Refugee efforts to organize into communities are a strategic and political move to ensure a participatory and representative position within and outside of any grassroots progressive movement.

Let’s join together: The REFUGEE is the movement and our community is our defense in Europe (by Osaren Igbinoba of The VOICE Refugee Forum).

We are now in the belly of the monster. They want us to become their soldiers so they can become more powerful in their colonial systems. We know why we are here, and we will never forget the people we left behind in our home countries. We are in solidarity, especially with those who are still on the other side of the border, fighting against terrible living conditions just to survive one more day.

We scramble to stop all deportations and for freedom of movement for all!

The current protest march is not the first organized by “Refugee Struggle for Freedom” and it will not be the last protest march in Bavaria. This protest will go a long way to strengthen the resistance of refugees in Bavaria, just as it strengthens our resolve and makes visible our unity in refugee communities nationwide.

The refugee community is on the move and by networking with each other, we find immediate solutions to our problems. Through our coordinated protest and engagement we want to work towards uniting and organizing ourselves together!

Those who are currently destroying our homelands are the same ones who claim to give us protection and the right of residence. Those who divide and divide our societies and cause wars between our peoples are now those who claim that they want to integrate us into their society! You claim they are generous? People in material wealth are not generous, otherwise they would not be rich. Only the poor are generous, because they know what it means to have nothing.

We call on refugees to distance themselves from the state institutions, organizations and political parties that feed and nourish themselves through the plight and misery of the refugee. These networks have one thing in common: they join together to depoliticize the struggles of activists within the movement. We know them when they call for a humanitarian solution while advocating mass deportations and isolation of refugees.

In truth, they hold their sword of deportation over our heads. They also divide us into “good” or “bad” and “deserving” or “undeserving” refugees. They have other lists in store: they talk about the dangers of Pegida and Islamists, a prototype of the war that has been caused precisely by the actions of their system in the Middle East and Africa.

They expect us, the marginalized masses, to forget what they are really doing: that they are using their ruse to lead us into division by giving some of us better positions under their rule.

Our protest has lasted for more than two decades now and our resilience and determination is unstoppable. For many years we have been showing our anger and without this we would not have experienced some changes, albeit minimal, in our treatment as human beings. Since the defacto abolition of the right of asylum in Germany in 1993, there have been no changes without the struggles of refugee communities. Refugee struggles built on the desire for justice cannot be completed without us refugees and community activists in society.

Now once again we witness the refugee community in Bavaria “Refugee struggle for freedom” on the move from October 8 to 21, 2016 – from Munich to Nuremberg, where the headquarters of the Federal Office for Migration in Germany is located. We join and call on other refugees to unite in this protest to turn the refugees’ demands for unconditional residency rights and open borders into reality in protest of the inhumane conditions we live under.

This is a protest march and a way to bring us together. Because our unity is our strength. When we come together, we find that we are all suffering from the same pain. We can share our experiences with each other and organize our unity.

Come to this march or support it in your localities and with your words. Freedom and dignity will never be given to us as a gift, we achieve them through our collective struggles.

The VOICE Refugee Forum for: Refugee-Migrants Community Platform,

English:
Let’s Unite – The REFUGEE is the movement and our Community is our defense in Europe: The “VOICE” Declaration on Protest March http://thevoiceforum.org/node/4251