Taz Panter Award: We will continue to fight against the death at sea and for safe ways into Europe!

The Watch The Med Alarm Phone received the TAZ Panter award of the readers of the daily national newspaper TAZ. We are grateful to have been chosen for this award which honours outstanding engagement of initiatives that respond to pressing societal issues. This year’s nominees all do important work in their respective areas of intervention – so the competition was tough. Agisra e.V. fights for the rights of migrant women in Cologne; the activists of the IG Werkfairträge are tackling exploitation of east European workers in Tönnies, one of the biggest slaughterhouses in Europe; Durchblick e.V. Leipzig welcomes everybody, regardless of their psychological state of mind, to live collectively with others; Lina Schönfeld, who offers free boxing lessons to migrants and who also supports them at immigration authorities and the activists of Mensch ist Mensch e.V., tackle discrimination against Roma communities. Knowing how important all of these projects are, we couldn’t help but share the awarded money equally amongst the nominees. We hope to inspire more people to support these projects financially and ours, of course, too. We depend on donations to cover the high cost for phone bills for example (https://alarmphone.org/en/donations/). We consider the Panter Preis as an award that goes to all the many civil society initiatives that fight tirelessly for migrants and refugees at the borders within and beyond Europe. At the same time, we want to honour and remember the countless migrants who lost their lives due to the EU’s politics of deterrence. Our aim is to save lives as well as name and shame the outrageous situation along European frontiers and we encourage people to change their mind about refugees and struggle in solidarity with them. Within the past weeks, we have seen how quickly and fundamentally the situation can change if political and civil society pressure is strong enough and if we act together. The taz Panter award reaffirms our belief in our cause and clearly shows that there are many people who disagree with the EU’s current treatment of migrants and refugees. Therefore, we will continue to fight against the death at sea and for safe ways into Europe!