research material from the actions that took place september 28th 2005 at the border of the enclave Ceuta

The images that flickered all over European TV-Stations in the days after the 28th of September 2005 struck us in our daily routines: Hundreds of people literally running over the fences in Ceuta and Melilla, making their way into the political Europe in a collective action. The fast-forward animated images that originated from a surveillance camera were shown over and over again and seemed to be just too right in time for the soon following Spanish-Moroccian Summit on Migration Policies.

Being puzzled and left without proper explaination of what has happened, how it happened and who organised what happened, we decided to go on a research trip to Ceuta, end of November 2005, in order to de-construct the TV-Images, dividing facts and fictions, giving voice to people who have something to say about the situation in Ceuta and what lead to the attack. But most importantly to find answers to the burning question: How did the people organize in such a situation and in the most a-organisational surrounding?

We, that was a group of people working on the issues of Border and Migration for many years, from all different perspectives and fields: a filmmaker, a photographer, writers, activists and organizers from Germany, all together six of us, who had organised - just months before the action happened - the festival "Borderlineacademy" focusing the connection between freedom of movement and freedom of migration, especially concentrating on the situation in the straits of Gibralta.

Ceuta is a Spanish enclave in North Africa, located on a northern tip of the Maghreb, on the Mediterranean coast near the Strait of Gibraltar. It is known in Arabic as Sabtah in Standard Arabic, Sebta in Morocco. Its area is approximately 28 km2. Ceuta has 76,000 inhabitants that are enclosed by a 6.8 km fence that separates it from moroccan territory. After entering this place, that always somehow feels surreal, we interviewed a number of people about the situation in Ceuta and on the action end of September.

Following you'll find some of the interviews - we hope more will follow soon-, as time and especially missing time prevented a more in-depth analysis of our research. Many of our questions could be answered in these interviews, many new question arose ... But one thing became clear to us: we see a new form of organization and organising in this collective action, beyond organization.

This research was financially supported by the Initiativfond of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation