All media. Hell, everyone, welcome to it could happen here. Podcasts about things falling apart and people putting them back together. Today we're talking about a little of both of those things. I'm joined by Rose, who's a migration activist in the Netherlands,
and Mick, who has studied migration. We're going to talk about the EU's border today, and we're going to talk about I think a lot of people, especially the bulk of our listeners in the United States, won't be aware, perhaps of how incredibly cruel and fatal the EU's border is, what it does to people, how it does it, where it does it. So we're going to talk about that today. It's very exciting. There's even more war than we have in the United States, so I'm looking forward to that.
And so Hi, Welcome to the show, both of you.
Hi, Thanks, Hi, Thanks for having us.
Thanks for being here. The way we wanted to structure this was Mick has like an excellent presentation for We're going to structure this over two episodes. First, we want to talk about the state of things, and then we want to talk about activism in ways that people can meaningfully make a difference in this situation. So Nick, Yeah, do you'd like to take it away with your with your script here wrote and I will interject whenever we feel like it.
Okay, fair enough, let's go.
So.
The EU border crisis is largely crisis of the Mediterranean to see that separates Europe from Africa, and it is arguably one of the most deadly borders in the world, if not the most deadly border. According to several activists organizations such as the United Against Refugee Devs and Abolish Frontex, which is the EU border agency in charge of protecting the border, over fifty two thousand people have died at
this border as of June twenty twenty three. This number is almost certainly higher to a number of factors, one of which is the significant amount of bodies are never recovered, which makes it very hard to verify whether or not someone has died or is lost somewhere in the migration routes. Migration patterns are very hard to keep track of. People travel hundreds of kilometers to simply get to a point where they can get access to boats or other means
of being transported across the sea. Yeah, I have a picture here that I would like to share with you. Listeners can find it in the notes and sources.
Maybe we'll try and describe it, just so you know someone's driving or something they can I guess, Yeah, go ahead, give me a best shot.
Okay. It's a map of continental Europe with adjacent to it Africa and Eurasia. And it's a bunch of arrows coalescing on to certain points that grow bigger and bigger. And these represent the migration routes and the number of people that take a particular path. As you can see, the thick line, the thicker the ligne, the more people it represents. The thinner lines come from the Middle East
and further to the east. In terms of obstacles and danger, I think it's safe to say that crossing Iraq or Syria is not without risk.
Yeah, yeah, I've done that. It's yeah, and I've done it in cars and with permission, and it's already pretty high risk. It's interesting this map is it's a twenty seventeen map. Am I seeing that right?
Yes, it's from the Frontext quarterly reports too, which covers April till June twenty seventeen.
Yeah, so maybe this is after the peak of people leaving that Iraq and Syria area they like there.
Yeah, after twenty fifteen Mayhem.
Yes, yeah, exactly, not that there are not still significant numbers. I mean I speak to people in Syria most weeks who are trying to leave Syria. It's become harder and harder due in part to the EU making it borders harder and harder and more and more deadly to cross, and due to a number of other reasons. But yeah, I think those those lines would have been fatter if we'd gone back, like, you know, three or four years. Yeah, I mean people in Europe will probably have been familiar
with this. I mean, of course, says THEE. When was the photo taken of the young child who passed away that was like Cordy.
I think that was in the summer of.
Bottom Yeah, Alan Curdy. Yeah, the boy's name was Alan Curty. I think a brother of his ground as well.
Yeah, people can look that up if they want to. I'll try not to include it. It's quite a horrible thing to have to witness.
No, it's it's it's not a nice photo to see. Ironically, it was one of the few moments where like European people could muster some sympathy for refugees, but yeah, that wins at some point.
Yeah, it's always a case like I don't know, I
am talking about this before speak about again. But like the other day, I was out dropping water and we came across a little three year old girl and her mother from Guinea, and the young girl was very hypothermic, Like at first we didn't notice because we're like, oh, this girl is very quiet, and then we're like, oh, okay, this girl is very very quiet, and perhaps, you know, we should be concerned, and like, I don't know how, and no one in their right mind would be like, yeah,
this is normal and good, and I'm really glad that this child is in a place where, you know, if left for several more hours, she might die. And everyone in that situation, to include people who were just driving by, were like, oh fuck, we need to help. But sadly, when we abstract it to numbers, which is the way it's always reported on, right, it's not stories, it's not people, it's not little children, it's fifty something thousand people. You know,
it's hard to imagine fifty something thousand people dying. It's easier to feel something for one little boy.
Yeah, and it's easier to feel something for a child or a man. It's easier to feel something for a woman than man. And also even the death of Alanchourli
despite all the yeah, outraged provoked. It was also used as a to make the Turkey Deal, which was intended to stop people crossing by boat from Turkey to Greece, even though that was actually one of the safest migration roots we had at the time, and it closed up and people started to move to Libya and instead of three kilometers of sea, that meant people had to cross one hundred or more kilometers of sea, which was obviously way more deadly.
Yeah, and just did you need to Libya? And that time in Libya's where we'll find out later is far from risk free.
Yeah. Libya is a very different place than Turkey.
Absolutely, Yeah, significantly worse to be than yeah, Turkey. So to get back on track, as you can also see from the picture of a vast majority of those migration routes crossed the Sahara Desert, people who die in the desert or through other dangers on their journey do not make it to the Mediterranean and therefore at tend to not end up in the statistics of people dying there, But I would still argue that it is undeniable that those people in fact died due to the migration policies
that the EU puts in place and enforces. Definitely, it's just outside of our purview.
The United list again of refugee deaths, it's taking into account anyone whose death can be attributed to the border, So they do also include people dying in the desert, but there is much less news about it, So the figures of frontacs and of IOM usually do not include those. But the number you just mentioned that with fifty two thousand, it also includes people who made suicide and detention centers,
or who died of medical neglecting camps. But it also includes people who died further from the European border, but still on borders that are controlled are influenced by European policies.
Yeah, in the US like to give a sort of comparison example that the statistics we have that come from border patrol, those are the remains that are found, which is a subset of the remains that exist in it, and it doesn't take into account people who died crossing Mexico creepeople who died as fastus as a Darian gap right, which is very dangerous, and it's becoming more so as more traffic goes across it. People who died taking boats around the Daryan Gap right or for whatever reason didn't
make it. So we too have this kind of attempt to I guess when we get government statistics, we have to remember that they come from a government perspective and they will try and minimize the obvious cruelty that's happening.
I think that's a characteristic of almost every government that keep the numbers low and don't really engage with the actual problems that are at hand. So before we go into more specific territories, there are a few things that should be made clear. The EU does not follow their own rules about migration. Hopefully, at the end of this the listeners will also accept that the humanitarian and migration crises is much more a product of border policies rather
than the policies being a consequence of migration. To first illustrate this, here is a quote from government dot NL, the English version of the Dutch government websites Asylum or Return. All refugees entering the EU may apply for asylum. They must do this in the country where they enter the EU. Asylum Seekers who do not require protection must return to their country of origin or to a save third country. The EU respects the human rights of refugees, both when
dealing with their applications and with regard to return. So I want you all to keep this in mind when we continue, because this phrasing ignores other policies that make much harder for migrants and refugees to even enter the EU or to be able to apply for asylum. So, and before we dive deeper into the atrocities that the EU enables, I think it's important to first briefly explain how the border system works and the history behind it.
Europe is no stranger to migration and migrants, and it is something that has been happening in the waves over the past three to four decades. In the early nineties, there were multiple waves of migrants from Albania to other European countries. The main cause of this was the isolationist policies that were enforced by the communist regime that was in charge there, the unrest that followed at the end
of the regime, and the crisis of Kosovo. For those unaware, Kosovo had a war with Serbia for independence and Kosovari people are largely ethnic Albanians with the same language, and because of this, it was easier for Albanians to merge with the Kostafari refugees and use that to migrate further and easier into Europe. Other waves are closed by other geopolitical events, such as the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, which I think Mia and Roberts covered in their episode on
self immolation. Yeah, okay, and much more down to everyone divorce in Syria and Libya.
My interest in the border is has always run parallel to my interesting conflict in reporting on conflict, and like it's just become such a such a recurrent experience to either learn about conflicts at the border here because somebody is telling me about them, or learn about often like repression of ethnic or national or religious minorities because someone
here tells me about them, or to go somewhere. You know, I was in Syria in October, was in Iraq the and then return and see people from there at our border. And like, as people will be aware the asylum system and it will cover it later. The asylum system allows people who are very in danger of persecution for various categories to apply for asylum. It's not functioning. It's not functioning the e U, it's not functioning in the US.
Like I've seen that persecution with my own eyes and the consequences of it, and I've seen people try and get away from it. Every single time I'm in somewhere like that, people will ask me for help, and it is fucking heartbreaking to be like, yeah, the country that you see flying the F sixteens or the F thirty fives over your head, the planes that cost more than this entire town makes in a year. No, we can't
have a functioning fucking immigration system. Like in the case of the US, it's this app which doesn't work and you can only use it Northern Mexico City. And it's this broken system leads to people. They're not like getting in a boat across the Mediterranean, crossing the Darien Gap, walking across the mountains of Northern Mexico because they want
to have like a better iPhone. They're doing it because whatever the alternative is seems worse and it's worth People are fully aware that they're risking their lives on these journeys. It's you know, it's not that they live without access to news and the internet. They know about the death
in the Mediterranean, they know about the Dariant Gap. When I talk to migrants who haven't crossed the gap, like I was talking to group of Colombian migrants two or three days ago, and they were coming in to the US through It's in an area east of Hocomber, which's very rugged and very mountainous, and they were coming into an open air detention site where border patrol holds them. And I was talking to them, I say, how many if you walked, how many if you flew. Most of
them flew and then were able to work forward. The ones who walked. Everyone was like, oh shit, that's horrible, Like you must have seen terrible things. Like they're very aware of how dangerous these journeys are. The reason that they're taking them is because it seems like staying at home would be more dangerous.
Yeah, although I would like to add that it's not every migrant is a real refugee, and not every migrant has to be a real refugee. Yes, at least as the definition was established in the fifties by a bunch of pretentious guys who kind of decided this is a good reason to migrate and all other reasons are not.
At first, yeah, at first I worked in Greece and that was mainly with people of like what are considered like objectively real or good refugees, like people from Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria, whereas when I was working in Bosnia it was mainly people from Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan. And a lack of opportunity can be a very good reason to move. I think most white people who moved to
America did so because of that. Yeah, not because they were imminently you know, bombed in their home countries, but because they wanted to make something out of their lives and they didn't have opportunities at home. And I think this whole concept of refugee is meant to distinguish between good and bad reasons to move, and good and bad people migrants. In the end, people can do really dangerous things for giving their children a better life, and if
their children are not immediate danger. And the other thing I would like to stress is that I think the migration regime that we see today is very tightly connected to colonization and decolonization. For example, specifically in the Midlands, Surinam was a Dutch colony and one of the reasons why the Dutch government agreed with decolonization was because the Dutch society started to get worried about all the black people showing up. So and the same something similar happened
with the independence word that Algeria fought against France. France preferred to give them independence rather than give them equal rights and access to the French territory. Like creating those barriers and keeping people in the Global South after these countries became independent is very tighly connected with ecolonization, but of course especially with new colonization and new ways of controlling people in the Global South and exploiting them.
Yeah, if we look at like the US context, the United States government has managed to engineer this sort of compromise where capital travels freely across the Americas and people don't right, so it's possible for them to exploit lower wage labor, for US companies to exploit lower wage labor in Mexico and other countries to the south, but not for those people to come and seek a better way to better way of living in the country that is consuming the products of their labor and so like this
is obviously not new to people, right, this is a thing that's appartist to highlighted in nineteen ninety four and it's been the case for thirty years. But yeah, we have in the US because the United States and colonialism like kind of a in a somewhat less overway, although often in a pretty over way. It's facilitated undemocratic regimes and a low quality of life for people all across specifically the Americas, but also the rest of the world.
And it's now seeking to prevent those people from coming here after it destabilized to their countries, right or in the case of climate change, again, like the consumption habits of certain countries that have had an impact on people all around the world, to include people in more dieconomic circumstances. And it shouldn't be any less should we shouldn't have any less empathy or solidarity with those people because no one's bombing them and they just want to chance for
their kids to do the same shit. Like I moved to America and I was twenty one because they want many jobs for me at home, Like there's something.
Very arrogant about thinking that you can decide whether someone else has a right to exist totally. And I think that's kind of what migration policies are.
Yeah, and as you pointed out, they were established after the Second World War with a very narrow set of categories. Don't include not only do not include climate change, but also like generalized violence, right, the generalized veru. Yeah.
Actually it's like seeing from a war is not making you a real refugee according to international.
Law, yeah, yeah, which is.
Something people don't know. So like an average sharing refugee is actually legally not.
A refugee, right, Yeah, they are in.
Discriminate violence, but not like they don't have like political they don't have a right to political asylum.
Yeah, or like people in Ecuador will will talk to talk to people from Ecuador a lot, you know, and they'll be like, well, you've seen men they took over the TV station. So there's some gangs took over a TV station there recently, and it's kind of an armed takeover. And then like, as you can see, would you want your child growing up there? You know, if you had children, And of course it's a very compelling argument and if
I was in their position with young children. Guy I met the other day his son needed medical care that he couldn't obtain in his country. You know, like that's a perfectly valid reason for coming here. But none of those things count for asylum to those people that I'd a lumped into quote unquote economic migrants, which is still you know, like people have a right to a living wage and to be able to pay for their family, to have the things that they need to survive and thrive.
You're right, the asylum system is very narrow, and we.
Should also not forget that, even if we're excluding war, you can't really separate migration from the things the West has done in those other countries to maintain that neocolonial relationship and you know, keep those keep those people dependent on whatever whims there are in the West, and whether that's for resources, whether that's for because there were like the communist regimes there that we weren't happy with. Like,
you can't separate that. You can separate the conditions that are happening there right now to things that have been decided in the West years prior.
Yeah, very true, All right, we're back. Have you enjoyed those adverts products and services following our discussion on how capitalism has made life unlivable in certain parts of the world. So Mick Kail, let's pick up with you explaining this to EU border to us well.
I found a very nice scholarly article that breaks down how the EU borders work and makes a very clear distinction between the different layers that protect fortress Europe. These layers will be called the paper border, which largely consists of visa policies and similar bureaucracy that regulates movement to the EU and within it. Then we have the iron border, which is exactly what you imagine it to me, it's the physical structures and forms of control that we put
up to keep people out. And then we have the post border, and that's about the reception of migrants, migrant shelters and similar constructions that keep migrants and refugees ostracized and isolated even after being allowed access into the EU and having started a asylum process. For those stories, we should turn to Rose when we get there, because she is much more on the ground experience than I have
with this, So we'll start with the paper border. During the mid eighties, the EU started to propose and enact a series of treaties and policies that in effect strengthened the external borders and loosened the borders within Europe. I think no one is particularly interested in this series of treaties, so I will name the only one is the Shangan Treaty. This treaty essentially unites the external borders under EU command
rather than as a task for individual states. In practice, this also means that you citizens who have a proper documentation can move really between countries who are who have signed the sang In Treaty for holidays or work loose. You and I we could move to Germany tomorrow if we wanted to, and I have little to know obstacles in terms of like documentary.
Were economically independent though, like that is very crucial about your friend. Enough movement is conditional on.
You making money, yeah, having enough money to support yourself. But you can move like this is very funny. Pissed off British people who are living in Spain right when they when Britain brexited, because they hadn't realized that they would impact them. They you know, like.
Was only the Polish that we yeah, like the undesirable migrants, but yes, assume themselves to be desirable.
Yeah, well, yeah, I don't think we use the word expat right like Bridge would use the word expected its describe a migrant from Britain to Spain like it's yeah, it's reallyiculous. I mean, I've lived in front in Spain, of fift in Belgium and I was, I guess, somewhat economically independent. Made twelve thousand years a year as a bike racer, but that was you know, I could do that. It's very easy for me, but it is.
I do think it's important because I think it's one of those post border things that what we see for some point in analyts is that most homeless people here are not the undocumented migrants. They are not the refugees or Dutch people that they're EU migrants. So people have low paying jobs, break their legs, get kicked out of their houses and their jobs, and are not welcoming to homeless shelters because an endlands says, well, you are not
economically independent. There were, Yeah, so this is also part of the migration regime, and this is also part of keeping migrants exploitable. Even if you use citizens have the right to work, they don't. They're only allowed to work. We only want them if they bring in econo profits. We don't want them when they're sick or neat or whatever.
Yeah, and then mostly we want them for jobs that we feel too good to actually do. When I was younger, I used to work in a greenhouse, and there's an immense amount of people from like Poland or other Eastern European countries coming there because Dutch people tend not to want to work in a greenhouse. It's one of those things.
It's an extension of that, like a colonial perspective, right that like, these are not jobs for.
Us exactly because you get your hands dirty and we can't have that here. To put the whole thing about the paper border into less academic term, the EU started to act like a nation state and started to make sharp distinctions between native and non native European citizens. I think it's worth pointing out that what counts as EU is also a how was it? European identity. It's very closely tied to geographical location and therefore also implicitly linked
to Christianity. Countries that are largely non Christian but connected to Europe tend to be excluded. Turkey is partially in Europe but not part of the EU, and Bosnia Herzegovina, which is a majority Muslim country, is also excluded from that. But much like Turkey is being tempted with the whole maybe you can join if you do this and that, but we're not really committing to that. That, however, is a story for another time. Maybe The point that I want to make here is that the visa program for
Europe is based on geographical discrimination. Countries outside the geography of Europe are blacklisted and cannot gain access to the papers that they need to legally enter the EU. This bureaucracy prohibits people from entering the EU before fences or border guards have even entered the equation, hence the paper border, since entering or crossing without a paper visa is nigh impossible.
Yeah, I would like to add, of course, like it is geographical discrimination, but of course indirectly it is discrimination based on class and race, So it is people of color but not the super rich people of color, and it is yeah, it is. It is formerly colonized countries that are largely that even have an obligation to get a visa, so people from the US can travel visa free, same for people from Australia. So it is like it
is very ironic. I find that it's in Europe it's considered legal to discriminate based on nationality, even though it is very clearly a very smart way to discriminate actually people based on the color of their skin and their economic status.
Exactly what you said, Rose, Like all the countries that are backlisted are like from the the global South, so I have to speak almost all of them. But I talked to about this with a professor of mine a while back, and I think if you can put down like thirty thousand euros, then you can get a visa even if you're from those countries.
Exactly. So the super rich. Actually, the super rich have freedom of movements, yeah, but the it is always the poor migrants whose movement is problematic and whose.
Movement is Yeah. In Britain and in the US, there's a lot of discourse about like open borders. I've noticed like, oh, the border is open, right, Like the border has always been open to people like me. I live in the United States, right, I am a US citizen. Now I'm also a British citizen. I've lived and worked in Spain, I've lived and worked in France, I've lived and worked in Belgium. I can go, and I can get a visa to i Rack. I can get a visa to
anywhere I want. The borders have always been open to white people who have financial means. What they're saying when they're saying open borders is implicitly border is open to people who are not white, not wealthy, perhaps not Christian.
And what one can infer from that is a great deal of bigotry and a great deal of like unease about living, you know, alongside people who you feel like are not like the same quote unquote as you, which is particularly run in the United States, right in a country which is itself a settler colony.
Yeah, it's all very very uplifting stuff. I do want to end this particular bit with the quote from that article, Yeah, because I think it it says it much more fancy than I ever could, Rather than guards with guns, this first border. If the EU is watched over by bureaucrats armed with paper and entrenched in far away embassies. Through this political technology, all citizens of a large group of
nations bart to view are blacklists. This means in practice that most of the citizens of these blacklisted countries cannot acquire the visas they require to legally travel to the EU. The implication is that the paper border of the EU remotely and invisibly cages people in the inequitable or tree of birth end quote. I think it's very much worth highlighting that if you're as we've established, unless you're like wealthy or white, you cannot legally enter the e EU.
And even though our politicians keep saying no, no, we're just against the illegals, now there is for a lot of people there simply is no way to enter legally. It's impossible, and it's a large part of the conversation that we conveniently ignore because it doesn't fit like the political narratives that people want to spread.
Yeah, and of course most refugee conventions allow for people to enter between ports of entry in whichever way they can to claim asylum, Like one does not have to and turn a certain way to claim asylum, despite what the discourse might suggest.
Yeah, and I think this border is like probably the most overlooked because it doesn't create any dramatic pictures, right it is indeed, it's just people sitting in an office and looking at papers and deciding no. But these are like in Dutch. Yeah, these are people working at the immigration office. And these are the people who then decide that's the only option for people is to go on
a boat. So these these are policies and the people who are executing them are super crucial in enforcing people onto dangerous.
Routes exactly because there is no way to do it legally. Therefore, I have to set foot on that soil and then you know, apply for asylum because the other route is like before I even tried, already closed off.
Yeah, and I really like that term, the inequitable of birth. We call it like support hides. Yeah, but it's one of the most insane or like most fundamentally unjust things that we see, that we are living with and that we don't see or like that many people don't see. So just because we were born, like I was born in one of the richest countries of in the world. My parents had a Dutch passport. That's how I got a Dutch fasport. I did literally nothing to get that.
It is impossible for me to lose my Dutch passport. I commit I can commit like the worst crimes and they will not, you know, they will not lead me to lose my passport. Whereas other people who are born in countries where life expectancy is crazy low, or where there's no healthcare or no proper education or jobs, they too did absolutely nothing to be born there or to
be assigned to that nationality. And so somehow this border and this passport is legitimizing the fact that some people just die and we're fine with that, and other people have insane privileges and opportunities, and the nationality is kind of a justification because if you really think about it, there is no reason why the midium wage in Ethiopia should be lower than in the Netlands, Like there really isn't. The only reason is that they have a different nationality,
and somehow that makes it normal. And it's just yeah, it's just this injustice in just structures that are so invisible and that are not questioned or talked about enough. So I'm glad we're talking about it today.
But yeah, good, it's such a stark reality when you live on the border. That guy live on the US Mexico border, and like what on earth, Like, you know, the justification for being like oh yeah, this person should arn less money and they can't come here, but you can go down there and buy stuff at the same price, ake, and that's fine, Like, it's totally fine. Yeah, An, we're
going to build a giant fuck off wall. And it's just such when I spend a lot of time in the more remote parts of the US border, and for most of the time that border country to what you might have seen on the news is a one meter high cattle fence with a single strand above wire. And it's so obviously just a light like very often cattle will cross the border, and like they will have to be herded back right, like the it's just a notional
line in the sand. When they built the border wall, it really fucked up the migration habits of jaguars, bears, deer. I've seen animals unable to comprehend. Like, but no, that's where I go and get my water, right, Like, it's such an arbitrary distinction that that results in so much cruelty.
But we do build walls better than you.
Yeah, that's a good segue to the European iron border.
One thing we are more cruel at than the Americans.
Yeah, yeah, it's finally something we can beat the American sets.
I'm mad. We're working on it, believe me.
Okay, well, not too hard. We want we want to keep this trophy for a while.
You know what else is competing to be the most cruel Mick, No, it's it's it's potentially the production services support this show. All right, we're back. We hope you enjoyed those products and services. Hopefully it wasn't for like a border surveillance technology or you know, something similar walls.
Okay, so the next part is the Iron Border. This is very similar to what people already think of, but but somehow worse. The Iron Border is a collection of fences, walls, barbed and razor wire, or even fortified enclaves such as Suta and Melilla in Spain. Sorry for butchering those names. It is both the Trent and a performance. It's meant to project security for people within the walls. It shows that EU uses an iron fist to protect Europeans from
irregular or illegal immigrant migration. What is more important to highlight it also makes for very good outreach media for right wing and fascist platforms. Refugees will continue to breach those fences and the photographs and videos of it made for very good propaganda about how borders need to be strengthened. The fenced borders of Europe have increased from three hundred kilometers in twenty fourteen to a shocking two thousand and forty eight kilometers in twenty twenty two.
Yeah, that's substantially than the US we have. Of course it's America, so it's miles. But the most generous estimate, based on pre existing war repairs Trump wall building is seven hundred and forty eight miles. That was actually I would say about seven hundred and fifty because I've seen construction happening since then, so that's what like eleven hundred kilometers, And it's you know, we're just just behalf of what the EU has.
And I think for me, like when I when I was at the physical borders, like the border walls, I mean, it feels like a military zone, like I was on the Hungarian border. There's drones, there's super heavily weaponed soldiers walking around, like helicopters flying around. It's like it's a very intimidating feeling. But if you talk to the people crossing the fence, the fence is kind of a joke like you can just bring Yeah, you can just go to a gardening shop and buy a stairs or like
a ladder and just put it over the fence. You can buy a super simple scissor that you would use in the garden to cut your vegetables and you kind of cut the fence open with it. People were building tunnels, like of course it is. It takes time to us and it's so in that sense, it's it's a hindrance.
But the entire.
Promise that if a wall holl stop people is indeed, it's just a political game, and the politicians know that it's not true. It's it's just a way to show how tough they are and how rough they are. And at the same time, I think this is a good one to instant some Palestine to the discussion. So most of the European borders are equipped with razor wire, and that is literally like knives wire, you know, like it
is like it's razors blades. Yeah, and this is designed by the Israeli army and weapons industry, and the aim of these this razor wire is to gut as deeply as possible into people's skin without causing pain. So people don't realize how realize how heavily wounded they are, in order to make them bleed as much as possible. This has been tested in Gas and it is really are weal liked it, And now it's sold in Europe to sometimes stuff the same people leaving Flea and Gaza trying
to reach Europe. So the border in one hand is kind of useless, but at the same time it is really built to be as cruel and as harmful as possible. And I know a lot of people with a lot of scars on their bodies just from those razor wires.
Yeah, I think if we want to draw that connection further, like Lbit Technologies has massive, multi tens of million dollar contracts for border surveillance where I live. Right, the same things that are surveilling people in Gaza are surveilling you if you go for a hike in East County, San Diego, they're also surveilling migrants. Right. The raiser ware that you mentioned is everywhere out here. Right. It doesn't work, it gets cut eventually, it gets blankets thrown over it, but
in the meantime it hurts people and the wall. It's right, there's also walls between it's rail and Palestine, between Kurdistan and Turkey. What they, at least these larger ones do is is they force people. The US Wall is also one that's entirely breachable. I've seen people climbing it. I've seen people climbing again this week. I've seen people go under it, I've seen people go through it. I've seen
people go around it. But what it does tend to do is force people into the more remote areas where they didn't build wall, and those areas are where you're more likely to die. And every year that we've built more wall, we've seen more deaths. And as someone who engages in mutual aid, every year that they build more wall, we have to think about where will people go, how will they get there, what state will they be in, How can we make this journey less deadly? And that
becomes harder and harder for us. You know, we did a water drop on Sunday. It took us five hours to hike a very small section of this trail that people hiked in order to surrender themselves, just as they would if they could come through a port of entry. No more deadly.
Yeah, I think that's kind of sum sort of most migration policies or migration like obstacles to migration in Europe as well, they don't actually stop migrants, but they do hurt them, and they do push them into danger or actual.
Deadly Yeah, because you're never going to stop it, but you can use like quote unquote deterrens in the hopes that will all slow down, but you're just going to get people hurt and killed.
Yea. Yeah, that is like how incredibly cynecle the border is. I think that the main deterrence is the people dying, and that this is part of the political game to disencourage migrants.
Yeah, and then you can and then you can use other policies that we'll get to to present yourself as the good guy for wanting to make sure that people don't cross those walls or across the meta Seradian and you can present yourself as the good guy trying to prevent those steps that your policies are causing.
I think that's why we're going to endit for today. We'd plan for this to be a one part episode, but we really enjoyed talking and we had a lot in comment, so this is going to be a two parter. Tomorrow we will be back to discuss the EU's external border and how it has not one EU countries enforcing its border in ways that are very detrimental, damaging and deadly to migrants. So I hope you look forward to that and we'll see you again tomorrow.
Hi.
Everyone, it's me James, and I just wanted to read you this today. I'm going to put it in our episode this week because it's a cause that's important to us, and so we thought it would be something that might be important to you too as well. On the tenth of June twenty twenty four, Leonard Peltier, an m robed member of the Turtle Band of Chippewa of Lakota and Ojibwai ancestry and the longest serving political prisoner in the United States, will be appearing before the US Parole Commission
for the first time since two thousand. He faces staunch opposition from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies due to having allegedly killed two FBI agents in a firefight on the twenty sixth of June nineteen seventy five, after the agents appeared on reservation land to execute a pretextural warrant.
The initial firefight occurred during the quote reign of Terror on Pine Ridge in the wake of the occupation of Wounded Kney, a time of extreme violence when federal law enforcement installed a puppet tribal chair and was arming vigilantes who targeted Indigenous traditionalists every since leaving up to these events, as well as subsequent investigation and mister Peltier's tradition, trial, conviction, and sentencing were characterized by gross misconduct on the part
of law enforcement, the prosecution, and the courts. Mister Peltier's co defendants were separately tried and acquitted on grounds of
self defense. Mister Peltier was railroaded, and his case is tainted by discrimination at every level, ranging from the withholding of exculpatory evidence to a torture and coercion of extradition and trial witnesses, and from the refusal of the judge to dismiss and vowedly racist Dura, to the apologetic gymnastics of the courts affirming his convictions in the face of meritorious legal challenges and admitted evidence ab outrageous government misdeeds.
Mister Peltier has been in prison for more than forty eight years and he's almost eighty years old. He suffers from chronic and potentially lethal conditions for which he receives insufficient and substandard medical care. If you want to take action to hashtag free Leonard Peltier, you can call the US Parole Commission at two zero two three four six seven zero zero zero. And if you'd like to find more information on how to support, you can go to this url. It's http colon slash slash n d NC
dot c c slash free Leonard Peltier. That's free l e O n A R D P E l t I e R, or you can follow n d N Collective on social media for more ways to support him. More information on Danna Peltier, listen to Margaret's podcast on the Lakota Nation, a read in the Spirit of the Crazy Horse by Peter Mathewson.
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool Zonemedia dot com slash sources thanks for listening.