The collective attempts by more than four thousand migrants to cross the borders between Africa and Europe have shown the brutality of the European border regime. In the last two weeks ten people were shot dead by border police. Since then, Moroccan authorities have rounded up and “deported” more than 2,500 people, and abandoned them without food and water in the Sahara Desert. More than 36 people have died there so far.

The news of the past two weeks shows only a small part of the brutality at Europe’s borders, where hundreds of migrants drown every year crossing the Straights of Gibralter, suffocate in trucks, or are blown up by landmines in the fields between Greece and Turkey.

The reaction of the Spanish Government and the European Comission is military reinforcement of the borders and externalising the “management” of migrants. European colonialism and economic policies created the sitations that are forcing people to flee. Now, being pushed by the German government and others, refugees are being made invisible to Europe; caught way before the borders and held in “transit” prisons far away. Third countries, such as Morocco are made to handle the situation in exchange for economic aid. The EU has given 40 million Euro to Morocco to build up border defences. The Moroccan government uses these deals to systematically violate human rights, torturing, deporting and murdering migrants.

Across Europe groups are organising acts to reject this brutality at the borders. We are calling for a coordinated day of action on 29th October 2005. (link)

… Zizek goes on to look at the resurgent racist authoritarianism of the state: from the EU’s construction of a border police force to keep out immigrants to the recent assassination of migrants fleeing G8-engineered famine (covered by Bat here), and:

This is the truth of globalization: the construction of new walls safeguarding the prosperous Europe from a flood of immigrants. One is tempted to resuscitate here the old Marxist “humanist” opposition of “relations between things” and “relations between persons”: In the much celebrated free circulation opened up by the global capitalism, it is “things” (commodities) which freely circulate, while the circulation of “persons” is more and more controlled. …