KEIN MENSCH IST ILLEGAL Founded 1997 in Germany. Local networks all over Germany and in a number of other Western countries   © Kein Mensch Ist Illegal   Kein Mensch Ist Illegal (No One Is Illegal) was founded in 1997 as an anti-racism network. During Documenta X in Kassel, Germany, three or four dozens political activists published the manifesto “No One Is Illegal.” Among the participants were media activists, radio practitioners, photographers, filmmakers, and artists. The goal of the network is to hide and support illegal migrants, squatting churches, organizing public or semi-public debates about illegal border-crossing, and starting actions against deportations. It is an ongoing project with no centralized structure, but several hundred groups, exile organizations, asylum-seekers, and migrant self-organizations and supporters have joined the various actions. “Deportation.Class” is the name of a campaign that developed from the network in the summer of 1999, when a Sudanese refugee on board a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Cairo was killed by police escorts during deportation proceedings. The campaign was officially launched during the International Tourism Convention in Berlin, Germany, March 2000, and targeted the Lufthansa Corporation for transporting deportees on its commercial flights. With actions in public space, websites, posters, publications, film spots, and short animations, the activists took every opportunity to publicize the practice of transporting deportees on commercial flights, which had in the meantime come under judicial scrutiny. Activists arrived to cause confusion at travel agencies and ticket counters, at firm-run training centers and flight schools, at trade conventions and the Lufthansa Partner Day at the World's Fair 2000. At the Hamburg airport, for instance, activists repeatedly disguised themselves as employees of an advertising agency, purportedly conducting a survey among Lufthansa passengers as to their readiness to be reseated from business or tourist into deportation class. “Book with the Lufthansa deportation class,” read the pamphlets. “We are offering a thirty percent price reduction on all flights since a separate zone has been reserved in our aircraft for the transport of deported asylum seekers.” Most of those asked did not categorically refuse: “If it's cheaper, why not?” The Lufthansa Corporation had no choice but to call a hasty press conference on April 11, 2000, and distance itself from the “cynical and inhumane proceedings.” Needless to say, they meant the pamphlets, not the deportations.   Contribution: Participates in Station 2: Aarhus Art Building, Aarhus, with “Deportation.Class,” 1999. Documentation of mixed media campaign, dimensions variable. Courtesy of Kein Mensch Ist Illegal.