This is an episode of RFI’s Grand Reportage program by journalist Manon Chapelain, who works in Turkey. She investigated the border between Iran and Turkey, and tells what’s happening to people trying to flee Iran at the moment.
Since Erdogan’s re-election, things have got worse. Iranian and Turkish police don’t hesitate to shoot anyone trying to leave Iran.
Her visit to the cemetery of a village near the border is a terrible radio moment.
What I’d like to point out now. This border, which seems so far away, is ours. (us: Europeans)
That these military and police infrastructures which prevent the movement of those seeking a place to come to, are ours: it is we who finance them, literally. With our taxes. (us: Europeans)
That these 295 km of concrete built across the mountains are our wall (we: Europeans).
That we are accountable for the atrocities committed against the children, women and men trying to escape a regime that wants them dead (we: Europeans).
That the corpses of migrants found when the snow melts, of refugees lost in the mountains and freezing to death, or of those killed by militias and gangs as they pass through, are to be blamed on our necropolitics (as Achille Mbembé puts it, a necropolitics that sorts out those who must be sacrificed so that others can be saved).
That this bloody, racial fortress of Europe was not designed by a totalitarian or far-right state. It’s our European liberal democracies.