At this very moment, over 2700 people are detained in Greece as “smugglers” for exercising their freedom of movement or after being found guilty of “facilitating” it in others. Even more people are imprisoned in the rest of Europe. People on the move are often arrested and convicted of such “crimes” after entering Europe. They might have been driving boats or cars across a border but, equally likely, they might not. Some were arrested completely at random. Some were simply those sitting next to their dinghy’s steering gear. Others were the only ones in their boat with a bit of nautical knowledge. Some might have paid a bit less for their trip. Others might have received some money. In Greek law a person driving a boat is considered a “facilitator”, no matter if money is involved or not. Despite its harmless connotations, this word – “facilitator” – defines the lives of the people labelled by it.
We don’t believe in the justice system, but it is worth mentioning that Greece is enabled to send thousands to jail by applying the European Facilitators Package, the legislative framework for such crimes. Not only does this allow for huge sentences, leaving prisons full of people jailed for boat driving, at the same time it feeds the EU’s narrative of fighting against smuggling. On top of a base prison sentence, an additional 10 years in prison per person “facilitated” into Europe is often added, and in some cases an extra charge of causing a shipwreck. We should remember that the very people brought before the court are those that brought their boat to shore as safely as possible and saved many lives. Still, they end up dragged into farcical trials without proper legal representation and, more often than not, jailed for many years.
This process of criminalisation is systematic and results from racist laws and border practices. It affects the lives of criminalised people forever. These trials usually happen in the shadows. The state lawyers are assigned to their clients and get to know them, and the details of the case, 15 minutes before the trial is scheduled. Trials often happen without appropriate translation. Verdicts are made after a process averaging 38 minutes, condemning people for an average of 44 years in prison. The lack of legal assistance, as well as the short procedures at a moment’s notice, are some of the tools used in the system of imprisoning migrants. This has left a lot of people without any support, in prison for years, and with no legal possibility after their appeal.
The criminalisation of people on the move is too often invisible, and their voices are silenced through detention and imprisonment. This allows the authorities of the EU and its member States to further violate their rights and to exercise the worst violence on them, even after their release. They find their voice in the mainstream media, where they feed the common stereotypes portraying people on the move. They are depicted as poor victims, exploited and endangered by an evil smuggling mafia, as perpetrators themselves, or as tools sent to destroy our “superior” European culture.
To reinforce these ideas, media pundits deliberately mix up the terminology, using without legal grounds phrases like “human traffickers”. This makes it seem like they have smuggled people against their will. The media and its audience does not seem to mind the contradiction in the idea that the smuggler and the invader are one and the same. With few exceptions, even for the Leftist media, a migrant’s case has to break our hearts to make sympathetic headlines. They might write about the clear injustice of a father who had lost his child in a shipwreck and was accused of endangering his children’s welfare. They might also write about the white activists arrested for “crimes of solidarity”. Still, as long as they do not fit the profile of the vulnerable victim or the humanitarian hero, they will not mention the countless people on the move arrested for facilitation. The arrests have become a normality, and headlines about normality do not sell. It is the spectacle they want, nothing else.
Looking at the movement’s response, even we tend to fall into the same trap. There have been some victories in the last few years, trials that were won after all, usually after huge campaigns and real legal support. Still, most of the cases remain in the shadows. In order to gain wide appeal, the framework of our campaigns often fits within the logic of victimisation and innocence. Meanwhile, there are very few of us working on the subject and with limited capacities, initiatives such as the “Captain Support Network”, solidarity lawyers and individuals. They face a situation where it is difficult to find convicted people in the prison system, where it is difficult to raise attention, where it is difficult to find the money to support the campaigns and the legal efforts. We have to ask ourselves why.
Working on this topic is not only difficult; at some points it is contradictory. As we have already said, we don’t believe in the legal system, but in order to support people facing life sentences we have to use it. We form campaigns to find money to pay lawyers and court fees, and with this money we feed the same system that we criticise. If we don’t want to cause damage to the accused, we have to moderate our words in the media and say that the person is “innocent”. Under these circumstances, how can we create a different narrative, one that doesn’t victimise?
People who cross borders are people who resist fortress Europe. They are comrades in the fight against borders (regardless of their political ideas and background). If we did not focus on court and prison support, we would leave them behind.
This work might be full of political traps and contradictions. It might be emotionally challenging too, but when we consider the fact that people on the move are political prisoners of a system that scapegoats them, a system that bends its own laws to serve its own goals, we have to say that it is urgently and ideologically necessary.
On the one hand, these trials are part of the deterrence policies, alongside the pushbacks, the detention centres and the bureaucratic procedures that aim to scare people from entering Europe. On the other hand, they are an attempt to show right-wing voters that the government is doing something about migration, tackling the smugglers and preventing illegal entry to their country. They are nothing but a bad theatre play, performed on the backs of people that have done nothing but fight for survival and seek a better life. This theatre does nothing to disrupt the smuggling networks, which are not destroyed by arresting those on the lowest level of the structure. Just as the so-called war on drugs is a war on users, the war against the smugglers is in fact a war on migrants.
Over time, the systemic criminalization of those who drive the boat has had a strong influence, not only on the lives of the thousands in jail, but also on those who decide to jump out of the boat for fear of ending up in jail, those who abandon the wheel when they see the Coast Guard or FRONTEX vessels, and those well-meaning still believe that it is illegal to assist people on the move in any way.
As long as there are no safe ways to migrate, there will be a demand for facilitation, and as long as there is a demand, there will be a market. The system that claims to dismantle this shadow market is the system that created it and keeps it profitable. In this market, the bosses are not affected by cases against boat drivers. Under this capitalist logic, the bosses will just replace them, and the money will keep reaching them, just like in every other business, legal or not. It is not our concern to discuss the moral aspects of the market. It is clearly as dirty as every other business. Instead we will focus on the people paying the price for this charade.
The deceitful claim that operations against the smuggling networks are motivated by concern for the lives of people on the move is pure hypocrisy. The same authorities arresting random people as smugglers are those conducting pushbacks. They commit countless crimes against people on the move every day at the European borders. The same politicians that go on and on, ranting endlessly about the evil of smugglers after yet another shipwreck, are those that push more money into the militarisation of borders, in turn forcing people to take more dangerous routes. They order their executive bodies to act with utmost brutality while locking people up in unlivable facilities where they are denied even the most basic needs. They create the reality where people on the move are perceived as a social threat and become the target of racist attacks all over Europe.
We should not leave the topic of migration in general, and criminalisation in particular, to the NGO industry. Nor should we treat it with the humanitarian approach. Instead we need to put it in a political, a revolutionary context! If we want to fight fortress Europe, we have to stand in solidarity with those imprisoned for actually resisting it, no matter their individual or collective reasons.
We need to recognise and expose the tactics of the State, which targets certain groups, defines them in order to separate them, and therefore to separate resistance. The workers’ struggle, where migrant workers are often ignored, or in the worst case even treated as a threat for workers rights, is often successful and most dynamic when this division is rejected. We need to recognise that we have to fight together with people on the move and this obviously includes supporting them at the courts and in jail. We need to recognise that driving a boat can be as radical an act as tearing down the walls of a prison. Being here today and discussing this topic among political assemblies is the first step towards connecting, staying connected, and creating stronger networks is what we have to do to develop new tactics in the struggle against racism and capitalism.