Tuesday, June 18th, 2013
Meeting point at the Moorweide at 10 o'clock
Protest march to the French consulate general
Manifestation at 11 o'clock
With “Opération Harmattan” on March 19th, 2011, France started the bombing of Libya, in a military alliance with Great Britain, USA and Canada. Three days later the air strikes under the command of the NATO followed.
The massive air strikes were publicly declared as a guarantee for “protection for the civil population”, in fact they were an intervention into the inner affairs of a sovereign state with the aim of a “Regime Change”.
We ourselves have been a part of the civil population in Libya. We did not belong to any political party or fraction, neither on the regime's nor on the opposition's side. We have been working and taking care of our families. We became victims of the bombings as we became victims of the attacks of various war parties, fueled by the intervention.
We have seen a lot of horrible things and we have lost a lot of people.
We are the surviving civilians, now vegetating on the streets of Europe, without rights and without any means.
Until this point in time we had a relatively good and secure life. We were living on our continent Africa, without any intention to come to Europe. Our flight was enforced by the violent international interest policies.
The very same states which carry out wars in the name of democracy and human rights are now refusing every shelter for us. They are even going more far and threat us with deportation into countries which we had left long time ago in order to make a living in our new home Libya.
We have lost everything and Libya has become a burning country full of weapons. We are in Europe now a we will stay here. In Italy, we have been living two years under hard conditions, administrated by the Italian state. After appreciation of our humanitarian state as refugees, we have been insistently requested to go to Northern Europe. None of the states of the European Unions is willing to take the responsibility and to take any steps to support the war refugees from Libya – the civilians which they declared they wanted to “protect” in the first place.
We tell the European governments: You cannot abscond from your responsibility. Neither ignoring our existence nor threatening us with deportation will stop our movement for defending our lives and our rights.
We tell the European governments: if you do not want to welcome refugees and give them shelter, the you will have to stop military interventions, weapon tradings and political interventions for your interests.
Do not speak of democracy and human rights in other countries if you are yourselves not willing to apply them.
Lampedusa in Hamburg Further information: www.lampedusa-in-hamburg.org
Local group