September and October 2025
Find more comprehensive reports and a gallery of photos and videos here
Online Kick-Off event on 4th of September 2025 towards the transnational chain of actions
About 50 people listened to the exchange after an introduction from a protagonist of 2015, a friend from Zurich, who was part of the march of hope in Budapest 10 years ago, which eventually led to the historical breakthrough against the EU border regime. With brief interventions from Zagreb, Berlin and Geneva, from the Aegean and Lampedusa, from Madrid, Rabat and Rome, from Ljubljana, Vienna, Ragusa and Tirana the many-voiced session continued with reflections on 2015 and with presentations of the coming mobilizations. At https://trans-border.net/index.php/chain-of-action-2025/kick-off-of-the-transnational-chain-of-action-online-conference/ a video-recording of this transnational gathering is available.
The SAR Camp: A Step Forward in the Collective Struggle for Free Movement for All
From September 4th to 7th, just outside Berlin in Biesenthal, Germany, the SAR Camp, short for Solidarity and Resistance Camp, took place as part of the Transnational Chain of Actions for Free Movement. We deliberately chose the name SAR to underline that it not only stands for Search and Rescue, but also for Solidarity and Resistance. This set the tone for a participatory space focused on critical reflection, collective learning, and further developing our different actions into a strong movement.
“The camp brought together people from international organizations engaged in search and rescue, migration and displacement, “No Borders” movements, and anti-colonial struggles—alongside activists who live these battles every day. It was a powerful space to meet, to share knowledge, and to dive into workshops and discussions that carried real depth and urgency…“
This quotation is from a summarizing article by a member from Refugees in Libya.
f.Lotta
The protest regatta started on 10th of September with a press conference in Mazara (Sicily). The following day, 10 sail boats headed in the direction of Lampedusa. Find a logbook with pictures here: https://flotta.noblogs.org/logbook/.
Core to f.Lotta actions were F.lottine and land f.Lotta events, which brought the f.Lotta message where it hurts: inside fortress Europe. A f.Lottina is a maritime, river or lake occupation other than the one in the central Med. A land f.Lotta action can take many forms, such as a talk, a march, a sit-in in front of a deportation center. This way, the occupation in the central Mediterranean sea sparked several other occupations elsehwere. Actions took part in Elba, Rome, Marseille, Brest, Calais, Rosenheim, Berlin, Cyprus, Baleares, Mazara del Vallo, beside the main action south of Lampedusa.
In total, 13 campaigns were launched, 20+ organisations joined the movement, 30+ boats were involved in the actions, hundreds of activists took part and 1.1 million people were reached on social media. These actions were only the beginning. The f.Lotta movement aims to occupy as many spaces and times as necessary to denounce the violent consequences of the border regime. It is important to fight, to reoccupy our spaces both at sea and on land to denounce this violence, to fight against racist laws that criminalise sea rescue, to fight against this system that wages war on exiles.
Let us rise up against these borders that kill and for a world where everyone has the right to move freely and live as they choose.
More Information here: https://flotta.noblogs.org/
UNFAIR 2.0 in Geneva
Simultaneously with the f.Lotta-protests two days of action took place in Geneva, organized by Refugees in Libya:
We`ll Come United Caravan and Parade
On the 20th of September the German-wide network We`ll Come United started a one-week caravan through several cities in eastern Germany. Isolated Camps and detentions were visited to empower the inhabitants and to invite them to get organized against deportations and racist discrimination. Mainly voices of self-organised refugees spoke in this series of indoor events as well as street parties, manifestations, and demonstrations. The caravan culminated in a powerful parade in Berlin on September 27 with about 1000 participants and with eye-catching trucks, which symbolized the struggles for freedom of movement and equal rights for all. In the German newspaper Tageszeitung (Taz) a diary with nine texts was published by a Somalian woman from the media team of the caravan, see here (in German).
Further report with impressive photos: https://umbruch-bildarchiv.org/well-come-united-2025/
CommemorA(c)tion of 20 Years of struggle – Baobab & Arcom
From 3 to 5 October 2025, the conference ‘We migrate to live, not to die’ was held in Rabat, organised by the autonomous migrant organisation ARCOM and Afrique-Europe-Interact. It marked the 20th anniversary of ARCOM and the tenth anniversary of the ‘Baobab’ shelter, a place that offers protection and solidarity to many migrant women and their children. Around 300 participants, mainly migrants (in transit) from sub-Saharan African countries as well as activists from Europe and Africa, gathered to share their experiences, develop strategies of resistance, and oppose Europe’s repressive border regimes.
Round tables, workshops, and cultural contributions highlighted the reality of migration and exile: violence at borders, overcrowded camps, lack of protection, survival on the streets, and structural exclusion. The situation of women and children in exile was at the centre of the conference. The testimonies of Sudanese refugees and the play staged by migrants about the dangerous crossing of the Sahara were particularly impressive.
Discussions focused on criticism of the UNHCR, systematic pushbacks into the desert, and strengthening local and transnational networks. The conference was a powerful forum for meeting, solidarity and networking – a new beginning for new cooperation across borders. Its central credo remains the same: we migrate to live, not to die. Freedom of movement for all!
Action days from Refugees in Libya in Rome against the “Memorandum of Understanding“
No Border Summit Vienna: Conference and Demonstration against the ICMPD and EU’s racist migration policies
In light of the 10th Vienna Migration Conference hosted by the International Center for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), a group of activists organized a counter-conference opposing the increasingly deadly externalisation of EU borders. The ICMPD is the ideological think tank behind Europe’s authoritarian migration policy. ICMPD supports the training of security forces in Libya and Tunisia and is currently expanding its cooperation with Algeria through “capacity building” programs.
The No Border Summit countered this racist gathering/conference by providing a space of solidarity and resistance over the course of four days in different locations around Vienna. Talks, discussions and workshops by – and in cooperation with international activists and experts, as well as literature readings, concerts and film screenings allowed participants to exchange knowledges, perspectives and ideas. The Summit focused amongst other aspects on collectively developing a profound understanding of institutions such as ICMPD, IOM and Frontext and their ramifications in the continued fortressification of Europe.
In the morning of 21st of October, the opening day of the Vienna Migration Conference, the ICMPD and accomplices (ministers from Austria, Germany, Sweden and Greece as well as their counterparts from Egypt, Jordan and Turkey) were confronted with more than 30 activists blocking the entrance of the conference venue with the support of many more chanting against the racist migration management institutions. Several hours later, at the very same location,the summit culminated in a powerful demonstration with 700 participants demanding the abolition of the ICMPD, an end to EU border externalisation and freedom of movement for everyone.
Start of the Trial against Mediterranea in Ragusa
On October 21 in Ragusa, the trial began against six activists charged with “aggravated aiding and abetting of illegal immigration.”
Their crime? Having, in various ways, taken part in the mission of our ship Mare Jonio, which in September 2020 rescued 27 shipwreck survivors who had been abandoned for 38 days by all European authorities (Malta and Denmark first among them) aboard the Danish oil tanker Maersk Etienne, just off the Maltese island. The 27 people were transferred to Mare Jonio, where they received initial medical care. On the evening of September 13, the Italian authorities (the Ministry of the Interior and the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, MRCC Rome) assigned Pozzallo as the safe port for disembarkation.
Three months after the events, the shipping company that owned the vessel, Maersk Tankers, made a transparent donation in support of civilian sea rescue operations. The Ragusa Public Prosecutor’s Office used this as grounds to accuse the Mediterranea activists of “facilitating illegal immigration,” aggravated by the slanderous claim of a “profit motive,” unleashing a full-blown smear campaign against us.
Five years after those events, the public trial finally started. For us, this will be an opportunity to reestablish the full truth and legitimacy of what happened — and to turn this absurd accusation against sea rescue and solidarity into a trial against those who, at sea, allow women, men, and children to die in massacres like the one in Cutro, or through deliberate failures to rescue that cause suffering and death.
The next date of the trial in Ragusa is the 13th of January 2026.
More Information: https://mediterranearescue.org/en/news/caso-maersk-etienne-trasformeremo-le-accuse-alla-solidarieta-nel-processo-a-chi-fa-morire-persone-in-mare
Protest days and workshops from network against migrant detentions in Shengjin, Gäder and Tirana
On the 1st and 2nd November, around a hundred activists from Albania, Italy, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Belgium joined the mobilization called by the Network Against Migrant Detention to oppose and denounce the Rama–Meloni Pact and the creation of the CPR of Gjader and the hotspot of Shëngjin.
These centres are not only unconstitutional: they represent a colonial project that, with the complicity of the Albanian government, sets a dangerous precedent that the EU seeks to replicate through the New Pact on Migration and Asylum and the New Returns Directive. Albania is being turned into a laboratory of externalisation, where detention and deportation are tested before becoming European policy.
On Saturday, we marched through Tirana, stopping at the Prime Minister’s office, the Italian Embassy, and the House of Europe, to denounce this agreement and demand its abolition. Later, we travelled to Lezhë to meet Hana, a political collective of young activists from the city. Together, we held a protest in front of Gjader, the new Italian-run detention centre where 25 people are currently held awaiting deportation.
On Sunday, the activists of the Meshde collective organised public discussions and assemblies at the Faculty of Law in Tirana, where we had the chance to exchange with activists and intellectuals from across Europe and Albania about coloniality, migration, and the need to transform Europe into a political space of freedom and equality rather than repression and exclusion.
What is happening in Albania is deeply connected to the securitarian management of migration spreading across the world — from the violent deportations carried out by the U.S. through ICE, to the policies of remigration and administrative detention now proliferating across nationalist European governments. Together, these measures form the backbone of an increasingly rapid, externalised, and militarised migration regime.
Yet detention centres are not spaces of total control. They are sites of conflict and resistance, where the struggle for freedom of movement and migrant self-determination continues to challenge the violence of borders and the erosion of democracy.
From Italy to Albania, from Europe to the Mediterranean, our fight is collective and transnational: we will keep organising to dismantle the regime of detention and deportation, and to reclaim a democratic, decolonial and solidaristic Europe.
Network against migrant detention
Videos on 10 years of the Summer of Migration
As part of the transnational chain of action a series of videos is in production. From the middle of September onwards, every week one or more new clips will be published, each including two voices: oan active supporter from the Aegean or along the Balkan route, and someone who made the journey and now lives in a destination city. Reflections from the various experiences will be combined and connected to recall and to reflect the summer of migration in 2015, but also to think about future perspectives.
