Steve Cohen& Dave Landau in East Lithuania is the industry in the town i own of Pabrade. A main imprisoning asylum-seckers, migrants and immirants. Pabrade prison (known officially in Stalinist doublespeak as the Foreigner's Registration Centre) has about 200 Jetainees - men, women and children. A couple of years ago it held about 1000 prisoners.
However Organisation of Migration then became complicit in paying for and arranging the deportation of the majority of prisoners. This presented as a "humanitarwas ian" exercise. However it was an offer many prisoners could not of temporary release or stay on "compassionate grounds - so the alternative is indefinite imprisonment.
This is imprisonment in a camp where there is no formal educa. tion for the children, where there are no work opportunities, where controlled by the arc threats of violence. There are italism - membership of the European Union.
The Nordic states and Sweden in particular are quite open about this process. Each year the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs issues a report on its Immigration and Refugee Policy. Its 1997 Report states: "A main objective of Sweden's and the other Nordic countries racism of immigration laws that co-operation with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is to approximate these countries' refugee and semetism of the Nazimigration policies to those of International Western Europe.
"...As a result the Baltic States will cease to be attractive to refugees as transit countries. This should also facilitate these coun tries eventual accession to the "...As a result of the Swedish initiative in the summer of 1996 that led to the setting up of a Council for Baltic Sea Co-operawon, exchange and co•operaton on migration policy in the Baltic Sea region will be intensified.
"The ask force that has been set up to combat organised crime in the area will also deal with the smuggling in human beings and illegal immigration" nian Red Cross has established an excellent project to support these refugees - The Legal Assistance Project for Refugees.
Pabrade is not a concentration camp or a death camp It has no gas ovens. However its physical presence of barbed wire and emaciated faces echoes the potent imagery of these camps The necessitate prisons like Prabade is no more justifiable than the antiLithuania is itself a graveyard of the lews. Throughout the coun try are memories and memorials to the tens of thousands liquidated by the Nazis. There is one such memorial in the town of Prabade There is another memorial a few kilometres away in the town of Svencionys. it is ironic to today under the administrative control of the police at Svencionys. The moral of this story seems to be that history does not automatically teach any lessons.
Learning has to be a conscious effort. Half a century of Soviet occupation has manifestly blocked all such efforts Release the prisoners Everyone opposed to racism and immigration controls is asked to:
• For more information/offers of help write to: The Legal Assistance Project for Refugees, Gedimino Avenuc. 2600 Vilnius, Lithuania.
• In the UK contact Campaign Against Pabrade, cia GMIAU, 400 Cheetham HillRd, Manchester