It was great to receive a solidary message
from Barbed Wire Britain:

"Greetings to your Human Rights Day celebration -

- from the Campaign to Close Campsfield Detention Centre in Oxford, England,

- and from the Barbed Wire Britain Network to End Refugee and Migrant Detention.

Last weekend an international meeting of migrant rights activists in Athens heard about migration and refugee developments in different parts of Europe. Notable were:

• recent legalisation and amnesties for undocumented migrants in Spain, Sweden and Greece;
• the externalisation of borders - for example to the high seas where hundreds die every year - to north Africa, and to visa offices at embassies and consulates in Asia and South America.
• the ever increasing numbers of detention centres - or migrant and refugee prisons - and of deportations of refugees and other migrants.

However, we heard also of increasing organisation of refugees and other migrants to demand residency, citizenship, and equal access to education and health services.

On Saturday there was a demonstration in Athens for the first time organised by black African women - attended also by many children - to demand the right to birth certificates for children born in Greece to migrant parents.

The meeting prepared for debates and actions around migration during the European Social Forum in Athens next May.

The meeting welcomed the call from Australia for an international weekend of anti-detention actions next Easter, and agreed to back it. So thanks to you in Australia for proposing it."

In solidarity
Bill MacKeith