Speaker 1: A Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hi, we're back, And just to remind people, if you
Speaker 2: haven't listened to the episode yesterday, you probably won't pick
Speaker 2: up what's going on today. So I suggest starting there
Speaker 2: as we commence on our second part of the discussion
Speaker 2: about the EUS border. Today, we're going to discuss the
Speaker 2: EU's external border and what that means for migrants. We'll
Speaker 2: pick up with Mick and Rose and we'll start off
Speaker 2: more or less where we left off yesterday. Like you
Speaker 2: can map, and I'm not the first one to have
Speaker 2: made these maps, but you can look at humane borders
Speaker 2: in Arizona, and then you can look at EFF's map
Speaker 2: of fixed and mobile towers and you can see people.
Speaker 2: And again this is something I'm more familiar with, and
Speaker 2: I'd like to be people dying in the shade of
Speaker 2: the surveillance towers, without help, without water, without the very
Speaker 2: minor things that it would take for them not to
Speaker 2: have died. And so yeah, this provides justification. It provides
Speaker 2: a massive outlet for the post War on Terror like
Speaker 2: military industrial complex to continue to make its money, and
Speaker 2: to continue to make its money through innocent people dying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was either abolish Frontex or the
Speaker 3: transnational institutes. I got some hands on some literature they
Speaker 3: were spreading, and there is a direct you can draw
Speaker 3: a direct line between like the end of the Cold
Speaker 3: War in the nineties, with military industrial complex having to
Speaker 3: fight new ways to sell their products to states. And
Speaker 3: that's also why the border keeps getting more and more militarized,
Speaker 3: because it is the one point where they can still
Speaker 3: sell a lot of things without their having to be
Speaker 3: a war.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's like a very serious lobby of companies who
Speaker 4: just want to make money out of making our borders deadly,
Speaker 4: and they're really successful.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think they just want to make money and
Speaker 2: they don't care if they make our borders deadly. The
Speaker 2: end goal is always profit for them, right like, and
Speaker 2: everything else is consequent to that.
Speaker 3: Think of the stockholders they have to live as well.
Speaker 3: What I personally find most troubling is this extension of
Speaker 3: the Iron border into non European countries. So the EU
Speaker 3: is making deals with countries in which for the in
Speaker 3: exchange for large sums of money that those countries are
Speaker 3: now containing, or stopping migrants and refugees from ever leaving
Speaker 3: the Middle East Africa. Like Rose said earlier, The Turkey
Speaker 3: deal is essentially a political deal between the EU and
Speaker 3: Turkey for Turkey to hold a portion of Syrian refugees
Speaker 3: over within their border to stop them from coming into Europe.
Speaker 3: And I think we paid a few billion, more than
Speaker 3: a few billion probably for Turkey to do that. So
Speaker 3: the most prominent of these deals are, as I said, Turkey,
Speaker 3: but also Tunisia and Libya. We're essentially outsourcing the abuse
Speaker 3: and human rights violations to countries that are outside the
Speaker 3: scope of our media, who have regimes that we would
Speaker 3: declare dictatorships and autocracies. In the case of Libya, it's
Speaker 3: even like rebels and warlords being funded with EU taxpayer money. Today,
Speaker 3: the EUPAC with Libya has given rise to a full
Speaker 3: fledged slave market run by cold blooded human traffickers who,
Speaker 3: incentivized by the EU's crackdown on irregular migration and the
Speaker 3: resulting business downturn of would be profitable passengers, are now
Speaker 3: auctioning economic migrants and refugees as slaves. Yeah, we're just
Speaker 3: doing slavery with extra steps now. So to make it
Speaker 3: inescapably clear how bad the situation is, I'm now going
Speaker 3: to quote from an Amnesty International article from twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: Three Police Shada al Zawa Center is a facility facility
Speaker 3: which was previously run by a non affiliated militia and
Speaker 3: was recently integrated under the DCIM and designated for people
Speaker 3: in vulnerable situations. A DCIM is an acronym for Libya's
Speaker 3: Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration. It's essentially a department of
Speaker 3: their Interior Ministry. Former detainees from that facility said that
Speaker 3: guards raped women and some were cohoersed into sex in
Speaker 3: exchange for their release or for essentials such as clean
Speaker 3: water grace. A pseudonym said she was heavily beaten for
Speaker 3: refusing to comply with such a demand. I told the
Speaker 3: guard no. He used the gun to knock me back.
Speaker 3: He used a letter soldier's shoe to kick me from
Speaker 3: my waist. Two young women at the facility attempted to
Speaker 3: commit suicide as a result of such abuse. Three women
Speaker 3: also said that two babies detained with their mothers after
Speaker 3: an attempted sea crossing had died in early twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one after guards refused to transfer them to a hospital
Speaker 3: for a critical medical treatment, and the International Report documents
Speaker 3: similar patterns of human rights violations including severe beatings, sexual violence, extortion,
Speaker 3: force labor, and in human conditions across seven DCIM centers
Speaker 3: in Libya. In Abuisa Center in the city of al
Speaker 3: Zayadtnes reported being deprived of nutritious food to the point
Speaker 3: of starvation end growth.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Libya is is just on a completely different level.
Speaker 4: And we have systematic torture on almost all border crossings
Speaker 4: by European border guards, but Libya just manages to do
Speaker 4: worse than that, just systematically enslave, rate, murder, torture. And
Speaker 4: I think it's important to stress that, Like there's this
Speaker 4: Libyan Coast Guard, they're funded by the European Union. So
Speaker 4: the opinion Union will go out with drones support the
Speaker 4: boat of migrants. Previously, the European Union actually had rescue ships,
Speaker 4: but the European Union, if a boat is near another
Speaker 4: boat in distress, there's an obligation to rescue, and after
Speaker 4: the rescue, you have to bring the people to a
Speaker 4: safe port. So having having a boat at sea meant
Speaker 4: that the European Border Agency Front Tax was obliged to
Speaker 4: rescue people at sea, and so they just thought let's
Speaker 4: just do away with the boats and let's just have
Speaker 4: helicopters and drones so we can still spot boats that
Speaker 4: are sinking, but we cannot help them.
Speaker 3: And they are obligated too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean they're physically yeah, exactly. They they they
Speaker 4: managed to escape that responsibility under maritime law, and then
Speaker 4: they paid the Libyan coast Guard to rescue rescue people
Speaker 4: quote unquote. Libya is so bad that reportedly migrants just
Speaker 4: jump in the water if they see a Libyan coast
Speaker 4: guard because people prefer to drown them to be taken
Speaker 4: back to Libya. The Libyan coast Guard takes the people
Speaker 4: on the boat, brings them back to Libyan mainland, and
Speaker 4: actually sells them to the militias running the detention centers.
Speaker 4: So the Libyan coast Guard gets paid twice for stopping migrants,
Speaker 4: first by the European Union and secondly by the militias
Speaker 4: that will later sell them as slates or use them
Speaker 4: for slavery. And this is what we have been funding
Speaker 4: for years, and there have been extensive documentation about these
Speaker 4: human rights violations and the very direct link of the
Speaker 4: EO funding, and it just keeps going.
Speaker 3: I think it was a year or so back where
Speaker 3: I saw a video of someone a woman on a
Speaker 3: dingy who was just incredibly emotional and she was just
Speaker 3: exclaiming all the time like I'd rather die than go
Speaker 3: back to Libya, which yeah, it's.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just literally what it is. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would encourage that the listeners to just google
Speaker 3: something like Libya migrant detentions or something and look at
Speaker 3: the pictures because it's you might get.
Speaker 4: Like traumatized, but you will be more aware of the
Speaker 4: horrors in the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that they're not great pictures to look.
Speaker 2: At, but thank you for good sleep.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, I think it's important to see those things
Speaker 3: because that is the reality that we in Europe often
Speaker 3: do not get to see, and this is the reality
Speaker 3: that has been created by our overlords. So what the
Speaker 3: EU is doing is to be very blunt, extending its
Speaker 3: own orders into sovereign territory of states outside of Europe
Speaker 3: to stop migrants from even entering the EU. Proponents of
Speaker 3: these policies will undoubtedly argue that this saves lives by
Speaker 3: preventing people from crossing the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats and dinghies. Personally,
Speaker 3: I would argue that people will continue to make that
Speaker 3: crossing if only to escape the EU funded hellholes that
Speaker 3: these regimes create in order to get that sweet, sweet
Speaker 3: EU funding. What is definitely very concerning is that despite
Speaker 3: criticisms from NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch,
Speaker 3: Europe will likely continue these practices. Only last year did
Speaker 3: it sign a deal with Tunisia with the attention of
Speaker 3: using that as a third country as they call it,
Speaker 3: to prevent sea crossings. European Commission President Ursula von der
Speaker 3: Leyen stated that this could be a blueprint for cooperation
Speaker 3: with other countries. Surprise of no one, this will very
Speaker 3: likely increase the human rights violations and abusance that happened there.
Speaker 3: And after this, I have two examples of stories that
Speaker 3: that happens at the EU borders that are I think
Speaker 3: particularly heartbreaking. And this was also the hardest part for
Speaker 3: me to write, because there are so many stories out
Speaker 3: there that I think deserve to be heard and deserve
Speaker 3: to have like some lights shone on there just to
Speaker 3: show people the reality. But that would be that would
Speaker 3: turn into a very very long episode.
Speaker 4: Yeah, can I can?
Speaker 5: I quickly just I would like to say something about
Speaker 5: the these deals and I think there is something very
Speaker 5: ironic about the European Union pretending to value democracy and
Speaker 5: human rights.
Speaker 4: And Ladlav Well, I mean what you've just said makes
Speaker 4: it apondantly clear that human rights in Europe are just
Speaker 4: for Europeans and not for humans. But I would also
Speaker 4: just like to stress that it's very strange and I
Speaker 4: think not maybe often enough address that what Europe is
Speaker 4: doing is it's just bribing countries. It is bribing countries
Speaker 4: to stop migrants, It is bribing countries to take unwanted
Speaker 4: migrants back through deportation. It is often also forced to
Speaker 4: take on its own citizens. So it's not only people
Speaker 4: from Sub Sahara Africa traveling through Libya, but it's also
Speaker 4: Libyan people themselves. So they have elected a government, they
Speaker 4: have an interest themselves as well, maybe in having the
Speaker 4: ability to move away from Libya, and the you needs
Speaker 4: to come up with enormous sums of money to force
Speaker 4: these governments to Yeah, why do they need that money?
Speaker 4: Because that's not in the interest of the country or
Speaker 4: its citizens to do this. And especially in the Netherlands,
Speaker 4: there is this enormous Yeah, there's this is expectation that
Speaker 4: if we don't like something, other countries should do something
Speaker 4: about it. So in the Netherlands, Moroccan migrants specifically are
Speaker 4: filified a lot, and and Algerian migrants, and both countries
Speaker 4: have not been very collaborative with deportations. But like, why
Speaker 4: the hell should they support the forced return of their
Speaker 4: own citizens who don't want to go back to their countries. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like there's no reason for them to do that, except
Speaker 4: if Europe is just abusing its power and forcing it
Speaker 4: these countries to do things that are yeah, not in
Speaker 4: their interest. I mean a lot of these border guards.
Speaker 4: I think Libya has an exception because they they actually
Speaker 4: make money out of the migrants in so many different ways.
Speaker 4: But if you look at Serbia or Bosnia, they are
Speaker 4: forced to control their borders, which is super expensive. And like,
Speaker 4: these are tries who have other issues to fix, Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe they should, maybe they want to focus on building
Speaker 4: up their country and improving living conditions, but instead the
Speaker 4: EU is just giving them money to yeah, to protect,
Speaker 4: to protect borders of people who aren't mainly just walking
Speaker 4: through their countries. Like that's not really a big problem
Speaker 4: for them. And yeah, it's very irunic because Europe is
Speaker 4: like justifying its migration policies with this idea that every
Speaker 4: country has sovereignty over who it allows access. That's like legally,
Speaker 4: that's like the fundament of migration deterrence. But it only
Speaker 4: claims that right for itself. So if other countries say, well,
Speaker 4: I don't care if there's Serians walking through my country,
Speaker 4: like maybe they'll spend some money and they'll just leave anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 4: other countries don't have the right. I think Belarus is
Speaker 4: an interesting example as well, because Belarus welcomed migrants and
Speaker 4: then brought them to the new border with Poland and Lithuania,
Speaker 4: and Bellus says every right to give feesa to people.
Speaker 4: You know, it's actually like just like the Namla says
Speaker 4: the rights to give freesa to people, Belarus says that
Speaker 4: right too. And then of course people can also go
Speaker 4: to the border across the border if they want and
Speaker 4: ask for asylum. So yeah, I just wanted to highlight
Speaker 4: the irony of how incredibly one sided Europe is in
Speaker 4: how we can claim that we want to keep people out,
Speaker 4: but other countries are not allowed to have sovereign migration policies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we see it exactly the same in the US, right,
Speaker 2: and we're trying to outsource processing of migrants to Quatemolson
Speaker 2: on Durs. We are trying to I mean, we pay
Speaker 2: Mexico massive sum of money to enforce ourborder, right like
Speaker 2: we saw. It's funny there are three gaps outside of
Speaker 2: a combat that people who have listened to this podcast
Speaker 2: will be very familiar with my reporting on. And we
Speaker 2: saw those gaps close down, not when people started coming
Speaker 2: so much, but once once legacy media outlets showed up.
Speaker 2: Then by December, the US had a bilateral meeting with Mexico,
Speaker 2: and very soon thereafter, we saw Mexican National Guard sitting
Speaker 2: at those gaps in the border wall. The US is
Speaker 2: border like if people are leaving Mexico, it's not Mexico's problem.
Speaker 2: But we saw them with technicals and machine guns policing
Speaker 2: those gaps in the border. And the US gives a
Speaker 2: ton of money to countries to enforce its border right
Speaker 2: to prevent migration and get extremely The US has even
Speaker 2: taken actions to prosecute airlines that fly people north so
Speaker 2: that they can do that too. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like insane, like half a million or something
Speaker 4: for like bringing one migrant.
Speaker 2: Without of these yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: Two is externalization, just as like bribing Libya to protect
Speaker 4: the border. Is also like actually forcing carriers, like forcing
Speaker 4: transport companies to be the border guard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to ascertain whether you have a visa or not,
Speaker 2: decide if you have the right to travel. Let's pick
Speaker 2: up with those examples you make, because I think it
Speaker 2: is important for people to kind of have a human
Speaker 2: face or a human story.
Speaker 3: Well, to preface this, like migrants are under EU law,
Speaker 3: migrants are supposed to apply for aside in the first
Speaker 3: EU country that they enter. This policy is likely the
Speaker 3: result of fear from more affluent European countries that the
Speaker 3: majority of refugees will travel to those countries. This means
Speaker 3: that the countries geographically closest to Africa and the Middle
Speaker 3: East are the ones supposed to take in most refugees.
Speaker 3: Think of Spain, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria. They however, are not
Speaker 3: too acphusiastic at the prospect of taking huge amounts of migrants.
Speaker 4: More are the migrants themselves.
Speaker 3: By the way, I can imagine that they're also a
Speaker 3: lot too keen to live in Bulgaria, especially after what
Speaker 3: follows next, because this story happened at the Turkish Bulgarian border.
Speaker 3: But I also personally it's just incredibly cruel that like
Speaker 3: the Netherlands and Germany and the Scandinavia countries are like,
Speaker 3: oh no, you should take you should take all those refugees,
Speaker 3: like we don't want them here.
Speaker 4: And I would say, that's like where the outstoarsing starts,
Speaker 4: like that's you law. We have shance, so we have
Speaker 4: like free travel within the u EU, but that comes
Speaker 4: with extremely violently guarding the outside of the u So
Speaker 4: if you are a border country, you are only welcome
Speaker 4: if you can prove to us that you are cr
Speaker 4: enough to discourage people from crossing this border. Because again,
Speaker 4: like Bulgaria doesn't really have that much interest in guarding
Speaker 4: the borders if people can just if they anyway want
Speaker 4: to go to Western European countries, right, so it's a
Speaker 4: way to again to I would say, the border externalization
Speaker 4: already starts from like the main countries of destination, which
Speaker 4: is like France and Germany and even Bulgaria would not
Speaker 4: have much interest in stopping migrants if there were not
Speaker 4: all of these rules to make them responsible.
Speaker 3: Exactly. But again, which is why I said, like the
Speaker 3: more affluent countries within you don't want that for reasons
Speaker 3: that I think anyone can think of at this point
Speaker 3: of the story is where pushbacks come into play. This
Speaker 3: is a tactic used by the countries I just mentioned.
Speaker 3: It's a set of measures that force people back over
Speaker 3: the border they crossed, often immediately after. This practice is
Speaker 3: often a force for violence and does not take into
Speaker 3: account the circumstances of migrants and denies them the opportunity
Speaker 3: to apply for asylum. This means that the EU does
Speaker 3: pushback people that have very legitimate reasons to apply for asylum.
Speaker 3: Under the EU's own rules, I'm going to quote, pushbacks
Speaker 3: violate the prohibition of collective expulsion of asylum seekers in
Speaker 3: Protocol four of the European Convention on Human Rights, and
Speaker 3: often violate the international law prohibiting on non refoulment. It's French, yeah, ah, okay,
Speaker 3: I was never good at French, all right. It's a
Speaker 3: fundamental principle of international law that forbids a country receiving
Speaker 3: asylum seekers from returning them to a country in which
Speaker 3: they would be improbable danger of persecution based on race, religion, nationality,
Speaker 3: members ship of a particular social group, or political opinion.
Speaker 3: That being said, I'm aware even like the Dutch government
Speaker 3: has sent like Lgbtqi people back to countries where they
Speaker 3: could be like persecuted for that. So again those rules
Speaker 3: seem to be very optional. So what follows now is
Speaker 3: two examples of border practices that I think are particularly egregious.
Speaker 3: So on October third, twenty twenty two, Abdullah Mohammed, at
Speaker 3: age nineteen, a Syrian refugee, attempted to cross the Bulgarian
Speaker 3: Turkish border. After being pushed back by border guards, they
Speaker 3: threw stones at the border I would emphasize here at
Speaker 3: the border itself, not at the guards. After this, a
Speaker 3: shot rang and Abdullah fell to the ground with a
Speaker 3: bullet lodged one centimeter away from his heart. He survived
Speaker 3: and was interviewed by Lighthouse Reports. He states that there
Speaker 3: was an intent to kill when he was shot. That's
Speaker 3: his belief. The bullet also pierced this hand, which is
Speaker 3: now partially paralyzed. There seems to be no justification or
Speaker 3: reason whatsoever for border guards to have shot, or to
Speaker 3: have shot with live ammunition. This was the first time
Speaker 3: that such an incident was called on video. If you want,
Speaker 3: you can find it linked on Lighthouse Reports. Attached to
Speaker 3: the article about this incident. The video is not as
Speaker 3: bad as you might think, but watch you at your
Speaker 3: own risk. As far as I'm aware, there have been
Speaker 3: similar rumors before, but this was the first instant that
Speaker 3: has entered like the public record, or the first time
Speaker 3: it was actually documented. Needless to say, no one should
Speaker 3: be shot for attempting to cross a border. I don't
Speaker 3: care about anyone's opinion or bad faith nuances. People have
Speaker 3: a right to apply for asylum, and as far as
Speaker 3: I'm concerned, this was a deliberate and calculated attempted murder.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do think there have been quite a lot
Speaker 4: of videos of people being shot, and definitely people making
Speaker 4: statements about it and just having the actual bullet in
Speaker 4: their body to prove that it happened. Yeah, it happened
Speaker 4: in Croatia, it happened in Greece. Greece is a habit
Speaker 4: of shooting at boats as well, and in that way
Speaker 4: making people drown. Yeah. And of course, apart from the shootings,
Speaker 4: which I would say on the European borders that they
Speaker 4: are still kind of rare. Yeah, the pushbacks and the
Speaker 4: violence and the torture is yeah, the evidence of that
Speaker 4: is like an enormous pile. There's when I was working
Speaker 4: in Bosnia, I think that was in twenty eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 4: there was no video footage of a pushback, and there
Speaker 4: was a journalist who volunteered with us for a while
Speaker 4: and they were the first one to film it. But
Speaker 4: in the past years there have been like many, many
Speaker 4: horrible videos of people being beaten up and actual torture.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Of course in the US, under the pretense of
Speaker 2: protecting us all from the coronavirus, which still killed millions
Speaker 2: of people in this country, we have done they called
Speaker 2: Title forty two, which allowed border patrol to quote unquote
Speaker 2: repatriate people to Mexico, even if they were Mexican, and
Speaker 2: just drop them back in Mexico, to include laterally transferring them,
Speaker 2: which is a pseudonym for kind of trafficking them halfway
Speaker 2: across the country and then dumping them in a place
Speaker 2: where they have no connections, no money, and no way
Speaker 2: of establishing themselves right. And this led to massively increased
Speaker 2: a fatalities at the border because people were trying to
Speaker 2: avoid border patrol where then coming in and surrendering themselves
Speaker 2: for so as we see now and massively increase encounters
Speaker 2: at the border encounters don't necessarily represent unique individuals. Right,
Speaker 2: this is my I will beat this fucking drum until
Speaker 2: I die. But apparently our colleagues at New York Times
Speaker 2: haven't worked it out yet. Wall Street Journal, almost every NPRT,
Speaker 2: every big outlet in the United States that likes to
Speaker 2: commission border reporters who don't live on the border will
Speaker 2: tell you that that, like the number of migrants went up.
Speaker 2: An encounter is an encounter. If someone crosses and then
Speaker 2: gets bounced into Mexico and then crosses again and does
Speaker 2: that five times, that's five encounters. It's the same person.
Speaker 2: BP doesn't keep records of unique individuals under Title forty two,
Speaker 2: or didn't keep under Citle forty two. We don't know
Speaker 2: how many people, but we know that more people tried
Speaker 2: to cross, and we also know that every time you
Speaker 2: try to cross, you risk your life. And so we
Speaker 2: certainly know that more lives will put in danger because
Speaker 2: of this policy, because again, like turning someone back is
Speaker 2: not going to stop them, especially when you're dropping them
Speaker 2: in a country where they don't want to be and
Speaker 2: where they're not from. Like, the people aren't just going
Speaker 2: to be like okay, cool, I'll stay in Mexico like that.
Speaker 2: That has not historically been the case.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we had exactly the same kind of juggling with numbers.
Speaker 4: I remember people in Bosnia. Some of them would get
Speaker 4: pushed back like forty or fifty times, and so they
Speaker 4: would be counted as individuals starts. Yes, indeed, so it would.
Speaker 6: Sound as if there was like, I don't know, tens
Speaker 6: of thousands, and I was like, it's really not that many, though, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: just literally count the same person again and again and again.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And also I would like to say that like, yes,
Speaker 4: it is a border like the EO border countries, but
Speaker 4: it is also much deeper into the territory. So we
Speaker 4: externalize the border towards like Libya, Niger and way further even,
Speaker 4: but we also internalized the border, so we would find
Speaker 4: we would have people who had made it to Austria
Speaker 4: or Italy. They would get caught in Austria Italy, be
Speaker 4: pushed back to Slovenia, taken over by Slovenian police, brought
Speaker 4: to the Croatian border, taken over decoration police. Often in
Speaker 4: Croatia get tortured and then be dumped on the Boston
Speaker 4: In border, which would be the EO border as well.
Speaker 4: So that's what they call chain pushbacks and yeah, I yeah,
Speaker 4: so I worked in the Boston hed Selovina, which is
Speaker 4: none you, So we would get the people after they
Speaker 4: had been pushed back.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The things that people have done, like wader guards have
Speaker 4: done to migrants are yeah, I don't know if you
Speaker 4: actually want to use this footage, right, it's like it's
Speaker 4: really really gruesome. Like in Bosnia, they would they would
Speaker 4: be like snow form, like they have very long and
Speaker 4: very cold winters. They would take away people's shoes and
Speaker 4: socks and like make them walk for five hours on
Speaker 4: bare feet. So one of the main tasks of our
Speaker 4: volunteers are medical volunteers, was amputating toes. People would, Yeah,
Speaker 4: people would come back with broken bones, broken skulls. People
Speaker 4: would be sent back with just their underwear at minus
Speaker 4: twenty degrees celsius. I don't know how much that is.
Speaker 2: In the US, neither do ways. I think they come
Speaker 2: together around minus twenty. It's extremely The culdred.
Speaker 4: Gets the more accurate. Yeah. So, like at some point
Speaker 4: we start to call this cold torture as a kind
Speaker 4: of specific yeah, tactic that mainly the Croatian border guards
Speaker 4: were using yeah. Also yeah, And I also want to
Speaker 4: stress again that yes, it is the European border countries
Speaker 4: in the east and in the West and in the south.
Speaker 4: But when I was working in Bosnia, Croatia was not
Speaker 4: yet part of the Shanan Zone, and like politicians were
Speaker 4: pretty explicit about Croatia can only enter if they have
Speaker 4: solved their border problem, even though there was constantly proof
Speaker 4: of torture coming out. The same happened with Bulgaria and Romania.
Speaker 4: So these countries were very very much pressured by countries
Speaker 4: like the Netherlands and Germany, who like you know, pretend
Speaker 4: not to have anything to do with these atrocities, but
Speaker 4: who were very very explicitly saying if you are not,
Speaker 4: if you don't get your borders in control, you cannot
Speaker 4: join the economic Yeah, you cannot have the open borders
Speaker 4: within the U.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so sad to see all these serialities. This
Speaker 2: is very depressing. My friends and I were helping someone
Speaker 2: who had it like the early onset of like like
Speaker 2: trench foot, Yeah, a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't do it, like I guess as a
Speaker 2: policy as much as just by default. But in the
Speaker 2: mountains and then desert here in California. When it rains,
Speaker 2: areas that are drive the rest of the year turn
Speaker 2: into rivers and migrants have to cross him. We've also
Speaker 2: seen a large number of migrants drown this year in
Speaker 2: San Diego, and I more will have drowned if very
Speaker 2: brave people hadn't risk their own lives rescuing them. Not
Speaker 2: people who were working for the government, just individuals who cared.
Speaker 2: We've also seen a young man from Jamaica recently passed away.
Speaker 2: This was in early probably early for some February and March.
Speaker 2: From February March. He was on a migrant trail. I
Speaker 2: know exactly where, about a few hundred yards actually from
Speaker 2: where my friends have left warm clothes, hand warmers, jackets, food, water.
Speaker 2: But he wasn't able to make it that far and
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, you know, like one death of a
Speaker 2: tragedy and a millions of statistic or whatever. But that
Speaker 2: really impacted me. He was actually on the other side
Speaker 2: of the border when he died, but like he could
Speaker 2: have thrown a stone into the US and it's not
Speaker 2: a fence to border there. But yet we have chosen
Speaker 2: a policy which made that young man die of hypothermia
Speaker 2: by himself on the side of a mountain because for
Speaker 2: some reason, that's what we've decided, or our government has
Speaker 2: decided it's better than having him come here and be
Speaker 2: able to make his case and live with us and
Speaker 2: get a job or what have you. And yeah, that
Speaker 2: was just a particularly heartbreaking one for me because I
Speaker 2: knew that, like, he was five minutes walk away, ten
Speaker 2: minutes walk away from potentially being okay, And like that
Speaker 2: that's why my friends and I like to go out
Speaker 2: and leave stuff for people. But it shouldn't be a
Speaker 2: group of anarchists and migrant activists and people of faith
Speaker 2: like hiking into the desert every weekend with backpacks full
Speaker 2: of water and food and warm clothes. That shouldn't be
Speaker 2: what prevents people from dying coming here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a kind of cruelty in that, even like
Speaker 4: it is amazing to help people to be part of
Speaker 4: a group of people who commit themselves to yeah, to
Speaker 4: resist these incredibly violent borders and to support people who
Speaker 4: decide to cross them. But at the same time, it
Speaker 4: is just so problematic that someone's life, like access to
Speaker 4: food or healthcare, depends on whether or not there are
Speaker 4: some crazy volunteers willing to do that, so like it
Speaker 4: shouldn't be like our you know, are like, yeah, like
Speaker 4: I don't want to have that power over someone's life,
Speaker 4: and I think no one should have that power over
Speaker 4: someone's life. But this system where basically migrants lives are disposable,
Speaker 4: also mean that it's like optional to offer super basic
Speaker 4: things that can save these lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very much too.
Speaker 3: Are you ready for the second depressing story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get the second depress let's hit rock bottom.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'm sure you've you've heard this story before, but
Speaker 3: still I think it's very much worth repeating. So on
Speaker 3: June fourteenth, twenty twenty three, the Adriana, a ship on
Speaker 3: its way degrees, capsized and subsequently sank. The boat allegedly
Speaker 3: had the capacity for about four hundred people, but carried
Speaker 3: around seven hundred and fifty. Of all those lives, one
Speaker 3: hundred and four were saved, eighty two were confirmed deaths,
Speaker 3: and up to four five hundreds are missing and presumed death,
Speaker 3: the majority of which are women and children. I'll refer
Speaker 3: back to the Lighthouse Reports, who did a reconstruction of
Speaker 3: the incident, which makes this even worse than it already is.
Speaker 3: Transcriptions and witness statements obtained by Lighthouse Reports, the Oshpiego Monitor, Asiairaj,
Speaker 3: Lpos Report, Is United and The Times strongly suggests that
Speaker 3: the Greek coast Guard attempted to conceal their own involvement
Speaker 3: in this tragedy. Nine survivors were asked to make statements,
Speaker 3: none of which appeared to blame the coast guard. Different
Speaker 3: suggestions were given for the capsizing, blaming it on the
Speaker 3: edge of the ship or the lack of life jackets.
Speaker 3: Four of these statements contained near identical phrasing. It was
Speaker 3: later discovered that one of the translators was a coast
Speaker 3: guard himself. There were other translators, all of which were
Speaker 3: sworn in on that very day later in Greek courts.
Speaker 3: Six of those nine stated that the coast guard did
Speaker 3: in fact tow the boat before it went down. Two
Speaker 3: survivors tot Lighthouse reports that certain parts of their testimony
Speaker 3: was omitted in the transcription to clarify that a bit
Speaker 3: because of what I said earlier that migrants have are
Speaker 3: obligated to apply for asylum in the country in which
Speaker 3: they arrive. It's become a habit of like coast guard
Speaker 3: and frontext to drag them to certain areas of of
Speaker 3: water that are part of for example, Italy or Greece.
Speaker 3: This particular one boat may have been an attempt to
Speaker 3: drag the boat to Italian waters so the Greeks didn't
Speaker 3: have to take them in. So to quote the report
Speaker 3: from Lighthouse sixteen out of the seventeen survivors we spoke
Speaker 3: to set the coast guard attached the rope to the
Speaker 3: vessel and tried to tow it shortly before it capsized.
Speaker 3: Four also claimed that the coast guard was attempting to
Speaker 3: tow the boat to Italian waters, while four reported that
Speaker 3: the coast guard caused more depths by circling around the
Speaker 3: boat after it capsized, making waves that caused the boat's
Speaker 3: carcass to sink. End quote not great badtime stories if
Speaker 3: you ask me, yeah, I thin, yes, there there's just
Speaker 3: no words like yeah.
Speaker 2: I think I think to say like, I don't think
Speaker 2: anyone should be okay with it.
Speaker 1: M M.
Speaker 2: Perhaps I think we're going to talk again about how
Speaker 2: people can oppose this, and how people can try their
Speaker 2: best to to a change the system and be do
Speaker 2: what they can, you know, while we're stuck in this
Speaker 2: terrible place to make things more survivable and less cruel.
Speaker 2: So perhaps we can finish up here with you guys
Speaker 2: plugging anything you want to. If there are orgs or
Speaker 2: social media where people can follow both of your work
Speaker 2: and then I'd love to hear about them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can follow us on migrates dot the n
Speaker 4: I think it's like for English and migrated.
Speaker 5: I G R E A C.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the system is super fucked. It is super super
Speaker 4: super fucked. It is Yeah, it's really treating human beings
Speaker 4: as disposable and human a moment life has absolutely no value.
Speaker 4: But I also just wanted to say that I think
Speaker 4: a lot of migrants who cross borders they are aware
Speaker 4: of the risks. But I think it's also important to
Speaker 4: say that it isn't it's a kind of resistance. It
Speaker 4: is a kind of We started that episode with talking
Speaker 4: about passport privilege and the lottery of birth, and I
Speaker 4: think we should not only look at like the bad
Speaker 4: border guards and the good people helping or something, but
Speaker 4: I think we should also acknowledge that the people crossing
Speaker 4: the borders are doing like taking unbelievable risk, often also
Speaker 4: to help their families or their friends. Yeah, and I
Speaker 4: think crossing a border without permission is a kind of resistance.
Speaker 4: And I think we as people who do direct support
Speaker 4: or direct aid, we are I mean, for me, it's
Speaker 4: also part of the resistance. Is like helping people cross
Speaker 4: the border. I don't mind if yeah, people that want
Speaker 4: to accuse me of being a smaller or something, or
Speaker 4: like aiding illegal border crossings, Like the whole point is
Speaker 4: that people should be able to cross that border.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really good Someone recently
Speaker 2: accused us of in Cucumber that said that people people
Speaker 2: come to a cumber because we feed them, and like
Speaker 2: it's fucking ludicrous, Like you didn't fucking come from a
Speaker 2: guinea because I'm going to give you a peanut butter sandwich.
Speaker 4: Bat like the best food.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, like it is. It is not the best.
Speaker 2: It's the best we can do, like you know, less
Speaker 2: than an other person or what have you. But like no,
Speaker 2: like but I yes, but I am doing it because
Speaker 2: I believe that person should be able to and not
Speaker 2: just because they're in those circumstances, but because I fundamentally
Speaker 2: support there, right, Like I want them to be my neighbor. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm okay with that, and that's why I'm doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely think I think we should all keep in
Speaker 3: mind how many of our friends, family, or other loved
Speaker 3: ones have moved at some point in their lives for
Speaker 3: a job or opportunities or love or whatever. Not that
Speaker 3: the essence of like Huban movement is the same, right
Speaker 3: right there?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it is our politicians who choose
Speaker 4: that this movement is a problem, that the movement of
Speaker 4: these people specifically is a threat or danger, whereas I think, like, yeah,
Speaker 4: if you talk about like racism or systemic racism, the questions,
Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, but what is the system?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 4: This is the system, the visa policies, the actual border,
Speaker 4: This is what is keeping people like is trying to
Speaker 4: keep people unexploitable conditions in the global South, is doing
Speaker 4: incredible cruelties to them just for political gain. Is exploiting
Speaker 4: people who do make it, but who are undocumented or
Speaker 4: on fragile resident status and are still exploited and deprived
Speaker 4: of basic rights even if they do arrive to their
Speaker 4: country of destination. Like this system is designed to create
Speaker 4: an underclass of people that is easily exploitable. There are
Speaker 4: companies who are profiting from this. There is absolutely no
Speaker 4: intention to stop migration, but there is definitely an intention
Speaker 4: to marginalize and segregate migrants and yeah, and just profits
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And meanwhile, we do the absolute bare minimum to
Speaker 3: provide aids to those countries to make the living conditions
Speaker 3: there better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, these borders are playing a role and keeping people
Speaker 4: exploitable there and making it possible to make them work
Speaker 4: for incredible low wages and horrible labor conditions. Like yeah,
Speaker 4: into those into those conditions.
Speaker 3: I think the the mandatory international development aid that countries
Speaker 3: should pay is like zero points zero zero seven percent
Speaker 3: or something of the GDP, and the majority of like
Speaker 3: Western countries are not not not doing that even that.
Speaker 3: So it's very much like the problem is that they're
Speaker 3: coming here, not that the conditions there are ships and
Speaker 3: war keeping them ships.
Speaker 2: Yeah, were great.
Speaker 3: I'm a bit bumped now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, we left you will saide. We will come
Speaker 2: back with with Rose again and make to talk about
Speaker 2: ways to make it better. Is there anything you wanted
Speaker 2: to plug, make any anything you want people to give
Speaker 2: the time money to follow on the internet.
Speaker 3: I just want to give a shout out to like
Speaker 3: organizations such as Migrates, but also the abolished Frontechs campaign
Speaker 3: and United Against Refugee's And it would urge anyone to
Speaker 3: who feels compassionate to help out. There are so many
Speaker 3: ways you can help out, even if you don't know
Speaker 3: it yet. It is sorely needed. Like wherever you are,
Speaker 3: whoever you are, you can help out.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: Everyone, it's me James, and I just wanted to read
Speaker 2: you this today. We're going to put it in our
Speaker 2: episode this week because it's a cause that's important to us,
Speaker 2: and so we thought it would be something that might
Speaker 2: be important to you too as well. On the tenth
Speaker 2: of June twenty twenty four, Lennond Pelgier, an enrolled member
Speaker 2: of the Turtle Band of Chippewa of Lakota and Ojibwei
Speaker 2: ancestry and the longest serving political prisoner in the United States,
Speaker 2: will be appearing before the US Parole Commission for the
Speaker 2: first time since two thousand and nine. He faces staunch
Speaker 2: opposition from the FBI and other laurenenforcement agencies due to
Speaker 2: having allegedly killed two FBI agents in a firefight on
Speaker 2: the twenty sixth of June nineteen seventy five, after the
Speaker 2: agents appeared on reservation land to execute a pretextural warrant.
Speaker 2: The initial firefight occurred during the quote reign of terror
Speaker 2: on Pine Ridge in the wake of the occupation of
Speaker 2: Wounded Kney, a time of extreme violence when federal law
Speaker 2: enforcement installed a puppet tribal chair and was arming vigilantes
Speaker 2: who targeted Indigenous traditionalists. Every since leading up to these events,
Speaker 2: as well as subsequent investigation and mister Peltier's extradition, trial, conviction,
Speaker 2: and sentencing, were characterized by gross misconduct on the part
Speaker 2: of law enforcement, the prosecution, and the courts. Mister Peltier's
Speaker 2: co defendants were separately tried and acquitted on grounds of
Speaker 2: self defense. Mister Peltier was railroaded, and his case is
Speaker 2: tainted by discrimination every level, ranging from the withholding of
Speaker 2: exculpatory evidence to the torture and coercion of extradition and
Speaker 2: trial witnesses, and from the refuse of the judge to
Speaker 2: dismiss and vowedly racist Dura, to the apologetic gymnastics of
Speaker 2: the courts affirming his convictions in the face of meritorious
Speaker 2: legal challenges and admitted evidence about rageous government misdeeds. Mister
Speaker 2: Peltier has been in prison for more than forty eight
Speaker 2: years and he's almost eighty years old. He suffers from
Speaker 2: chronic and potentially lethal conditions for which he receives insufficient
Speaker 2: and substandard medical care. If you want to take action
Speaker 2: to hashtag free Lenard Peltier, you can call the US
Speaker 2: Parole Commission at two zero two three four six seven
Speaker 2: zero zero zero. And if you'd like to find more
Speaker 2: information on how to support, you can go to this
Speaker 2: r L it's h t t P colon slash slash
Speaker 2: n d n C dot c C slash free Leonard Peltier.
Speaker 2: That's fre e l e O n A r d
Speaker 2: P e l t i E or you can follow
Speaker 2: NDN collective on social media for more ways to support him.
Speaker 2: More information on Danna Peltier, listen to Margaret's podcast on
Speaker 2: the Lakota Nation, a read in the Spirit of the
Speaker 2: Crazy Horse by Peter Mathewson.
Speaker 1: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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