EU Border Enforcement, Part 2

more or less where we left off yesterday. Like you can map, and I'm not the first one to have made these maps, but you can look at humane borders in Arizona, and then you can look at EFF's map of fixed and mobile towers and you can see people. And again this is something I'm more familiar with, and I'd like to be people dying in the shade of the surveillance towers, without help, without water, without the very minor things that it would take for them not to

have died. And so yeah, this provides justification. It provides a massive outlet for the post War on Terror like military industrial complex to continue to make its money, and to continue to make its money through innocent people dying.

fight new ways to sell their products to states. And that's also why the border keeps getting more and more militarized, because it is the one point where they can still sell a lot of things without their having to be a war.

the Middle East Africa. Like Rose said earlier, The Turkey deal is essentially a political deal between the EU and Turkey for Turkey to hold a portion of Syrian refugees over within their border to stop them from coming into Europe. And I think we paid a few billion, more than a few billion probably for Turkey to do that. So the most prominent of these deals are, as I said, Turkey,

but also Tunisia and Libya. We're essentially outsourcing the abuse and human rights violations to countries that are outside the scope of our media, who have regimes that we would declare dictatorships and autocracies. In the case of Libya, it's

even like rebels and warlords being funded with EU taxpayer money. Today, the EUPAC with Libya has given rise to a full fledged slave market run by cold blooded human traffickers who, incentivized by the EU's crackdown on irregular migration and the resulting business downturn of would be profitable passengers, are now auctioning economic migrants and refugees as slaves. Yeah, we're just

doing slavery with extra steps now. So to make it inescapably clear how bad the situation is, I'm now going to quote from an Amnesty International article from twenty twenty one. Three Police Shada al Zawa Center is a facility facility which was previously run by a non affiliated militia and was recently integrated under the DCIM and designated for people in vulnerable situations. A DCIM is an acronym for Libya's Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration. It's essentially a department of

their Interior Ministry. Former detainees from that facility said that guards raped women and some were cohoersed into sex in exchange for their release or for essentials such as clean water grace. A pseudonym said she was heavily beaten for refusing to comply with such a demand. I told the guard no. He used the gun to knock me back. He used a letter soldier's shoe to kick me from my waist. Two young women at the facility attempted to

commit suicide as a result of such abuse. Three women also said that two babies detained with their mothers after an attempted sea crossing had died in early twenty twenty one after guards refused to transfer them to a hospital for a critical medical treatment, and the International Report documents similar patterns of human rights violations including severe beatings, sexual violence, extortion, force labor, and in human conditions across seven DCIM centers

in Libya. In Abuisa Center in the city of al Zayadtnes reported being deprived of nutritious food to the point of starvation end growth.

boat of migrants. Previously, the European Union actually had rescue ships, but the European Union, if a boat is near another boat in distress, there's an obligation to rescue, and after the rescue, you have to bring the people to a

safe port. So having having a boat at sea meant that the European Border Agency Front Tax was obliged to rescue people at sea, and so they just thought let's just do away with the boats and let's just have helicopters and drones so we can still spot boats that are sinking, but we cannot help them.

back to Libya. The Libyan coast Guard takes the people on the boat, brings them back to Libyan mainland, and actually sells them to the militias running the detention centers. So the Libyan coast Guard gets paid twice for stopping migrants, first by the European Union and secondly by the militias that will later sell them as slates or use them

for slavery. And this is what we have been funding for years, and there have been extensive documentation about these human rights violations and the very direct link of the EO funding, and it just keeps going.

preventing people from crossing the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats and dinghies. Personally, I would argue that people will continue to make that crossing if only to escape the EU funded hellholes that these regimes create in order to get that sweet, sweet EU funding. What is definitely very concerning is that despite criticisms from NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch,

Europe will likely continue these practices. Only last year did it sign a deal with Tunisia with the attention of using that as a third country as they call it, to prevent sea crossings. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated that this could be a blueprint for cooperation with other countries. Surprise of no one, this will very likely increase the human rights violations and abusance that happened there.

And after this, I have two examples of stories that that happens at the EU borders that are I think particularly heartbreaking. And this was also the hardest part for me to write, because there are so many stories out there that I think deserve to be heard and deserve to have like some lights shone on there just to show people the reality. But that would be that would turn into a very very long episode.

take on its own citizens. So it's not only people from Sub Sahara Africa traveling through Libya, but it's also Libyan people themselves. So they have elected a government, they have an interest themselves as well, maybe in having the ability to move away from Libya, and the you needs to come up with enormous sums of money to force these governments to Yeah, why do they need that money? Because that's not in the interest of the country or

its citizens to do this. And especially in the Netherlands, there is this enormous Yeah, there's this is expectation that if we don't like something, other countries should do something about it. So in the Netherlands, Moroccan migrants specifically are filified a lot, and and Algerian migrants, and both countries have not been very collaborative with deportations. But like, why the hell should they support the forced return of their

own citizens who don't want to go back to their countries. Yeah, like there's no reason for them to do that, except if Europe is just abusing its power and forcing it these countries to do things that are yeah, not in their interest. I mean a lot of these border guards. I think Libya has an exception because they they actually make money out of the migrants in so many different ways. But if you look at Serbia or Bosnia, they are

forced to control their borders, which is super expensive. And like, these are tries who have other issues to fix, Like, yeah, maybe they should, maybe they want to focus on building up their country and improving living conditions, but instead the EU is just giving them money to yeah, to protect, to protect borders of people who aren't mainly just walking through their countries. Like that's not really a big problem

for them. And yeah, it's very irunic because Europe is like justifying its migration policies with this idea that every country has sovereignty over who it allows access. That's like legally, that's like the fundament of migration deterrence. But it only claims that right for itself. So if other countries say, well, I don't care if there's Serians walking through my country, like maybe they'll spend some money and they'll just leave anyway. Yeah,

other countries don't have the right. I think Belarus is an interesting example as well, because Belarus welcomed migrants and then brought them to the new border with Poland and Lithuania, and Bellus says every right to give feesa to people. You know, it's actually like just like the Namla says the rights to give freesa to people, Belarus says that right too. And then of course people can also go to the border across the border if they want and

ask for asylum. So yeah, I just wanted to highlight the irony of how incredibly one sided Europe is in how we can claim that we want to keep people out, but other countries are not allowed to have sovereign migration policies.

Then by December, the US had a bilateral meeting with Mexico, and very soon thereafter, we saw Mexican National Guard sitting at those gaps in the border wall. The US is border like if people are leaving Mexico, it's not Mexico's problem. But we saw them with technicals and machine guns policing

those gaps in the border. And the US gives a ton of money to countries to enforce its border right to prevent migration and get extremely The US has even taken actions to prosecute airlines that fly people north so that they can do that too. Yeah.

Think of Spain, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria. They however, are not too acphusiastic at the prospect of taking huge amounts of migrants.

enough to discourage people from crossing this border. Because again, like Bulgaria doesn't really have that much interest in guarding the borders if people can just if they anyway want to go to Western European countries, right, so it's a way to again to I would say, the border externalization already starts from like the main countries of destination, which is like France and Germany and even Bulgaria would not have much interest in stopping migrants if there were not

all of these rules to make them responsible.

the border they crossed, often immediately after. This practice is often a force for violence and does not take into account the circumstances of migrants and denies them the opportunity to apply for asylum. This means that the EU does pushback people that have very legitimate reasons to apply for asylum. Under the EU's own rules, I'm going to quote, pushbacks violate the prohibition of collective expulsion of asylum seekers in Protocol four of the European Convention on Human Rights, and

often violate the international law prohibiting on non refoulment. It's French, yeah, ah, okay, I was never good at French, all right. It's a fundamental principle of international law that forbids a country receiving asylum seekers from returning them to a country in which they would be improbable danger of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, members ship of a particular social group, or political opinion.

That being said, I'm aware even like the Dutch government has sent like Lgbtqi people back to countries where they could be like persecuted for that. So again those rules seem to be very optional. So what follows now is two examples of border practices that I think are particularly egregious. So on October third, twenty twenty two, Abdullah Mohammed, at age nineteen, a Syrian refugee, attempted to cross the Bulgarian

Turkish border. After being pushed back by border guards, they threw stones at the border I would emphasize here at the border itself, not at the guards. After this, a shot rang and Abdullah fell to the ground with a bullet lodged one centimeter away from his heart. He survived and was interviewed by Lighthouse Reports. He states that there was an intent to kill when he was shot. That's his belief. The bullet also pierced this hand, which is

now partially paralyzed. There seems to be no justification or reason whatsoever for border guards to have shot, or to have shot with live ammunition. This was the first time that such an incident was called on video. If you want, you can find it linked on Lighthouse Reports. Attached to the article about this incident. The video is not as bad as you might think, but watch you at your

own risk. As far as I'm aware, there have been similar rumors before, but this was the first instant that has entered like the public record, or the first time it was actually documented. Needless to say, no one should be shot for attempting to cross a border. I don't care about anyone's opinion or bad faith nuances. People have a right to apply for asylum, and as far as I'm concerned, this was a deliberate and calculated attempted murder.

are still kind of rare. Yeah, the pushbacks and the violence and the torture is yeah, the evidence of that is like an enormous pile. There's when I was working in Bosnia, I think that was in twenty eighteen nineteen, there was no video footage of a pushback, and there was a journalist who volunteered with us for a while and they were the first one to film it. But in the past years there have been like many, many horrible videos of people being beaten up and actual torture.

where they have no connections, no money, and no way of establishing themselves right. And this led to massively increased a fatalities at the border because people were trying to avoid border patrol where then coming in and surrendering themselves for so as we see now and massively increase encounters at the border encounters don't necessarily represent unique individuals. Right, this is my I will beat this fucking drum until I die. But apparently our colleagues at New York Times

haven't worked it out yet. Wall Street Journal, almost every NPRT, every big outlet in the United States that likes to commission border reporters who don't live on the border will tell you that that, like the number of migrants went up. An encounter is an encounter. If someone crosses and then gets bounced into Mexico and then crosses again and does that five times, that's five encounters. It's the same person. BP doesn't keep records of unique individuals under Title forty two,

or didn't keep under Citle forty two. We don't know how many people, but we know that more people tried to cross, and we also know that every time you try to cross, you risk your life. And so we certainly know that more lives will put in danger because of this policy, because again, like turning someone back is not going to stop them, especially when you're dropping them in a country where they don't want to be and

where they're not from. Like, the people aren't just going to be like okay, cool, I'll stay in Mexico like that. That has not historically been the case.

to the Croatian border, taken over decoration police. Often in Croatia get tortured and then be dumped on the Boston In border, which would be the EO border as well. So that's what they call chain pushbacks and yeah, I yeah, so I worked in the Boston hed Selovina, which is none you, So we would get the people after they had been pushed back.

people would come back with broken bones, broken skulls. People would be sent back with just their underwear at minus twenty degrees celsius. I don't know how much that is.

But when I was working in Bosnia, Croatia was not yet part of the Shanan Zone, and like politicians were pretty explicit about Croatia can only enter if they have solved their border problem, even though there was constantly proof of torture coming out. The same happened with Bulgaria and Romania.

So these countries were very very much pressured by countries like the Netherlands and Germany, who like you know, pretend not to have anything to do with these atrocities, but who were very very explicitly saying if you are not, if you don't get your borders in control, you cannot join the economic Yeah, you cannot have the open borders within the U.

We've also seen a young man from Jamaica recently passed away. This was in early probably early for some February and March. From February March. He was on a migrant trail. I know exactly where, about a few hundred yards actually from where my friends have left warm clothes, hand warmers, jackets, food, water. But he wasn't able to make it that far and for whatever reason, you know, like one death of a tragedy and a millions of statistic or whatever. But that

really impacted me. He was actually on the other side of the border when he died, but like he could have thrown a stone into the US and it's not a fence to border there. But yet we have chosen a policy which made that young man die of hypothermia by himself on the side of a mountain because for some reason, that's what we've decided, or our government has decided it's better than having him come here and be able to make his case and live with us and

get a job or what have you. And yeah, that was just a particularly heartbreaking one for me because I knew that, like, he was five minutes walk away, ten minutes walk away from potentially being okay, And like that that's why my friends and I like to go out and leave stuff for people. But it shouldn't be a group of anarchists and migrant activists and people of faith like hiking into the desert every weekend with backpacks full

of water and food and warm clothes. That shouldn't be what prevents people from dying coming here.

decide to cross them. But at the same time, it is just so problematic that someone's life, like access to food or healthcare, depends on whether or not there are some crazy volunteers willing to do that, so like it shouldn't be like our you know, are like, yeah, like I don't want to have that power over someone's life, and I think no one should have that power over

someone's life. But this system where basically migrants lives are disposable, also mean that it's like optional to offer super basic things that can save these lives.

the majority of which are women and children. I'll refer back to the Lighthouse Reports, who did a reconstruction of the incident, which makes this even worse than it already is. Transcriptions and witness statements obtained by Lighthouse Reports, the Oshpiego Monitor, Asiairaj, Lpos Report, Is United and The Times strongly suggests that the Greek coast Guard attempted to conceal their own involvement in this tragedy. Nine survivors were asked to make statements,

none of which appeared to blame the coast guard. Different suggestions were given for the capsizing, blaming it on the edge of the ship or the lack of life jackets. Four of these statements contained near identical phrasing. It was later discovered that one of the translators was a coast guard himself. There were other translators, all of which were sworn in on that very day later in Greek courts. Six of those nine stated that the coast guard did

in fact tow the boat before it went down. Two survivors tot Lighthouse reports that certain parts of their testimony was omitted in the transcription to clarify that a bit because of what I said earlier that migrants have are obligated to apply for asylum in the country in which they arrive. It's become a habit of like coast guard and frontext to drag them to certain areas of of water that are part of for example, Italy or Greece.

This particular one boat may have been an attempt to drag the boat to Italian waters so the Greeks didn't have to take them in. So to quote the report from Lighthouse sixteen out of the seventeen survivors we spoke to set the coast guard attached the rope to the vessel and tried to tow it shortly before it capsized.

Four also claimed that the coast guard was attempting to tow the boat to Italian waters, while four reported that the coast guard caused more depths by circling around the boat after it capsized, making waves that caused the boat's carcass to sink. End quote not great badtime stories if you ask me, yeah, I thin, yes, there there's just no words like yeah.

say that it isn't it's a kind of resistance. It is a kind of We started that episode with talking about passport privilege and the lottery of birth, and I think we should not only look at like the bad border guards and the good people helping or something, but I think we should also acknowledge that the people crossing the borders are doing like taking unbelievable risk, often also

to help their families or their friends. Yeah, and I think crossing a border without permission is a kind of resistance. And I think we as people who do direct support or direct aid, we are I mean, for me, it's also part of the resistance. Is like helping people cross the border. I don't mind if yeah, people that want to accuse me of being a smaller or something, or like aiding illegal border crossings, Like the whole point is that people should be able to cross that border.

an underclass of people that is easily exploitable. There are companies who are profiting from this. There is absolutely no intention to stop migration, but there is definitely an intention to marginalize and segregate migrants and yeah, and just profits of it.

be important to you too as well. On the tenth of June twenty twenty four, Lennond Pelgier, an enrolled member of the Turtle Band of Chippewa of Lakota and Ojibwei 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 and nine. He faces staunch opposition from the FBI and other laurenenforcement 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 leading up to these events, as well as subsequent investigation and mister Peltier's extradition, 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 every level, ranging from the withholding of exculpatory evidence to the torture and coercion of extradition and trial witnesses, and from the refuse 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 about rageous 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 Lenard 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 r L it's h t t P colon slash slash n d n C dot c C slash free Leonard Peltier. That's fre e l e O n A r d P e l t i E or you can follow NDN 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.