AntiCRA Marseille, Network Against Migrant Detention, Marco Cavallo
Brick by brick, wall by wall, we will make detention centres fall.
Today, Administrative Detention Centres (also known as CRA in France, CPR in Italy, CCAS in Greece) are legal institutions, supervised and funded by the Ministry of the Interior and by the prefecture. This center are responsible for categorizing, locking up and deporting people deemed illegal by the state. Men, women and children are being incarcerated for the simple reason that they do not have the ‘right papers’. These are prisons pretending not to be. They are an obstacle to the principle of freedom of movement. The conditions inside are humiliating and unbearable: lack of activity, care, hygiene, repeated police violence, etc. Too many people locked up in these centres suffer from the physical and psychological impact of this detention. Through detention in Administrative Detention centres, the state seeks to spread a stigmatising and criminalising image of migrants. The development of this fascist discourse is linked to the installation of fear in order to prevent conversation, break solidarity and destroy community.
Detention centres have a long history of struggles and revolts, hunger strikes, fires and destruction, solidarity between detainees, organised escapes, etc. Whether they are called CRA, CPR, CA or ICE, there is a worldwide refusal to normalise these places through actions and mobilisations. In parallel with these repressive and post-colonial policies, collectives are organising and fighting against detention centres. Collectives against administrative detention centres are part of a broader movement against borders and detention, with the primary objective of standing in solidarity with those inside, supporting revolts and bringing their voices to the outside world through blogs, radio and social media.
Our response to the fascist state is the principle of solidarity, strong and indestructible, until all colonial prisons are destroyed.
Brick by brick, wall by wall, we will make detention centers fall.
Core signatories
AntiCRA Marseille
Fifty years ago in Marseille, a warehouse in a port was discovered which was being used as a prison for foreign nationals. When the Arenc clandestine prison scandal broke in April 1975, it revealed a whole illegal system for deporting foreign nationals which had been operating for 12 years. Relying on an administrative and police apparatus, previously inherited from colonialism, the Arenc hangar policies detained, categorized and deported those whom France deemed not of use or unexploitable.
In Marseille, 50 years ago, in April 1975, the existence of what would become the first administrative detention centre was discovered.Today, France has developed a series of anti-immigration laws and is currently maintaining 25 CRA centres with a capacity of nearly 2,000 people, and aiming to increase that number up to 5,000 by 2027.
Fighting against detention centres is an integral part of the fight against borders and for the freedom of movement. That’s why the Marseille antiCRA collective has joined the f.Lotta, because our local action is part of a more global approach supported by this movement.
The Network Against Migrant Detention is a transnational coalition of activists calling for the abolition of administrative detention of migrants in Italy, Albania, throughout Europe, and everywhere else.
We reject all repressive and criminalizing decrees targeting people on the move and political dissent, which are on the rise around the world. These decrees are based on security-driven paradigms, revealing a clear intention to hinder all forms of civil solidarity, both by land and sea, and to prevent freedom of movement, while refusing to take responsibility for the ongoing massacres along migration routes.
We believe in the urgent need to build a broad transnational collective movement capable of challenging all forms of administrative detention and the social model it represents. That is why we are joining f.Lotta in this campaign.
Marco Cavallo is traveling again. After visiting Italy’s judicial psychiatric hospitals to denounce the injustice and inhumanity of those places, his journey now takes him to the CPR (Centri di Permanenza per il Rimpatrio, or Repatriation Centers). These facilities are reminiscent of the OPGs in many ways, but are perhaps even more cruel from a human perspective. Today, as CPRs become new institutions of segregation and social violence, it is more necessary than ever to reaffirm a fundamental principle: human dignity has no boundaries.
