Noborder Radio is a web and pirate itinerant radio station that talks about immigration giving voice directly to immigrants and activists arount the world.
The idea has been conceived in the spring of 2016 by a group of indipendent activists who were working inside the big informal Idomeni refugee camp, along the greek-macedonian border and was supposed to became an FM radio station which broadcasts music and shows build with both immigrants and activists together in the whole camp area.The forced eviction of Idomeni at theĀ beginning of May let to the decision to move the project inside another informal camp 20 km far from Idomeni and where many people running away from deportation found a shelter: EKO camp.
The first transmission happened on May 31st, 2016 on 95.00 FM frequency using an old of Radio Popolare Milano transmitter and self-built antenna. The show was also streamed to the internet using a satellite antenna saved from the fury of the bulldozers in Idomeni and previously installed by #overthefortress for noborderWiFi project.
The radio became immediately the most important important meeting place of the camp and a around it a new community of people who helped to make it work for around a month, started to grow.
The radio remained in the camp until the day of the eviction, the morning of June 13, when the police raided the area forcing the refugees to jump on the buses to be deported to government camps and arresting activists,
After the experience in Greece, all the technical equipment is brought in Italy waiting to be reused. The opportunity to turn on the transmissions happens in July 2016 when in Como, on the Italian-Swiss border, hundreds of African immigrants remain stuck in the park by the train station following a major change by Switzerland about the laws regulating immigration. The radio will follow throughout the summer the stories of Como bringing immigrants and activists testimonies on air.
After the eviction of Como, which occurred in late summer, the radio takes a break to regroup until the first days of November, when it joins the #overthefortress caravan in southern of Italy, where it transmits once a week in a different place involving activists and migrants met along the way.
In the beginning of December 2016 Echoes, a film that tells the life within the EKO camp through the recordings of Noborder Radio, was released.