Saturday, before the anti-war rally in Seoul, the sit-in struggle team of the Anglican Church (A.C.) and our Sit-in Struggle Team, all together around 200 migrants, held a protest rally in Daehak-no to underline our demands. Beside of Direct Action group we got support by several members of Democratic Labor Party’s youth organization “All Together”.
After our rally we joined the central anti-war rally – but just several hundreds of Korean activists participated - on same place. Samar Thapa, chief of ETU-MB’s Emergency Struggle Committee, got the possibility to held a solidarity speech. Beside our specific issue, he also denounced imperialist wars in general, but as an example the role of US Imperialism in the ongoing “war against terror” in his own home country Nepal and of course in the Middle East.
After the rally we joined the short demonstration from Daehak-no to Tapgol Park, downtown Seoul. There we’d to see that the cops expected something else as this small peaceful demonstration. Between there and Sejong-no thousands of riot cops were hanging around and even water canons they had on the spot.
Later in the evening we went to the Anglican Church, near City Hall, were three sit-in struggle teams – Mansan, A.C. and we – organized a Struggle Cultural Festival. Our “mime” team performed their expression dances, one of our Nepalese comrades a folk dance, our band several struggle songs and last but not least Mahabu presented his version of the Philippine song “Our Union”. Very impressive were the performances of the Indonesian rock band and the Nepalese group, filled the audience – on the highlight of the event more than 300 people – with enthusiasm. The Indonesians had their own version of “We Will Rock You” by Queen: “We Want Working Visa!” and the Nepalese performed a mix of early Garage Punk sound and rock version of Arirang – really great. Especially Arirang created an atmosphere of enthusiasm, a little comparable with the atmosphere of last year’s anti-USFK demonstrations on Gwanghwamun. All in all a really great event – just pity that only some Koreans joined.
On Sunday we had again a more serious event: a protest rally and demonstration in Ansan organized by Ansan Sit-in Struggle team and us. Some of our comrades worried and expected fights with the cops and when we arrived we’d to see, that our fan club, the “Special Solidarity Team” in full crew-power were present: hundreds of riot cops were hanging around Ansan Station, our rally place. And their aim, to threat potential participants from Ansan, was partly successful. While on the rally sometimes between 300 and 500 people joined the event, later on the following demonstration through Ansan’s “Migrant-Town”, only around 150 people dared to participate. But anyway, we think it was successful for us, because we got a lot attention and sympathy from Ansan’s citizens and by-passing migrants. Very impressive was a spontaneous speech by Korean vendors, denouncing government’s policy of manhunt and deportation. Some shop owners gave several presents, like health drinks, for the demonstrators and especially by-passing migrants were eager for our leaflets. On places, during the demonstration, were we held speeches to explain our case, regularly crowds of pedestrians were listen to us and even we got several times applause from the audience, migrant workers, but also from many Koreans. One Korean teenager: “We are one community, we learned to live together and to share our happiness, our sufferings. It is like the government want to expel my sisters and brothers out of the country!”
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International Migrant Day 
