“By failing to plan you are planning to fail. In life not everything you deserve you find. There are many kind of people in this life. Some will teach you. Some will destroy you.
It’s very hard finding true friends that love and trust you. Never depend on anybody. Never love too much and never trust too much.
In this universe some countries preach about love while they don’t practice it. I respect the America. The Europe – they have no love for the blacks. Keeping someone in your country for how many years without documents is frustrating. Some of my friends have died because of lack of document. They loose focus. The best you can do for the less privileged: do. And leave the rest to God. I love the Italians – just that they see immigrant as animal. In the next world I pray to not witness italians. I really feel sad while writing this after they gave me 2 negative [on asylum request]. They ask me to leave their country which is not good. I feel frustrated while writing this. No matter the situation, don’t give up.
19th of January 2021″
This is a story somebody decided to share with us in a book that we started to have at the border. People leave messages in English, French, Arabic,… Others left pictures that they draw.
The past weeks have been full of stories in many ways and full of small changes.
It is beautiful to be together in our working spot, despite the long and hard journey that people never chose to have. We know that everybody is crossing this border, it may take 5,6,7 times or more, depending on which way they are able to chose, but in the end they continue their way to the country where they want to live, where they want to get documents and settle down. The struggles continue: Being dublined, often in Italy, Greece or a Balkan country, allows Europe to tell them where they should and should not be. And without legal support it is another jungle, the one of burocracy and losing possibilities they had in a certain time span for reacting on document processes and appealing on a decision.
No matter where you are: You don’t have to be at the border to get involved. All around the European countries, self organized groups are supporting people with legal advice and accompany them to appointments, to mainly fill the gap of a missing language and to be there in case somebody is lost. To make sure that the rights people have are provided, not ignored or not propperly explained, as we know it easily happens. We are sure that you, reading this text, are in some way or another already active or planning to, in whichever way. Sending some love to you, to everybody we met here on their travel, to everybody who will still arrive. We create the living conditions others find in exploited and politically involved countries, often the reason for leaving – and we create the living conditions and the solidarity that everybody finds here.
During the last weeks, we have seen an increase of police control on the Italian side. The cooperation between French and Italian state forces has been talked about for a long time, now it seems to be practiced regularly. In Ventimiglia in the train station, people are sometimes hindered the whole day to get in the train to France, which just means that police is standing on the platform and controlling everybody who doesn’t seem to be Italian or French. In the whole train station, Italian state forces control people more regularly again, taking people to the police station and registering them with fingers prints if they haven’t been so far. Thus, they are dublined, from now on Italy has to be the country to provide the legal process for them to stay, to start a living, in theory.
In the last days, we heard from a lot of individuals (yesterday at least 8) that they had been held in the French police station for more than 24 hours. Its been several months since we heard about this in such an amount.
They are not provided with anything like water, food or blankets, and when people arrive at our place they are cold and starving.
Some short work updates:
We started preparing a big pot of food for the afternoon in advance. Afternoons are even more crowded than usually, since people can just take the trains as soon as Italian police in the train station is gone, then are often arrested and pushed back in big groups from the French side. It is starting to be a ping pong between both countries, trying to make it as impossible as possible to stay on any of those sides without police contact.
Against the rainy days we now have pebbles all over the spot where we are, which helps against general moisture that started to establish. We can still provide clothes and shoes, which is essential after rainy days as there is no possibility to dry if there is no place to stay.
The distribution has seen around 100-150 people every day the last week, of which we provided food on two evenings.
After this brief message, we are welcoming you as always to join us in the next weeks or support in any other way, may it be donations, spreading the word or getting active in your part of Europe.
- Ciao from the Kesha Niyas!
https://keshaniya.org/
kesha-niya@riseup.net
keshaniyakitchen@gmail.com
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/keshaniya
Bank account: GLS Bank
Depositor: Frederik Bösing
IBAN: DE32 4306 0967 2072 1059 00
BIC-Code: GENODEM1GLS