressed their decision to return voluntarily to their country of origin. Fifty-three family groups comprising 33 men, 29 women and 64 children flew on Wednesday (09/10) from the city of Matamoros (Tamaulipas, Mexico) to San Pedro Sula (Honduras).

IOM deployed all efforts and collaborated closely with the Honduran Embassy in Mexico and with the National Migration Institute of Mexico to arrange for this first charter flight in its Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) programme.

In the days preceding departure, with the support of its Shelter Support programme and local partners, IOM provided migrants with accommodation and food. According to its internal protocols, IOM ensured that all migrants were made aware of all processes so that all decisions could be taken based on complete information. Further, IOM verifies that persons who express a desire to return do not face any immediate risks upon arrival.

“I made the decision to return to my country because of the situation I faced with my son; because promises made to us by the ‘coyotes’ are not fulfilled, and we risk our lives along the way,” said a young mother on board the flight. “When we finally crossed the border into the USA, they took us back to Matamoros in Mexico, where I spent eight days in a shelter. There, we saw IOM and we learned about different options. But I want to see my other daughter now, so I decided to return home.”

“Something I want to say is that if I ever migrate again, I will look for information before leaving, because many people simply give money which we do not really have to ‘coyotes’ or guides, who takes advantage of us,” said another Honduran migrant who decided to return due to the difficult conditions in the Mexican border city. “After considering our options, we found the shelter supported by IOM who helped us out by giving us food and a place to stay, and the possibility of return.”

“IOM has been providing support to shelters to increase their capacity along with the option of assisted voluntary returns by bus and commercial flights over the last months,” explained Christopher Gascon, IOM Chief of Mission in Mexico. “This is the first return by charter flight, which offers a better service to migrants who want to return home. We hope to provide many more charter flights in the weeks to come.”

The IOM Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) programme offers an alternative for an orderly, safe and dignified voluntary return for migrants. IOM offers humanitarian assistance to those who cannot or do not wish to remain in Mexico. Voluntariness is a key principle of IOM #AVR programmes worldwide.

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Même l’Eglise est aux côtés des occupants du Hambacher Forst...
▻https://www.domradio.de/themen/sch%C3%B6pfung/2018-09-18/kirche-besorgt-ueber-abholzungsplaene-fuer-hambacher-forst

Kirche besorgt über Abholzungspläne für Hambacher Forst Es geht um Glaubwürdigkeit

„Mit Sorge und Unverständnis“ blickt die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland auf die Vorbereitungen zu weiteren Rodungen im Hambacher Forst. Erforderlich sei ein sofortiger Stopp der entsprechenden Maßnahmen, so die EKD in Hannover.

Darüber hinaus sprachen sich die EKD-Umweltexperten Hans Diefenbacher und Ruth Gütter für ein Moratorium aus, dass bis zu der für den 11. Dezember erwarteten Entscheidung der staatlichen Kohlekommkission gelten solle. Ähnlich hatten sich zuvor schon die Evangelische Kirche im Rheinland und die Evangelische Kirche in Westfalen geäußert.

Lebensgrundlagen für kommende Generationen

Der Hambacher Forst bei Aachen soll einem RWE-Braunkohletagebau weichen und gilt Umweltschützern und Kohlegegnern seit Jahren als Symbol für ihre Proteste. Seit Tagen versucht die Polizei, das 200 Hektar große Waldstück von Aktivisten zu räumen, die dort noch im Protest gegen die Abholzung ausharren.

„Hier geht es um mehr als den Streit um die Erweiterung eines Braunkohletagebaus“, heißt es in der EKD-Erklärung. „Hier geht es um die Glaubwürdigkeit Deutschlands als Vorreiter im Klimaschutz und um die Verantwortung für die Erhaltung der Lebensgrundlagen für kommende Generationen.“ Zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt eine Rodung vorzubereiten sei ein «fatales Zeichen», mit denen die von der Bundesregierung selbst gesetzten Klimaschutzziele infrage gestellt würden.

Kohleausstieg planen

Wenn entschieden würde, dass ein weiterer Kohleabbau in Deutschland vorerst unumgänglich sei, dann hätte man in Hambach nur wenige Monate verloren, so die EKD-Umweltexperten. „Wenn ein Kohleausstieg jedoch auch anders geplant werden kann, wäre die Rodung des Waldes - eine unumkehrbare Zerstörung von über Jahrhunderte gewachsener Natur - überflüssig gewesen.“

#protection_du_climat

La guerra del carbone in Germania fa il primo morto, ad Hambach un attivista è caduto da un albero

Un uomo, probabilmente un mediattivista, è morto nel bosco di Hambach, teatro da giorni, in Germania, delle proteste degli attivisti che tentano di ostacolare il disboscamento da parte del colosso energetico Rwe. La versione ufficiale afferma che non sarebbero state in corso operazioni della polizia di Aquisgrana quando l’uomo è precipitato, poco prima delle 16, da 14 metri da un ponte sospeso tra due case sugli alberi. È morto per le ferite riportate mentre veniva portato via in elicottero verso l’ospedale di Colonia. Le operazioni di evacuazione sono state sospese. Il gruppo militante “Hambi Bleibt” sembra smontare la versione tranquillizzante delle autorità: «un amico che ci ha accompagnato giornalisticamente per un lungo periodo nella foresta oggi è caduto da un ponte sospeso di oltre 20 metri a Beechtown ed è morto. Al momento la polizia e RWE stanno cercando di liberare il villaggio di case sull’albero. Il SEK (Spezialeinsatzkommando), le squadre speciali in assetto antisommossa) stava arrestando un attivista vicino al ponte sospeso.

«Siamo profondamente scossi. Tutti i nostri pensieri e desideri sono con lui. La nostra compassione va a tutti i parenti, amici e persone che si sentono preoccupati – si legge sul sito del gruppo – esortiamo la polizia e RWE a lasciare immediatamente la foresta e a fermare questa pericolosa operazione. Nessuna altra vita potrebbe essere in pericolo. Ciò che è necessario ora è un momento di tranquillità». Gli ecologisti consigliano agli attivisti di proteggersi e non rilasciare dichiarazioni, nemmeno alla polizia: «L’incidente deve essere riparato, ma la polizia non è il posto giusto per farlo. Il suo interesse è dare la colpa ai manifestanti».

L’incidente arriva mentre l’evacuazione dello Zad dalla foresta di Hambach è in corso dallo scorso giovedì per fare spazio all’estensione di una miniera di carbone RWE, la prima compagnia energetica tedesca. Un’operazione fortemente contestata dall’opposizione e dalla stampa tedesca.

Le operazioni della polizia sono iniziate il 13 settembre. I manifestanti ecologisti oppongono una resistenza passiva alle manovre delle forze dell’ordine: gli attivisti sono appollaiati su alberi alti circa 25 metri, e portarli via, in modo sicuro, per le forze dell’ordine è impresa complicata. Infatti c’è scappato il morto. Le operazioni sono iniziate alle 8.20 di giovedì scorso, quando gli agenti hanno dato un ultimatum, chiedendo, con i megafoni, di lasciare libera l’area nel giro di 30 minuti. Gli attivisti non hanno rispettato la scadenza. «Riteniamo che questa operazione durerà diversi giorni – ha detto il presidente della polizia locale allo Spiegel – e porterà immagini anche drammatiche. Abbiamo 60 case sugli alberi da sgomberare. Prendere queste persone dalle case sugli alberi è una grande sfida».

Si è conclusa con 14 dimostranti arrestati e 8 feriti, di cui 3 poliziotti, la manifestazione di domenica scorsa contro l’abbattimento di una porzione della foresta di Hambach per lasciare spazio ad una miniera di carbone del gruppo energetico RWE, nell’ovest della Germania. La polizia ha ripreso con lo sgombero delle casette costruite dai manifestanti sugli alberi: al momento ne sono state sgomberate 28 su 50, e 19 di queste sono state demolite. Alla manifestazione hanno partecipato 4000 manifestanti, secondo la polizia, tra le 5000 e le 9000 persone, secondo le organizzazioni ambientaliste. La foresta di Hambach è diventata, intanto, per le diverse organizzazioni ambientaliste un simbolo della resistenza contro la politica energetica basata sul carbone.

Le autorità hanno cercato per giorni di fare sgomberare gli ambientalisti che si sono incatenati a delle case sugli alberi e ai tronchi degli arbusti. I manifestanti sperano che una commissione nominata dal governo per esaminare il futuro dell’industria carbonifera tedesca consigli di bloccare la distruzione della foresta.

«Ci stiamo battendo per gli obiettivi sul clima a livello globale e nell’interesse del futuro di tutti», ha spiegato uno degli attivisti di Hambach. Nel corso di una conferenza stampa i militanti hanno chiesto che il governo tedesco «si impegni subito» con misure concrete a favore del clima.

Il carbone è il combustibile fossile più sporco. Gli enormi escavatori estraggono dalla terra il brown coal – la lignite. Questo combustibile fossile ammonta ancora a circa un quarto del mix energetico tedesco. Proprio domani, giovedì, attivisti e ambientalisti avevano in programma di presentarsi al premier della Renania Settentrionale-Vestfalia, Armin Laschet, con una petizione firmata da 500.000 cittadini che chiedono al governo del Land di intervenire e salvare la foresta.

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signalé par @albertocampiphoto

Il s’appelait Steffen. À Hambach, un blogueur militant chute mortellement lors de l’opération policière

Un déploiement policier massif se déroule en forêt de Hambach, pour évacuer des écologistes qui tentent d’empêcher l’extension d’une mine de charbon géante. Mercredi 19 septembre, un jeune blogueur est mortellement tombé d’une cabane.

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Allemagne : la justice stoppe l’agrandissement d’une vaste mine de charbon

La justice allemande a stoppé ce vendredi l’agrandissement controversé d’une énorme mine de charbon, interdisant à l’énergéticien RWE de déboiser la forêt de Hambach tant que le recours sur le fond de ce projet n’aura pas été tranché.

Occupée depuis six ans par des dizaines de militants écologistes, dans des constructions parfois situées à la cime des arbres, cette forêt de l’ouest du pays proche d’Aix-la-Chapelle cristallise les débats allemands autour de l’exploitation de la lignite, source d’énergie bon marché et très polluante.

Se prononçant en appel et en référé, la Cour régionale administrative de Münster a estimé que RWE « n’avait pas le droit de déboiser la forêt de Hambach » tant que la justice n’aura pas examiné le recours déposé sur le fond par l’association environnementale Bund.

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#HambacherForst #RWE #lignite #charbon #émissions #gaz_carbonique

Hambi Bleibt !

Jeudi 25.10.2018 la caravane depuis Genève et Lausanne comportant une soixantaine d’activistes pour la justice climatique s’en va rejoindre le camp de #Ende_Gelände, une coalition de résistance contre la déforestation et l’extraction du charbon en Rhénanie-du-Nord-Westphalie. [Podcast en pied de page].

L’extractivisme qui prolifère en Amérique latine, en Afrique et ailleurs ne contient aucune vertu. Il regorge de nuisances et comporte un haut degré de nocivité à tous points de vue. Le Lignite. Roche sédimentaire au bas PCI (pouvoir calorifique inférieur) qui est l’objet de l’extraction est donc premièrement un mauvais carburant.

Deuxièmement, son extraction est source de radon, responsable de cancer du poumon et de sulfure responsable des pluies acides. Sa combustion dégage du dioxyde de carbone et contribue à l’aggravation de l’effet de serre. C’est donc une impasse pour user d’un doux euphémisme.

Cette maudite mine menace la forêt de Hambach, écorchée et réduite quasiment à néant. Celle-ci se situe entre Cologne et Aix-la-Chapelle, en Rhénanie-du-Nord-Westphalie dans l’ouest de l’Allemagne. Une zone déjà fortement touchée par l’industrialisation galopante.

Elle est ainsi nommée d’après le quartier de Hambach de la ville de Niederzier où elle se situe en partie. La forêt ainsi que la mine de charbon, objet de l’extractivisme si nocif est dénoncé par Ende Gelände, une coalition en lutte pour la justice climatique. ET pas que.

Antérieure à la dernière glaciation la forêt date d’environ 12 000 ans. Les arbres les plus anciens ont environ 350 ans. La forêt qui faisait encore 12 000 ha au début du 19ème siècle n’en faisait plus que 4.200 ha en 1978, quand la construction de la mine de Hambach l’a réduit à 226 ha. Depuis 2004, l’entreprise RWE a annoncé vouloir étendre la mine et réduire la surface forestière à 80 ha. La résistance à cours, menée par des activistes qui occupent la forêt depuis lors comme zone à défendre (ZAD).

Des examens d’archéologie expérimentale y ont été conduits pour reconstituer les pratiques agricoles du Néolithique.La forêt de Hambach est constituée d’un environnement d’une haute valeur écologique.

D’après les études du BUND, sur les 226 hectares de forêt, la faune de la forêt contient douze espèces de chauve-souris « strictement protégées ». En tout, 142 espèces protégées seraient présentes sur le territoire boisé.

La flore de la forêt est composée de nombreux spécimens de charme commun et de chêne pédonculé.

Dès 1977, il s’est formé le Hambach-Gruppe (« groupe de Hambach ») pour protester contre l’expropriation et la destruction de villages entiers pour permettre l’agrandissement de la mine. Des groupes locaux, des organisations environnementales et même des associations religieuses à l’instar de simples militant·e·x·ss se sont progressivement dressé·e·x·s contre la déforestation au fur et à mesure que la forêt s’amenuisait.

En 2004, des militants de Greenpeace font les premiers actes de résistance médiatisés contre la déforestation. En 2009, le BUND porte sa première plainte contre #RWE.

À partir de mi-avril 2012, des militant·e·x·s commencent à camper dans la forêt et à organiser des occupations d’arbres. Le but est d’empêcher la destruction de la forêt, conséquence de l’extension programmée de la mine. C’est aussi une manière de médiatiser les conséquences écologiques de cette mine, première source de gaz à effet de serre de toute l’Europe selon l’ONG 350.org.

Ende Gelände, Terre perdue, depuis 2016 est un important mouvement de protestation et de désobéissance civile en Allemagne pour limiter le réchauffement climatique par l’élimination des combustibles fossiles

En 2018 la lutte continue et s’intensifie, la police réprime pour le compte de RWE et le 19 septembre 2018 un militant meurt dans une chute depuis une cabane dans les bois assiégée par la police. RWE, acronyme de Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk Aktiengesellschaft conglomérat allemand dans le secteur énergétique plus particulièrement la distribution d’électricité. Horrible entité qui fait de la recherche du profit sont unique et aveugle dispositif.

En 2018, Ende Gelände revient avec une action de masse de désobéissance civile contre le lignite et en soutien à la forêt d’Hambach du 25 au 29 octobre 2018.

« Nous voulons stopper l’extraction du lignite – maintenant ! Rendez-vous dans le bassin minier en Rhénanie au début de la saison de déboisement opéré par RWE en octobre. L’action aura lieu même si le déboisement est annulé, car les raisons de lutter pour une sortie immédiate du lignite et pour une justice climatique n’en restent pas moins nombreuses. »

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« La #désobéissance_civile est un symbole puissant »

Près de 6500 personnes ont bloqué l’accès à la mine de charbon la plus polluante d’Europe, dans la plus grande action de ce type jamais vue sur le continent. Reportage avec un groupe de Romands.

A l’aube samedi matin, une ambiance électrique régnait aux alentours de la mine de charbon de Hambach, en Allemagne. Et pour cause : les 6500 manifestants venus protester contre cette exploitation venaient d’apprendre qu’un petit groupe était parvenu à y pénétrer durant la nuit, immobilisant deux excavatrices et mettant le chantier à l’arrêt. Sous les chants, les slogans et les acclamations, le cortège s’est mis en marche pour rejoindre les lieux, formant une manifestation qui s’est étendue à perte de vue au milieu des champs d’éoliennes.

L’action, régie par les principes du #pacifisme et de la désobéissance civile, avait pour but de passer les barrages policiers grâce à la force du nombre, pour immobiliser la mine par la présence des manifestants. Le cortège est toutefois resté bloqué une heure face à un premier blocus, pendant qu’un nouveau trajet se négociait.

Dispersion efficace

A peine repartis, les groupes se sont scindés pour traverser en courant les champs, sous le regard d’une vingtaine de policiers dépassés. Près de 3000 personnes ont alors été s’installer sur les rails servant à transporter le charbon hors de la mine, bloquant celle-ci et l’alimentation des centrales électriques alentour. Une autre partie, dont un groupe de Romands, est restée encerclée par les forces de l’ordre.

« Ça peut sembler un peu frustrant, mais c’est le principe d’une action collective, raconte Antoine, 23 ans. Notre groupe a occupé l’attention de la police pendant plusieurs heures, ce qui a permis à une autre partie du groupe d’atteindre son objectif. » Mis à part quelques jets de spray au poivre et quelques coups de matraque, militants et policiers se sont toutefois côtoyés avec calme et sang-froid. « Ça reste très impressionnant d’être face à ces armoires à glace », avaient prévenu les habitués.

Et lorsque la partie légale de la manifestation a été déclarée illégale, la pression policière s’est fait plus insistante. « Mais je ne me suis jamais sentie en danger », assure Gaëlle, 28 ans. Dans la foule, la réaction a été la création d’une chaîne humaine, mais aussi de sortir les sandwiches ou de jouer de l’harmonica.

« La force du symbole ne doit pas être sous-estimée »

Pour les Romands, la journée s’est terminée là, mais près d’un millier de personnes ont passé la nuit sur les rails, malgré le froid. Dotés de couvertures de survie et de sacs de couchage, ils n’ont toutefois pas eu le droit d’être ravitaillés par l’équipe restée au camp.

« On est un peu déçus de ne pas y être parvenus, concède Alice, 21 ans. Mais fiers d’avoir aidé à rendre cette action possible. » « C’est puissant d’avoir pu faire partie de la plus grande action de désobéissance civile d’Europe, juge Alex, 22 ans. Et même si on sait qu’on a peut-être pas eu un impact direct énorme sur l’empreinte carbone de cette journée, la force du symbole ne doit pas être sous-estimée. »

▻https://www.20min.ch/ro/news/monde/story/La-desobeissance-civile-a-connu-un-nouveau-record-31834967

À Hambach, des milliers d’activistes débordent la police pour en finir avec le charbon

Hambach, en Allemagne, près de Cologne, est devenue le symbole de la lutte contre les énergies fossiles qui dévastent le climat. Ce week-end, une grande manifestation de désobéissance civile a réussi à bloquer la mine. Le but : en finir avec le charbon. Reportage photo.

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#limbe #effet-entonnoir #USA #campement #marche #caravane #réfugiés #Amérique_centrale

#migrations #disparitions #Ruben_Figueroa

#Caravana_de_Madres_de_Migrantes_Desaparecidos

Ciudad de México, a 27 de noviembre de 2017 – Del 1 al 18 de diciembre se realizará la decimotercera “Caravana de Madres de Migrantes Desaparecidos”, ingresando al país por la frontera de Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas para iniciar un recorrido de 4 mil kilómetros por la ruta migratoria buscando a sus hijos e hijas desaparecidas. La caravana cruzará 12 estados y 22 localidades de México, levantando la voz acerca de la desaparición de sus seres queridos y de la violencia que miles de migrantes encuentran en su tránsito por el país. En su movilización, la caravana de madres denunciará algunos de los temas principales que subrayan la inseguridad extrema que padecen los migrantes cuando cruzan las fronteras.

El resurgimiento de políticas extrema derecha en los Estados Unidos y en Europa está fomentando políticas que favorecen una retórica anti-inmigrante de odio y xenofobia. La popularidad de esta ideología ocurre en un contexto de crisis migratorias motivadas por las devastadoras consecuencias de las guerras e intervenciones de los países más poderosos dirigidas a los menos fuertes. Los efectos de estas intervenciones, combinadas con guerras civiles, inseguridad económica y el cambio climático, han resultado en el desplazamiento de millones de personas y numerosas crisis humanitarias en las fronteras de los países más prósperos del mundo.

Según Naciones Unidas aproximadamente 500,000 personas cruzan la frontera sur mexicana cada año. La mayoría provienen del Triángulo Norte de Centroamérica, región golpeada por una violencia generalizada y desigualdad económica. La inseguridad económica combinada con el impacto de mega-proyectos de extracción de minerales y otros recursos, crean una situación de violencia estructural y desplazamiento forzado. Esta precariedad económica ocurre en un contexto de aguda violencia en estos países que cuentan con los niveles más altos de homicidio y de violencia de género en todo el mundo.

Cuando los migrantes huyen de estas condiciones encuentran graves amenazas durante su trayecto a través de México donde la violencia de los grupos criminales y la corrupción de las instituciones del estado deriva en que los migrantes son secuestrados, extorsionados y traficados por grupos del crimen organizado, entre otras muchas violaciones a sus derechos humanos. Estos casos de violencia cotidiana están enmarcados por el descubrimiento de masacres y fosas clandestinas, de la desaparición de miles de migrantes y de los propios mexicanos.

La violencia a través de la ruta migratoria empeora por la invisibilidad, fáctica y política, de la que son objeto. Por eso, los actos de búsqueda, reclamo de justicia y protesta de las madres de migrantes desaparecidos son transcendentales pues arrojan luz sobre esta crisis. Los riesgos de tránsito a través de México han aumentado en años recientes donde el gobierno mexicano, en cooperación con el gobierno de los Estados Unidos, ha tratado de impedir que el flujo migratorio alcance la frontera norte a través de la militarización del territorio. Estas tácticas de persecución, detención y deportación combinadas con la amenaza de autoridades corruptas coludidas con grupos criminales, han incrementado la vulnerabilidad de los migrantes en tránsito. Al igual que en el caso de mexicanos desaparecidos, existe un nivel de impunidad absoluta en los casos de abuso y desaparición de migrantes en México. La ausencia de voluntad política y la corrupción de autoridades locales obliga a los familiares de los migrantes desaparecidos a realizar el difícil trabajo de búsqueda y demanda de justicia.

Por todo el mundo mujeres luchan contra el sistema patriarcal, contra el abuso doméstico y la violencia dentro de sus comunidades, se oponen a guerras y desafían los sistemas de injusticia. La demanda de justicia para los desaparecidos mexicanos y centroamericanos ha sido obra de sus madres y esposas quienes se unen en comités de familiares que ya representan una fuerza política.

La Caravana de Madres Centroamericanas se reunirá con colectivos de madres y familiares de mexicanos desaparecidos para construir y fortalecer la solidaridad política entre las mujeres Mexicanas y Centroamericanas quienes demandan información, justicia y alto a la impunidad. La Caravana representa una oportunidad para mostrar las consecuencias de las políticas anti migrantes, hacer visible el duelo de las madres y crear consciencia de que son personas tan importantes como cualquier otra, que cuentan con familias que los quieren y de los que dependen.

En el trayecto por los estados y las comunidades mexicanas golpeadas por la violencia y la carencia de oportunidades económicas, la caravana de madres arrojará luz sobre estos temas de violencia y represión que afectan tanto a la población en movimiento como a mexicanos. Las madres seguirán pistas sobre el paradero de sus hijos e hijas que las llevará a través de México con la esperanza de encontrar sus seres queridos. En el camino, construirán fraternidades con madres y familiares mexicanos contra la injusticia.

Invitamos a la comunidad mexicana a que apoyen a la Caravana y reiteramos que la presencia de los medios de comunicación siempre es una garantía, no sólo para dar a conocer los trabajos de la caravana y las causas que la motivan sino porque su presencia asegura la visibilidad, presionan a la autoridad, impiden que el olvido borre la magnitud del problema y son de gran apoyo en la localización de las personas buscadas por sus familias. Por ello, solicitamos a las agencias de noticias, a corresponsales, reporteros de medios nacionales e internacionales y la industria de la comunicación, que cubran ampliamente las acciones que las madres realizan en esta caravana de denuncia y de búsqueda de sus hijos de los que tuvieron noticia por última vez desde algún lugar del territorio mexicano.

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Desaparecidos. Sur la trace des migrants disparus

Un bus, quelques photos et beaucoup d’espoir : chaque année, elles font le tour du Mexique ensemble pour retrouver leurs proches, partis chercher une vie meilleure aux États-Unis. Mais la route vers l’eldorado est aussi l’une des plus dangereuses au monde. Le Quatre Heures a suivi ces 37 femmes venues des pays voisins d’Amérique centrale pour marcher dans les pas de leur fils, fille ou mari disparu.

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►https://lequatreheures.com/episodes/desaparecidos-sur-la-trace-des-migrants-disparus

@cdb_77 apparemment il faut être abonné pour pouvoir regarder le documentaire qui est sur lequatreheures.com

Oui, @ninachani Les Quatre Heures c’est #paywall.
Je suis abonnée.