Workers Solidarity Movement

The first solidarity convoy from Ireland to Calais returned a few days ago and Mairead Mary Frances Healy posted a great report on what was done (below) that has now been turned into this graphic. We applaud this solidarity with those who have spent the summer fighting the racist border policy of Fortress Europe through the direct action of breaking down the fences.

A few kilometres away from the small Serbian border town of Sid, a dirt track through corn and turnip fields serves as passage to tens of thousands of women, men and children seeking refuge and lives of more possibility.

The unofficial border crossing between Serbia and Croatia is surrounded by sun-lit verdant fields, apple orchards in the distance and a calm that brings temporary respite to those who have been on the road for weeks or months. The threat of militarised borders and recent memory of dehumanising conditions along the way is temporarily kept at bay as those walking stop to drink freshly pressed apple cider handed out by a local farmer, chat and rest before they continue on.

A disturbing feature of the prison rebellion in Cloverhill yesterday was that, if the prison is to be believed, a large group of prisoners took a fellow prisoner as a hostage seemingly because he was a migrant.

Up to 60 prisoners were initially involved in a protest in the exercise yard. 45 agreed to return to their cells while according to media reports "armed themselves with homemade weapons, including razor wire and goalposts" and took Walli Ullah, an asylum seeker who is being held in Cloverhill as a hostage and subjected him to a violent beating.

Europe's wall of shame has been completed in Greece's northeast ground border with Turkey. The wall is four-metre-high and is blocking a 10.365 meters-long strip of land from army guarding post of Kastanies down south to river Evros. The name of the company constructed the wall on behalf of the Greek state is DAGRES A.T.E ( ΔΑΓΡΕΣ Α.Τ.Ε).