Solidarities are not a given, they need to be built

Solidarities are not a given, they need to be built.

As we write these words, we are filled with intense anger and multi-directional grief. We are struck by the thunderous silence of far too large sections of the international public. We are fueled by both reaffirmed and new realizations about the world we live in and what the future looks like for Gaza, Palestine, Sudan, Congo and all of us.

Solidarity means that the principle of human dignity must apply to all people. It requires us to recognize and address the suffering of all those affected by colonization, armed conflicts, displacement and systems of oppression that render human beings collateral damage and illegal, and exploit all shapes and forms of life.

In these difficult moments, and in light of the current mobilizations for Gaza, we are challenging ourselves to learn more about what justice, liberation and internationalist solidarity mean. On the one hand, while this mobilization in Germany has been very wide and powerful in challenging the prohibitions and the theft of basic rights, we witness a full alignment of German majority society with rising right-wing, antisemitic and racist projects, while migrants and refugees are made the source of all these morbid symptoms. 

On the other hand, in Tunisia, as in many other countries in the North of Africa, mobilization for Palestine has been massive. Streets are witnessing the largest mobilizations since years, defying established restrictions to freedom of speech and political dissent. Still, many of us who are living and resisting in countries in the region, often feel powerless as our governments, from the most pseudo-sovereign to the most sold-out, are failing to put weight into the global geopolitical equation to echo our demands. 

It is disheartening to witness the mediatized pro-Palestine solidarity in Tunisia, while Palestinian migrants face harsh conditions on the ground. Their applications for legal residency are stalled for years. Their visas and the visas of their families and loved ones are rejected – often systematically – and bureaucractic hurdles are placed in their way to live in dignity in Tunisia. While our hearts are deeply touched when wounded Palestinians are offered medical treatment and physical security in Tunisia or Egypt, our hearts bleed for seeing the instrumentalization of their vulnerability to serve political interests and images.

At the same time, we cannot denounce the dehumanization of Palestinians, the dehumanization of Muslims, Arab and Arab-read people and any other form of discrimination that we see elsewhere, without acknowledging and speaking up for those who we dehumanize back home. Our hearts bleed at the double standards – that we know all too well – when, for instance, Sudanese, Gambian, Ivorian refugees instead face exploitation and violence by the state and a large portion of society. They are pushed into a chain of deportations: from Tunisia into the borders to both Libya and Algeria and from Morocco into the border to Algeria, then into Niger, then into the desert and factually the unknown.

So, how can we change things right where we are? And how can our solidarity extend to all those who are vulnerable in our societies?

Our collective focuses on resisting the mechanisms of anti-Black racism in the northern part of Africa, and our understanding of this resistance focuses on three aspects: 

1. We aim to make visible the realities of oppression and injustice that are erased, silenced or criminalized.
2. We aim to unpack the roots and the links between anticolonial and decolonial struggles, as they are central to understanding issues of racial justice.
3. We aim to build internationalist solidarities, deepen our understanding of what these solidarities look like in practice.

Making realities of oppression and injustice visible

As we write these words, European borders have killed – only in 2023 – over 2,500 people that attempted to cross the Mediterranean sea. Many people on the move are stuck at the fences of fortress Europe and its externalized borders, where they are pushed back, aggressed, taken hostage, in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Morocco etc. Still, a few days ago, the EU just passed major asylum law reforms that act as a de-facto removal of the right to individual asylum and plan for even more killing and severe human rights violations at the borders.

As we write these words, violence and racist attacks on Black migrants in Tunisia continue to rise. Thousands are stranded in the country and left in dire conditions: exploited, kicked out of their homes, left jobless, insulted, beaten, raped. Many migrants are caught in human trafficking networks, which are protected and sanctified by the state. Since July, many migrants are illegally deported by Tunisian authorities into the desert, with no food, water or cell phones. Many have died hungry, dehydrated and in awful pain.

As we write these words, People of the Democractic Republic of the Congo are facing an intensification of decade-long colonial violence. They are the victims of corrupt neocolonial regimes and armed militias by neighbouring countries, fueled by the extractivist interests of high-tech companies. The genocide in DRC already killed more than 6 million people and counts millions of cases of weaponized sexual violence, child labor and enslavement.

As we write these words, Sudan enters the 8th month of continuous armed fighting between the military and the RSF militias. The thirst for power of these rivals leads the country into a humanitarian crisis where tens of thousands are killed, injured and over 6.5 million people are displaced. Entire villages have been burned to the ground, with many citizens deprived of access to food, water, medicine and fuel. The region of Darfur is especially targeted, where people are facing a continuation of the 2003 genocide, extreme sexual violence and severe human and child rights violations.

As we write these words, Israel continues its genocidal bombing, killing and massive displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. For over two months now, and for 75 years before that, Palestinians are murdered, displaced and uprooted in the name of Zionist colonization. Now more than ever, we need to understand that there are no equal opponents in this war and that it has far more to do with land and geopolitics, than it does with religion and revenge.

We are in firm solidarity with the struggles for liberation from Congo to Sudan to Palestine, from Tigray to Artsakh, from Haiti to Syria, from Western Sahara to Kurdistan and with all oppressed people everywhere.

Unveiling linked realities 

Our commitment to deconstructing anti-Black racism in northern Africa forces us to challenge the power of erasure of Black African lives from global discourse. The numerous human and non-human tragedies that happened on the continent, this century only, have been wildly overlooked. The Tigray war has been the deadliest war of this century so far, yet it has received close to no media attention, and has been completely overshadowed by other world event, such as the Russia-Ukraine war. The geopolitics that affect northern African territories also force us to see the interconnectedness between conflicts affecting the African continent, Western Asia, the Muslim worlds and beyond.

The world’s most powerful countries happen to also be military powers or the leading industries in weaponry. This arms trade, led by the US, UK, Russia, France, Germany and Israel, is fueling wars and armed conflicts in the African continent. The Israeli military state that has been oppressing Palestinians, is also the one that supplies several conflict-ridden African countries with arms, such as South Sudan, Chad, the DRC and even Rwanda. 

While the EU’s Frontex is externalizing its borders into numerous African countries such as Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Senegal and Mauritania, in order to prevent migrants and refugees from reaching the European continent, Israel has also attempted to force African refugees out of the country. For example, the “voluntary departure” scheme to Rwanda has coerced some 4,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers based in Israel to go to Rwanda and Uganda between 2013 and 2018. These policies meant to keep “Africans in Africa” led to the human rights violations against the asylum seekers in Rwanda, but also the tragedies of Mellila in 2021 or Tunisia in 2023 perpetrated by vigilantes and local authorities against an overwhelming majority of Black African migrants and refugees. 

As many African people are still paying the heavy price of slavery, apartheid and colonization until today, there is a long history of solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people, from the unwavering political and diplomatic support of South Africa and Algeria, to the mere solidarity from grassroots organising regardless of their governments’ positions.

Most of the general public, political movements and civil society across the African continent, do not understand the current genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine as an “Arab” or “Middle-East” issue only, but as war crimes that ultimately impact all of us. In the same way, we also believe that the armed conflicts, massacres, displacements and all sorts of injustices, afflicting Black, African and marginalized populations on the continent, are contemporary expressions for legacies of slavery and colonization that ultimately impact all of us.

Solidarity in practice ​​​​​​​

We firmly believe that when those most marginalized in a certain time and geography are free, everyone takes a big leap towards collective liberation. So in its truest and most honest forms, solidarity with Palestine means to show up for the most vulnerable people right where we are and amplify their demands. It means to denounce and abandon any nationalisms that are incapable of making an equal place for everyone in our societies regardless of ethnicity, religion, citizenship, class etc.

Therefore, in Germany and other European countries, in Tunisia and other northern African countries, and everywhere else:

• We denounce the thunderous silence and alleged neutrality of those most privileged in society in the face of rising globalized racist and fascist hegemony.
• We denounce the violent silencing of racialized and marginalized people.
• We denounce the massive criminalization of solidarity.
• We denounce the restriction of freedom of speech and the pronouncement of topics as taboo and “off-the-table”.
• We are in firm solidarity with all oppressed peoples everywhere and their right to live in freedom, self-determination and resistance.
• We are in firm solidarity with the refugees, migrants and all kinds of diasporas who are mourning, feeling helpless and unsupported, fearing for their statuses and livelihoods, all while their grief and outrage in the face of war crimes are being criminalized in various parts of the world.

We are witnessing again in broad day light the double standards of Western colonial powers and their hypocrisy in claiming enlightenment and human rights. Again, we are seeing how some lives are more grievable than others, some lives are more worthy of dignity than others, some lives are universally human while others owe the world a proof of humanity before acknowledging that they are suffering.

Colonialism has deprived us of our humanities, filled us up with self-hate, erased our cultures, our languages and our communal ways of being. It made us sink in imposed borders and draw some more, so that we distinguish ourselves from other colonized societies and compete against them for proximity to the hegemon. It made us only look outwards and focus on proving our humanity, instead of working on our collective history and challenging our society’s modern values. 

Fanon says that “if we want humanity to move up a notch, if we want to take it to a different level than Europe has manifested it, then we have to invent, we have to discover. If we want to meet the expectations of our peoples, we have to look beyond Europe.”

Solidarity as a habit, not as a singular act. ​​​​

Solidarities are not a given: they need to be built. We have to start thinking of solidarity not as an act but as a habit which takes time to learn, as a muscle which strengthens through practice. Because acts are singular, while habits can be relied on and become a part of who we are.

Solidarity means to act and intervene whenever and wherever we can, starting by our closest circles. It means to interrupt harmful expressions and actions the best we can. It means to hold ourselves and each other accountable. 

It means engaging in constructive dialog. It means to defy obedience and comfortable positioning and to get organized. It means extending our actions beyond humanitarianism and making them personal and political.

We must take on ourselves the task of building solidarities to fight collectively for liberation. This is our only hope left, but it is also a very promising hope.

Solidarity with all migrants and people on the move! 

Down with fortress Europe!

Solidarity and power to all oppressed and colonized people!

None of us is free, until all of us are free.