CALL FOR URGENT ACTION

SUPPORT THE CHURCH HUNGER STRIKE & PROTESTS 
BY IMMIGRANT & NON-IMMIGRANT PEOPLE IN SPAIN

Picket the Spanish Embassy
Saturday 25 May 2002     2 - 3 pm
39 Chesham Place, London SW1X 8SB (tube Victoria)
report of picket

Catalan and Spanish people will go on a 48-hour hunger strike from Friday to Sunday at 9pm in three Barcelona churches and one in Cornella, to support immigrant people’s rights to stay and earn a living.  Churches in Valencia and elsewhere are expected to join in.  The action is organised by Eje de inmigración de la Campaña contra la Europa del capital y la guerra (Core group of the Campaign against a Europe of capital and war).

Last year over 700 immigrants in five cities across Spain held sit-ins and hunger strikes and won papers for many.  Participants come from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.  Their spokesperson, a woman of colour from Ecuador, stressed in her speech at the Global Women’s Strike that much of the organising and support work is done by women, immigrant and native.

To support this weekend’s action, we are calling a lightning picket of the Spanish Embassies in London and Ireland.  Spain has the presidency of the European Union at the moment, and this is an opportunity to protest against how European governments are using immigrant people as scapegoats and implementing the Nazi policies of those like Le Pen whom they pretend to abhor.  While Blair considers using the military for mass deportations, and “aid” to coerce impoverished countries to take back their nationals, a new repressive Bill is now before Parliament.

Come along, invite your friends and networks, or send a message of support to Eje de inmigración de la Campaña contra la Europa del capital y la guerra (Core group of the Campaign against a Europe of capital and war) in Barcelona via email: yoayuno2002@yahoo.es, fax: 00 34 93441 0206 or phone: 00 34 93441 9009. 

You can also phone/email the Spanish Embassy:
Tel: 0207 235 5555; Fax 0207 235 9905; email: consejeria.uk@correo.mec.es

Information:
Black Women for Wages for Housework and Payday (men’s network)
Crossroads Women’s Centre
Tel 020 7482 2496
Fax 020 209 4761
centre@crossroadswwomen.net  

Report of the picket at the Spanish Embassy in support of the Barcelona fast for immigrants’ rights undertaken by Catalan and Spanish people while immigrant people demonstrated.  The picket was called by Black Women for Wages for Housework and Payday men’s network, London 25 May 2002.

About 20 people of different races and nationalities met outside the Spanish Embassy in London to support the fast in the Barcelona churches.  At the picket, held from 2-3.30 pm, we read the call from the organisers of the fast and the support statement from the groups based at the Barcelona Women Count Centre.  We spoke about the situation of immigrant people throughout Europe, and highlighted the work women do maintaining families and communities and the need for it to be recognised.  Various people spoke about the history of the “conquistadors” who started the globalisation we now oppose, and about its consequences.  Spain, the whole of Europe and the US, today’s superpower, have a debt with the people of the South.  As immigrants we have a right to come and stay in Europe, and to demand the reparations we are owed for centuries of genocide and exploitation. We spoke about all the ways in which industrial powers rob the populations of non-industrial countries so that many are ready to risk their lives to emigrate: from the destruction of countries’ internal markets which force them to produce what the global market commands, and ‘aid’ conditions which encourage corruption and the arms trade, to the ‘Third World debt’ which we have not incurred but are forced to pay. The picket was an opportunity to tell the Spanish government which holds the EU presidency, that we reject all their immigration laws.  European governments say that they abhor extreme right candidates such as Le Pen, yet they have adopted his nazi policies, blaming immigrant people for the deprivations of the resident population.  Today in England they want to lock up immigrant children in detention centres to stop them going to school with other children and in this way divide us from those native people who have been our friends and neighbours and have supported us.  We will not allow them to divide us. Power to all immigrant and native people who struggle for our rights as human beings beyond national borders.

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