Syndicate: No Borders Camp in Ustrzyki Gorn

[florian schneider <fls@kein.org>]

[sorry for cross posting to all cross subscribers...
the camp in italy starts at saturday, the one at 
the german polish border one week later. there will
be another camp at the us-mexican border sept 1-3...
actions in britain are planned for the next few
weeks... check regurarily: <http://noborder.eu.org>
see you: /fls]

1ST REPORT FROM THE FIRST NOBORDER CAMP 2000

 From: "Laure Akai" <cube@zigzag.pl>
 To: <alter-ee@most.org.pl>

 We've returned from the camp in Ustrzyki on the
Ukrainian-Slovakian-Polish border. Everything went fairly well given the
conditions: it rained pratically the whole time making mountain hiking a
bit tricky.

Over 150 people from different countries came: we had people there from
Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Slovakia, Holland, Finland,
Austria, Bulgaria and Spain. The area has few inhabitants; the entire
population of Ustrzyki Gorne was deported after WWII after the UPA
(Ukrainian partisan army) became active in the area. There were three
main actions. First, there was a demo in front of the border police in
Lutowiski where people shouted slogans and burned a symbolic border
crossing. The second action was supposed to be the most important - the
illegal crossing of the border. But there were torrential rains and only
about 25 of the most enthusiastic and hardy campers decided to make the
four hour hike up the mountain trails. Still, when they got there they
found out that the border police had been waiting there for 3 days and
had to mobilize everyone they had (about 1500 people) to stop us. So,
needless to say, nobody managed to cross. Finally, during the last
action there was a protest at the building site of a new border guard
HQ; people climbed a tower and hung a banner. These actions got some
press coverage and generally they were fairly successful despite the
rain. During the actions there was no great problems with the police (we
outnumbered them and also they came to the camp the night before the
actions when we were showing riot videos and got scared of us).
Unfortunately as people started to leave they began to harrass folks and
deported Slovaks who had come illegally to join us. (We welcome them the
alter-ee!)

We have some good ideas for next year to make an action on the
Polish-Lithuanian-Belarussian border (with a possible side trip to the
Kaliningrad region). The town of Sejny has had some ethnic and border
conflicts recently; there is a Lithuanian majority in this town on the
Polish side of the border. After the camp, Belarussians hopefully will
be able to do a concert/festival on their side of the border.

Laure
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