June 5, 2024 • 44 mins
James talks with Mick and Roos about the EU’s external border, how it contributes to slavery, the abuse and death of migrants, and the role that we can play in advocating for the right to move.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
A Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi, we're back, And just to remind people, if you
haven't listened to the episode yesterday, you probably won't pick
up what's going on today. So I suggest starting there
as we commence on our second part of the discussion
about the EUS border. Today, we're going to discuss the
EU's external border and what that means for migrants. We'll
pick up with Mick and Rose and we'll start off
(00:26):
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
(00:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah, I think it was either abolish Frontex or the
transnational institutes. I got some hands on some literature they
were spreading, and there is a direct you can draw
a direct line between like the end of the Cold
War in the nineties, with military industrial complex having to
(01:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Yeah, there's like a very serious lobby of companies who
just want to make money out of making our borders deadly,
and they're really successful.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah. I think they just want to make money and
they don't care if they make our borders deadly. The
end goal is always profit for them, right like, and
everything else is consequent to that.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Think of the stockholders they have to live as well.
What I personally find most troubling is this extension of
the Iron border into non European countries. So the EU
is making deals with countries in which for the in
exchange for large sums of money that those countries are
(02:30):
now containing, or stopping migrants and refugees from ever leaving
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.
(02:51):
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
(03:13):
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
(03:37):
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.
(03:58):
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
(04:21):
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
(04:42):
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
(05:05):
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
(05:28):
Zayadtnes reported being deprived of nutritious food to the point
of starvation end growth.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Yeah, Libya is is just on a completely different level.
And we have systematic torture on almost all border crossings
by European border guards, but Libya just manages to do
worse than that, just systematically enslave, rate, murder, torture. And
(06:01):
I think it's important to stress that, Like there's this
Libyan Coast Guard, they're funded by the European Union. So
the opinion Union will go out with drones support the
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
(06:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
And they are obligated too.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Yeah, I mean they're physically yeah, exactly. They they they
managed to escape that responsibility under maritime law, and then
they paid the Libyan coast Guard to rescue rescue people
quote unquote. Libya is so bad that reportedly migrants just
jump in the water if they see a Libyan coast
guard because people prefer to drown them to be taken
(07:12):
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
(07:35):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
I think it was a year or so back where
I saw a video of someone a woman on a
dingy who was just incredibly emotional and she was just
exclaiming all the time like I'd rather die than go
back to Libya, which yeah, it's.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Yeah, just literally what it is. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, I would encourage that the listeners to just google
something like Libya migrant detentions or something and look at
the pictures because it's you might get.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Like traumatized, but you will be more aware of the
horrors in the world.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, yeah, that they're not great pictures to look.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
At, but thank you for good sleep.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Like, yeah, I think it's important to see those things
because that is the reality that we in Europe often
do not get to see, and this is the reality
that has been created by our overlords. So what the
EU is doing is to be very blunt, extending its
(08:59):
own orders into sovereign territory of states outside of Europe
to stop migrants from even entering the EU. Proponents of
these policies will undoubtedly argue that this saves lives by
preventing people from crossing the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats and dinghies. Personally,
I would argue that people will continue to make that
(09:20):
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
(09:42):
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.
(10:07):
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
(10:29):
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.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Yeah, can I can?
Speaker 5 (10:42):
I quickly just I would like to say something about
the these deals and I think there is something very
ironic about the European Union pretending to value democracy and
human rights.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
And Ladlav Well, I mean what you've just said makes
it apondantly clear that human rights in Europe are just
for Europeans and not for humans. But I would also
just like to stress that it's very strange and I
think not maybe often enough address that what Europe is
doing is it's just bribing countries. It is bribing countries
(11:17):
to stop migrants, It is bribing countries to take unwanted
migrants back through deportation. It is often also forced to
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
(11:39):
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
(12:01):
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
(12:26):
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
(12:48):
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
(13:11):
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,
(13:33):
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
(13:55):
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
(14:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah, we see it exactly the same in the US, right,
and we're trying to outsource processing of migrants to Quatemolson
on Durs. We are trying to I mean, we pay
Mexico massive sum of money to enforce ourborder, right like
we saw. It's funny there are three gaps outside of
a combat that people who have listened to this podcast
(14:55):
will be very familiar with my reporting on. And we
saw those gaps close down, not when people started coming
so much, but once once legacy media outlets showed up.
Then by December, the US had a bilateral meeting with Mexico,
and very soon thereafter, we saw Mexican National Guard sitting
(15:15):
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
(15:37):
taken actions to prosecute airlines that fly people north so
that they can do that too. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Yeah, it's like insane, like half a million or something
for like bringing one migrant.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Without of these yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Two is externalization, just as like bribing Libya to protect
the border. Is also like actually forcing carriers, like forcing
transport companies to be the border guard.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, to ascertain whether you have a visa or not,
decide if you have the right to travel. Let's pick
up with those examples you make, because I think it
is important for people to kind of have a human
(16:29):
face or a human story.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Well, to preface this, like migrants are under EU law,
migrants are supposed to apply for aside in the first
EU country that they enter. This policy is likely the
result of fear from more affluent European countries that the
majority of refugees will travel to those countries. This means
(16:52):
that the countries geographically closest to Africa and the Middle
East are the ones supposed to take in most refugees.
Think of Spain, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria. They however, are not
too acphusiastic at the prospect of taking huge amounts of migrants.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
More are the migrants themselves.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
By the way, I can imagine that they're also a
lot too keen to live in Bulgaria, especially after what
follows next, because this story happened at the Turkish Bulgarian border.
But I also personally it's just incredibly cruel that like
(17:31):
the Netherlands and Germany and the Scandinavia countries are like,
oh no, you should take you should take all those refugees,
like we don't want them here.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
And I would say, that's like where the outstoarsing starts,
like that's you law. We have shance, so we have
like free travel within the u EU, but that comes
with extremely violently guarding the outside of the u So
if you are a border country, you are only welcome
if you can prove to us that you are cr
enough to discourage people from crossing this border. Because again,
(18:04):
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
(18:27):
have much interest in stopping migrants if there were not
all of these rules to make them responsible.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Exactly. But again, which is why I said, like the
more affluent countries within you don't want that for reasons
that I think anyone can think of at this point
of the story is where pushbacks come into play. This
is a tactic used by the countries I just mentioned.
It's a set of measures that force people back over
(18:56):
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.
(19:17):
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,
(19:40):
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.
(20:03):
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.
(20:28):
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
(20:49):
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
(21:09):
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
(21:34):
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
(21:56):
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.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Yeah, I do think there have been quite a lot
of videos of people being shot, and definitely people making
statements about it and just having the actual bullet in
their body to prove that it happened. Yeah, it happened
in Croatia, it happened in Greece. Greece is a habit
of shooting at boats as well, and in that way
(22:28):
making people drown. Yeah. And of course, apart from the shootings,
which I would say on the European borders that they
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
(22:50):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah. Of course in the US, under the pretense of
protecting us all from the coronavirus, which still killed millions
of people in this country, we have done they called
Title forty two, which allowed border patrol to quote unquote
repatriate people to Mexico, even if they were Mexican, and
just drop them back in Mexico, to include laterally transferring them,
(23:38):
which is a pseudonym for kind of trafficking them halfway
across the country and then dumping them in a place
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
(23:59):
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
(24:23):
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
(24:44):
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.
(25:07):
That has not historically been the case.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Yeah, we had exactly the same kind of juggling with numbers.
I remember people in Bosnia. Some of them would get
pushed back like forty or fifty times, and so they
would be counted as individuals starts. Yes, indeed, so it would.
Speaker 6 (25:26):
Sound as if there was like, I don't know, tens
of thousands, and I was like, it's really not that many, though, Yeah, yeah,
just literally count the same person again and again and again.
Speaker 5 (25:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
And also I would like to say that like, yes,
it is a border like the EO border countries, but
it is also much deeper into the territory. So we
externalize the border towards like Libya, Niger and way further even,
but we also internalized the border, so we would find
we would have people who had made it to Austria
(26:00):
or Italy. They would get caught in Austria Italy, be
pushed back to Slovenia, taken over by Slovenian police, brought
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,
(26:21):
so I worked in the Boston hed Selovina, which is
none you, So we would get the people after they
had been pushed back.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
The things that people have done, like wader guards have
done to migrants are yeah, I don't know if you
actually want to use this footage, right, it's like it's
really really gruesome. Like in Bosnia, they would they would
be like snow form, like they have very long and
very cold winters. They would take away people's shoes and
(26:52):
socks and like make them walk for five hours on
bare feet. So one of the main tasks of our
volunteers are medical volunteers, was amputating toes. People would, Yeah,
people would come back with broken bones, broken skulls. People
would be sent back with just their underwear at minus
(27:13):
twenty degrees celsius. I don't know how much that is.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
In the US, neither do ways. I think they come
together around minus twenty. It's extremely The culdred.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
Gets the more accurate. Yeah. So, like at some point
we start to call this cold torture as a kind
of specific yeah, tactic that mainly the Croatian border guards
were using yeah. Also yeah, And I also want to
stress again that yes, it is the European border countries
(27:45):
in the east and in the West and in the south.
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.
(28:09):
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
(28:33):
within the U.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, it's so sad to see all these serialities. This
is very depressing. My friends and I were helping someone
who had it like the early onset of like like
trench foot, Yeah, a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 5 (28:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, we don't do it, like I guess as a
policy as much as just by default. But in the
mountains and then desert here in California. When it rains,
areas that are drive the rest of the year turn
into rivers and migrants have to cross him. We've also
seen a large number of migrants drown this year in
San Diego, and I more will have drowned if very
(29:08):
brave people hadn't risk their own lives rescuing them. Not
people who were working for the government, just individuals who cared.
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
(29:33):
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
(29:55):
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
(30:18):
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
(30:42):
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.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
Yeah, there's a kind of cruelty in that, even like
it is amazing to help people to be part of
a group of people who commit themselves to yeah, to
resist these incredibly violent borders and to support people who
decide to cross them. But at the same time, it
is just so problematic that someone's life, like access to
(31:14):
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,
(31:37):
also mean that it's like optional to offer super basic
things that can save these lives.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Yeah, yeah, very much too.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Are you ready for the second depressing story.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah, let's get the second depress let's hit rock bottom.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
So I'm sure you've you've heard this story before, but
still I think it's very much worth repeating. So on
June fourteenth, twenty twenty three, the Adriana, a ship on
its way degrees, capsized and subsequently sank. The boat allegedly
had the capacity for about four hundred people, but carried
(32:18):
around seven hundred and fifty. Of all those lives, one
hundred and four were saved, eighty two were confirmed deaths,
and up to four five hundreds are missing and presumed death,
the majority of which are women and children. I'll refer
back to the Lighthouse Reports, who did a reconstruction of
(32:39):
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
(33:00):
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
(33:22):
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
(33:45):
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
(34:07):
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
(34:30):
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
(34:55):
you ask me, yeah, I thin, yes, there there's just
no words like yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
I think I think to say like, I don't think
anyone should be okay with it.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
M M.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Perhaps I think we're going to talk again about how
people can oppose this, and how people can try their
best to to a change the system and be do
what they can, you know, while we're stuck in this
terrible place to make things more survivable and less cruel.
So perhaps we can finish up here with you guys
(35:40):
plugging anything you want to. If there are orgs or
social media where people can follow both of your work
and then I'd love to hear about them.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
Yeah, you can follow us on migrates dot the n
I think it's like for English and migrated.
Speaker 5 (35:58):
I G R E A C.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Yeah, the system is super fucked. It is super super
super fucked. It is Yeah, it's really treating human beings
as disposable and human a moment life has absolutely no value.
But I also just wanted to say that I think
a lot of migrants who cross borders they are aware
(36:22):
of the risks. But I think it's also important to
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
(36:44):
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
(37:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really good Someone recently
accused us of in Cucumber that said that people people
come to a cumber because we feed them, and like
it's fucking ludicrous, Like you didn't fucking come from a
guinea because I'm going to give you a peanut butter sandwich.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
Bat like the best food.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah yeah, yeah, like it is. It is not the best.
It's the best we can do, like you know, less
than an other person or what have you. But like no,
like but I yes, but I am doing it because
I believe that person should be able to and not
just because they're in those circumstances, but because I fundamentally
support there, right, Like I want them to be my neighbor. Yeah,
(38:06):
I'm okay with that, and that's why I'm doing it.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yeah, absolutely think I think we should all keep in
mind how many of our friends, family, or other loved
ones have moved at some point in their lives for
a job or opportunities or love or whatever. Not that
the essence of like Huban movement is the same, right
(38:32):
right there?
Speaker 4 (38:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it is our politicians who choose
that this movement is a problem, that the movement of
these people specifically is a threat or danger, whereas I think, like, yeah,
if you talk about like racism or systemic racism, the questions,
I was like, yeah, but what is the system?
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Then?
Speaker 4 (38:51):
This is the system, the visa policies, the actual border,
This is what is keeping people like is trying to
keep people unexploitable conditions in the global South, is doing
incredible cruelties to them just for political gain. Is exploiting
people who do make it, but who are undocumented or
(39:11):
on fragile resident status and are still exploited and deprived
of basic rights even if they do arrive to their
country of destination. Like this system is designed to create
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
(39:33):
to marginalize and segregate migrants and yeah, and just profits
of it.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah. And meanwhile, we do the absolute bare minimum to
provide aids to those countries to make the living conditions
there better.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Yeah, these borders are playing a role and keeping people
exploitable there and making it possible to make them work
for incredible low wages and horrible labor conditions. Like yeah,
into those into those conditions.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
I think the the mandatory international development aid that countries
should pay is like zero points zero zero seven percent
or something of the GDP, and the majority of like
Western countries are not not not doing that even that.
So it's very much like the problem is that they're
(40:32):
coming here, not that the conditions there are ships and
war keeping them ships.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Yeah, were great.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
I'm a bit bumped now.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah, sorry, we left you will saide. We will come
back with with Rose again and make to talk about
ways to make it better. Is there anything you wanted
to plug, make any anything you want people to give
the time money to follow on the internet.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
I just want to give a shout out to like
organizations such as Migrates, but also the abolished Frontechs campaign
and United Against Refugee's And it would urge anyone to
who feels compassionate to help out. There are so many
ways you can help out, even if you don't know
(41:17):
it yet. It is sorely needed. Like wherever you are,
whoever you are, you can help out.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Everyone, it's me James, and I just wanted to read
you this today. We're 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, 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,
(41:51):
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.
(42:13):
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,
(42:35):
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
(42:57):
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
(43:19):
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
(43:41):
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
(44:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
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,
A Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi, we're back, And just to remind people, if you
haven't listened to the episode yesterday, you probably won't pick
up what's going on today. So I suggest starting there
as we commence on our second part of the discussion
about the EUS border. Today, we're going to discuss the
EU's external border and what that means for migrants. We'll
pick up with Mick and Rose and we'll start off
(00:26):
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
(00:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah, I think it was either abolish Frontex or the
transnational institutes. I got some hands on some literature they
were spreading, and there is a direct you can draw
a direct line between like the end of the Cold
War in the nineties, with military industrial complex having to
(01:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Yeah, there's like a very serious lobby of companies who
just want to make money out of making our borders deadly,
and they're really successful.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah. I think they just want to make money and
they don't care if they make our borders deadly. The
end goal is always profit for them, right like, and
everything else is consequent to that.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Think of the stockholders they have to live as well.
What I personally find most troubling is this extension of
the Iron border into non European countries. So the EU
is making deals with countries in which for the in
exchange for large sums of money that those countries are
(02:30):
now containing, or stopping migrants and refugees from ever leaving
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.
(02:51):
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
(03:13):
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
(03:37):
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.
(03:58):
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
(04:21):
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
(04:42):
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
(05:05):
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
(05:28):
Zayadtnes reported being deprived of nutritious food to the point
of starvation end growth.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Yeah, Libya is is just on a completely different level.
And we have systematic torture on almost all border crossings
by European border guards, but Libya just manages to do
worse than that, just systematically enslave, rate, murder, torture. And
(06:01):
I think it's important to stress that, Like there's this
Libyan Coast Guard, they're funded by the European Union. So
the opinion Union will go out with drones support the
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
(06:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
And they are obligated too.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Yeah, I mean they're physically yeah, exactly. They they they
managed to escape that responsibility under maritime law, and then
they paid the Libyan coast Guard to rescue rescue people
quote unquote. Libya is so bad that reportedly migrants just
jump in the water if they see a Libyan coast
guard because people prefer to drown them to be taken
(07:12):
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
(07:35):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
I think it was a year or so back where
I saw a video of someone a woman on a
dingy who was just incredibly emotional and she was just
exclaiming all the time like I'd rather die than go
back to Libya, which yeah, it's.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Yeah, just literally what it is. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, I would encourage that the listeners to just google
something like Libya migrant detentions or something and look at
the pictures because it's you might get.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Like traumatized, but you will be more aware of the
horrors in the world.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, yeah, that they're not great pictures to look.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
At, but thank you for good sleep.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Like, yeah, I think it's important to see those things
because that is the reality that we in Europe often
do not get to see, and this is the reality
that has been created by our overlords. So what the
EU is doing is to be very blunt, extending its
(08:59):
own orders into sovereign territory of states outside of Europe
to stop migrants from even entering the EU. Proponents of
these policies will undoubtedly argue that this saves lives by
preventing people from crossing the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats and dinghies. Personally,
I would argue that people will continue to make that
(09:20):
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
(09:42):
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.
(10:07):
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
(10:29):
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.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Yeah, can I can?
Speaker 5 (10:42):
I quickly just I would like to say something about
the these deals and I think there is something very
ironic about the European Union pretending to value democracy and
human rights.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
And Ladlav Well, I mean what you've just said makes
it apondantly clear that human rights in Europe are just
for Europeans and not for humans. But I would also
just like to stress that it's very strange and I
think not maybe often enough address that what Europe is
doing is it's just bribing countries. It is bribing countries
(11:17):
to stop migrants, It is bribing countries to take unwanted
migrants back through deportation. It is often also forced to
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
(11:39):
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
(12:01):
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
(12:26):
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
(12:48):
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
(13:11):
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,
(13:33):
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
(13:55):
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
(14:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah, we see it exactly the same in the US, right,
and we're trying to outsource processing of migrants to Quatemolson
on Durs. We are trying to I mean, we pay
Mexico massive sum of money to enforce ourborder, right like
we saw. It's funny there are three gaps outside of
a combat that people who have listened to this podcast
(14:55):
will be very familiar with my reporting on. And we
saw those gaps close down, not when people started coming
so much, but once once legacy media outlets showed up.
Then by December, the US had a bilateral meeting with Mexico,
and very soon thereafter, we saw Mexican National Guard sitting
(15:15):
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
(15:37):
taken actions to prosecute airlines that fly people north so
that they can do that too. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Yeah, it's like insane, like half a million or something
for like bringing one migrant.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Without of these yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Two is externalization, just as like bribing Libya to protect
the border. Is also like actually forcing carriers, like forcing
transport companies to be the border guard.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, to ascertain whether you have a visa or not,
decide if you have the right to travel. Let's pick
up with those examples you make, because I think it
is important for people to kind of have a human
(16:29):
face or a human story.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Well, to preface this, like migrants are under EU law,
migrants are supposed to apply for aside in the first
EU country that they enter. This policy is likely the
result of fear from more affluent European countries that the
majority of refugees will travel to those countries. This means
(16:52):
that the countries geographically closest to Africa and the Middle
East are the ones supposed to take in most refugees.
Think of Spain, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria. They however, are not
too acphusiastic at the prospect of taking huge amounts of migrants.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
More are the migrants themselves.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
By the way, I can imagine that they're also a
lot too keen to live in Bulgaria, especially after what
follows next, because this story happened at the Turkish Bulgarian border.
But I also personally it's just incredibly cruel that like
(17:31):
the Netherlands and Germany and the Scandinavia countries are like,
oh no, you should take you should take all those refugees,
like we don't want them here.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
And I would say, that's like where the outstoarsing starts,
like that's you law. We have shance, so we have
like free travel within the u EU, but that comes
with extremely violently guarding the outside of the u So
if you are a border country, you are only welcome
if you can prove to us that you are cr
enough to discourage people from crossing this border. Because again,
(18:04):
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
(18:27):
have much interest in stopping migrants if there were not
all of these rules to make them responsible.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Exactly. But again, which is why I said, like the
more affluent countries within you don't want that for reasons
that I think anyone can think of at this point
of the story is where pushbacks come into play. This
is a tactic used by the countries I just mentioned.
It's a set of measures that force people back over
(18:56):
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.
(19:17):
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,
(19:40):
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.
(20:03):
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.
(20:28):
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
(20:49):
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
(21:09):
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
(21:34):
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
(21:56):
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.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Yeah, I do think there have been quite a lot
of videos of people being shot, and definitely people making
statements about it and just having the actual bullet in
their body to prove that it happened. Yeah, it happened
in Croatia, it happened in Greece. Greece is a habit
of shooting at boats as well, and in that way
(22:28):
making people drown. Yeah. And of course, apart from the shootings,
which I would say on the European borders that they
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
(22:50):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah. Of course in the US, under the pretense of
protecting us all from the coronavirus, which still killed millions
of people in this country, we have done they called
Title forty two, which allowed border patrol to quote unquote
repatriate people to Mexico, even if they were Mexican, and
just drop them back in Mexico, to include laterally transferring them,
(23:38):
which is a pseudonym for kind of trafficking them halfway
across the country and then dumping them in a place
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
(23:59):
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
(24:23):
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
(24:44):
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.
(25:07):
That has not historically been the case.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Yeah, we had exactly the same kind of juggling with numbers.
I remember people in Bosnia. Some of them would get
pushed back like forty or fifty times, and so they
would be counted as individuals starts. Yes, indeed, so it would.
Speaker 6 (25:26):
Sound as if there was like, I don't know, tens
of thousands, and I was like, it's really not that many, though, Yeah, yeah,
just literally count the same person again and again and again.
Speaker 5 (25:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
And also I would like to say that like, yes,
it is a border like the EO border countries, but
it is also much deeper into the territory. So we
externalize the border towards like Libya, Niger and way further even,
but we also internalized the border, so we would find
we would have people who had made it to Austria
(26:00):
or Italy. They would get caught in Austria Italy, be
pushed back to Slovenia, taken over by Slovenian police, brought
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,
(26:21):
so I worked in the Boston hed Selovina, which is
none you, So we would get the people after they
had been pushed back.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
The things that people have done, like wader guards have
done to migrants are yeah, I don't know if you
actually want to use this footage, right, it's like it's
really really gruesome. Like in Bosnia, they would they would
be like snow form, like they have very long and
very cold winters. They would take away people's shoes and
(26:52):
socks and like make them walk for five hours on
bare feet. So one of the main tasks of our
volunteers are medical volunteers, was amputating toes. People would, Yeah,
people would come back with broken bones, broken skulls. People
would be sent back with just their underwear at minus
(27:13):
twenty degrees celsius. I don't know how much that is.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
In the US, neither do ways. I think they come
together around minus twenty. It's extremely The culdred.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
Gets the more accurate. Yeah. So, like at some point
we start to call this cold torture as a kind
of specific yeah, tactic that mainly the Croatian border guards
were using yeah. Also yeah, And I also want to
stress again that yes, it is the European border countries
(27:45):
in the east and in the West and in the south.
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.
(28:09):
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
(28:33):
within the U.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, it's so sad to see all these serialities. This
is very depressing. My friends and I were helping someone
who had it like the early onset of like like
trench foot, Yeah, a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 5 (28:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, we don't do it, like I guess as a
policy as much as just by default. But in the
mountains and then desert here in California. When it rains,
areas that are drive the rest of the year turn
into rivers and migrants have to cross him. We've also
seen a large number of migrants drown this year in
San Diego, and I more will have drowned if very
(29:08):
brave people hadn't risk their own lives rescuing them. Not
people who were working for the government, just individuals who cared.
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
(29:33):
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
(29:55):
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
(30:18):
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
(30:42):
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.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
Yeah, there's a kind of cruelty in that, even like
it is amazing to help people to be part of
a group of people who commit themselves to yeah, to
resist these incredibly violent borders and to support people who
decide to cross them. But at the same time, it
is just so problematic that someone's life, like access to
(31:14):
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,
(31:37):
also mean that it's like optional to offer super basic
things that can save these lives.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Yeah, yeah, very much too.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Are you ready for the second depressing story.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah, let's get the second depress let's hit rock bottom.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
So I'm sure you've you've heard this story before, but
still I think it's very much worth repeating. So on
June fourteenth, twenty twenty three, the Adriana, a ship on
its way degrees, capsized and subsequently sank. The boat allegedly
had the capacity for about four hundred people, but carried
(32:18):
around seven hundred and fifty. Of all those lives, one
hundred and four were saved, eighty two were confirmed deaths,
and up to four five hundreds are missing and presumed death,
the majority of which are women and children. I'll refer
back to the Lighthouse Reports, who did a reconstruction of
(32:39):
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
(33:00):
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
(33:22):
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
(33:45):
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
(34:07):
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
(34:30):
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
(34:55):
you ask me, yeah, I thin, yes, there there's just
no words like yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
I think I think to say like, I don't think
anyone should be okay with it.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
M M.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Perhaps I think we're going to talk again about how
people can oppose this, and how people can try their
best to to a change the system and be do
what they can, you know, while we're stuck in this
terrible place to make things more survivable and less cruel.
So perhaps we can finish up here with you guys
(35:40):
plugging anything you want to. If there are orgs or
social media where people can follow both of your work
and then I'd love to hear about them.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
Yeah, you can follow us on migrates dot the n
I think it's like for English and migrated.
Speaker 5 (35:58):
I G R E A C.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Yeah, the system is super fucked. It is super super
super fucked. It is Yeah, it's really treating human beings
as disposable and human a moment life has absolutely no value.
But I also just wanted to say that I think
a lot of migrants who cross borders they are aware
(36:22):
of the risks. But I think it's also important to
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
(36:44):
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
(37:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really good Someone recently
accused us of in Cucumber that said that people people
come to a cumber because we feed them, and like
it's fucking ludicrous, Like you didn't fucking come from a
guinea because I'm going to give you a peanut butter sandwich.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
Bat like the best food.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Yeah yeah, yeah, like it is. It is not the best.
It's the best we can do, like you know, less
than an other person or what have you. But like no,
like but I yes, but I am doing it because
I believe that person should be able to and not
just because they're in those circumstances, but because I fundamentally
support there, right, Like I want them to be my neighbor. Yeah,
(38:06):
I'm okay with that, and that's why I'm doing it.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yeah, absolutely think I think we should all keep in
mind how many of our friends, family, or other loved
ones have moved at some point in their lives for
a job or opportunities or love or whatever. Not that
the essence of like Huban movement is the same, right
(38:32):
right there?
Speaker 4 (38:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it is our politicians who choose
that this movement is a problem, that the movement of
these people specifically is a threat or danger, whereas I think, like, yeah,
if you talk about like racism or systemic racism, the questions,
I was like, yeah, but what is the system?
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Then?
Speaker 4 (38:51):
This is the system, the visa policies, the actual border,
This is what is keeping people like is trying to
keep people unexploitable conditions in the global South, is doing
incredible cruelties to them just for political gain. Is exploiting
people who do make it, but who are undocumented or
(39:11):
on fragile resident status and are still exploited and deprived
of basic rights even if they do arrive to their
country of destination. Like this system is designed to create
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
(39:33):
to marginalize and segregate migrants and yeah, and just profits
of it.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah. And meanwhile, we do the absolute bare minimum to
provide aids to those countries to make the living conditions
there better.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Yeah, these borders are playing a role and keeping people
exploitable there and making it possible to make them work
for incredible low wages and horrible labor conditions. Like yeah,
into those into those conditions.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
I think the the mandatory international development aid that countries
should pay is like zero points zero zero seven percent
or something of the GDP, and the majority of like
Western countries are not not not doing that even that.
So it's very much like the problem is that they're
(40:32):
coming here, not that the conditions there are ships and
war keeping them ships.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Yeah, were great.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
I'm a bit bumped now.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah, sorry, we left you will saide. We will come
back with with Rose again and make to talk about
ways to make it better. Is there anything you wanted
to plug, make any anything you want people to give
the time money to follow on the internet.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
I just want to give a shout out to like
organizations such as Migrates, but also the abolished Frontechs campaign
and United Against Refugee's And it would urge anyone to
who feels compassionate to help out. There are so many
ways you can help out, even if you don't know
(41:17):
it yet. It is sorely needed. Like wherever you are,
whoever you are, you can help out.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Everyone, it's me James, and I just wanted to read
you this today. We're 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, 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,
(41:51):
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.
(42:13):
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,
(42:35):
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
(42:57):
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
(43:19):
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
(43:41):
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
(44:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
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,
It Could Happen Here News
Host
Robert Evans
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