Guards come and laugh at me through the bars of my cell. ---- "You're the
English, right?", they ask me. "What are you doing here?" ---- "You tell me," Isay, for the hundredth time. But they just laugh, and wander off. ---- I am theonly Westerner in a detention centre full of thousands of refugees. I am also theonly inmate waiting to be deported to the UK - though of course, I am pretty muchthe only person here who would not do anything for a one-way plane ticket toLondon. In a similar irony, the Greek police who run the facility make it veryplain they do not want any of my fellow inmates (Afghans, Iranians, Pakistanis,North Africans) in their country. And yet it is the same police force whichviolently arrested them and prevented them leaving.Earlier this year, while on holiday in Greece, I was detained at the Italianborder, arrested, thrown into the Greek detention and migration system for twomonths, and informed I was banned from the Schengen Zone for the next ten years.Though I still haven't been provided with any documentation about the ban, itappears likely that I am being targeted as a result of my reporting and mediaadvocacy from North and East Syria (NES), the democratic, women-led, autonomousregion built around Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), which the Turkish government ishell-bent on destroying. Chillingly, it seems the autocratic Turkish governmentnow has the power to impose a unilateral ban from Europe on a British citizen,professional journalist and media activist like myself.My two months in detention were just a brief taste of what many refugees,political activists and journalists from the Middle East and beyond must spend alifetime enduring. My case provided a window into the violence, squalor and farceof day-to-day life in the EU's detention-deportation machine. But it alsoillustrates the complicity of European states and the Erdogan regime insuppressing journalistic freedom, political dissent, and democratic movements.Inside the Greek migrant detention systemWhile travelling from Greece to Italy with a friend earlier this year, I was metoff the ferry at the Italian border by a group of armed, balaclava-clad police. Iwas banned from the Schengen Zone for ten years, they told me, at the request ofthe German government. Thus began my whirlwind tour of the Greek migrantdetention system. The port where I was arrested, Ancona, lies on a popular routefor people without papers trying to travel through Greece on to Western Europe,and so the Greek police simply dealt with me as they would deal with anyirregular migrant pushed back from Italy by the Italian police.I was variously detained in Patras police station, the notorious MigrantPre-Removal Detention Center at Korinthos which was condemned by the Committee toPrevent Torture, and another Pre-Removal Center in Petrorali, Athens. Conditionswere as you might expect. The police station in Patras only has small holdingcells, but I spent a week here sleeping on the bare stone. Others were held inthe same conditions for a month or more. For days at a time I was locked in mycell and not allowed to mix with other inmates, passing the time squashingcockroaches and playing chess with myself on a contraband paper set. Most of myfellow inmates were cut and bruised from the beatings they'd received uponarrest, trying to smuggle themselves onto ferries at the port. On one occasion,the police violently beat a petty drug dealer on the floor outside my cell.One day then I and a group of my new friends - Afghan migrants - were handcuffedand bundled into a windowless van. To keep us quiet, the police implied we weresoon to be released, but instead we found ourselves issued with new prisonnumbers and lined up along the wall at Korinthos, a massive, police-run prisonfacility officially known as a ‘Pre-Removal Detention Center'. This name, we soonlearned, was a farce, since there were virtually no ‘removals' (deportations)taking place due to the coronavirus crisis.Officially, people here should have exhausted all possible legal routes to remainin the EU, or else voluntarily accepted deportation. In practice, they are heldfor six to eighteen months or even more before suddenly being released -sometimes with the assistance of the shadowy lawyers who circle the centre likevultures demanding huge cash payments for unclear forms of ‘assistance',sometimes seemingly at random. People are interviewed about their asylum cases,but these days everyone is being rejected, regardless of the validity of theircase. Some people are released, re-arrested days later, and placed back in thedetention centre for another undetermined spell.In Korinthos, as elsewhere, the system is totally opaque. All NGOs are bannedfrom entering. Particularly Kafkaeseque is the way some guards will tell youwhatever you want to hear, some will say they know nothing, and some will tellyou to fuck off, with added racist abuse, where applicable: but they are allsimply trying to make their own lives easier. It is is impossible to know howyour case is going, where you will be sent next, when your interview will be,whether the lawyers (who never actually visit their clients in the detentionfacility, only occasionally shouting at them through the barbed wire) really canspeed up your release. The conditions are squalid, with frequent water outages,and up to forty men sharing each cell.The result is desperation. In the cell where I stayed, one Kurdish refugee hadrecently killed himself in desperation, hanging himself with two phone chargerswoven together. The lights are kept burning 24 hours a day, and yet when theresidents need a doctor or the water runs dry, no-one comes. I see one long-terminmate climb up the prison building and threaten to throw himself off just to getaccess to a dentist. Another slashed himself all over with a razor after beingconsistently denied access to the doctor for his agonising kidney problems. Thereare hunger strikes, fights, clashes with the guards with stones and burningmattresses. For the final two weeks I am transferred to a higher-securityfacility in Petrorali, Athens, where we once again spend most of the time inisolation. Here, more troubled inmates kept in isolation thrash against the bars,screaming, cursing, begging, fighting.The body of a Kurdish asylum seeker who committed suicide being removed fromKorinthos, sparking protestsRumours fly through the bars as frequently as the cigarettes and tea-bags passedaround via cardboard chutes. Transfers occur in windowless vans. On arrival at anew facility, we are stripped and cavity searched and have our blood taken andare given injections, but not told what the injection is for, fostering adangerous paranoia among the migrant population. When I arrive at Petrorali themedical staff tell me, laughing, that I have somehow contracted multiple forms ofhepatitis: that I will never be able to have children: and that there is nothingto be done about this. They send me back to my cell, untreated. It is only aftermany weeks of worry later, back in England, that my doctor tells me I havenothing to worry about, and what the Greek tests in fact picked up were myvaccinations against the disease. Whether this was done through malice oroversight, I don't know.I see much comradeship and joy, too. In Patras a brace of Hells' Angels beingheld on drug charges make the migrants and I laugh by breaking wind, share thefestal food brought in by their wives for orthodox Easter, advise the youngAfghans on how to handle the guards. In Korinthos we organise language classes,legal training ahead of the migrants' admissability interviews, work-out sessionswhere we leg-press the fattest guy in the cell, a clandestine livestream where werelay conditions in the prison to the outside world. We play ludo, chess,football, run out into the yard in the rain and belly-flop on the floodedconcrete. I write poetry on the cell wall, Blake, Milton: The mind is its ownplace, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. We laugh a lot,debate politics and religion, comfort one another as best we can.When I am woken at dawn for the last time and put on a plane back to the UK, myoverriding emotion is guilt that I cannot bring all my new friends and comradeswith me. But it is all I can do to dish out my last remaining cigarettes before Iam handcuffed, and swept away.Fires burning in Korinthos during protests following the death of a Kurdish inmateA cause worth defendingSix months later, back in the UK, I am still trying to get my hands on anyofficial paperwork to explain exactly what has happened. Since I have never hadanything to do with the German authorities, and given Germany's strong trade tiesand strategic relationship with Turkey, it appears likely Turkey asked Germany toissue the ban. This was done via an opaque institution known as the SchengenInformation System, which has "been the target of sustained criticism byacademics, EU bodies and civil rights organisations" since its inception.But why should the Turkish government care so deeply about a British journaliston holiday in Greece?You will have seen the world-famous images of ‘Kurdish women fighting ISIS'broadcast around the world, as Kurdish-led forces spent years pushing back ISISfrom strongholds like Raqqa before totally eradicating their caliphate in March2019 - as the main partner force of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, led bythe US but including the UK, Germany, and almost all Schengen Zone member states.You will probably also have seen footage from the two Turkish invasions of theregion, including the October 2019 assault greenlit by Donald Trump. Turkishwarplanes and tanks backed radical militias including scores of former ISISmembers to take over swathes of NES, looting, raping, pillaging and murdering asthey conduct forcible ethnic cleansing against the region's Kurdish, Yezidi andChristian minorities.But beyond the frontlines, the political project in NES has endured. Severalmillion people now live in a system of direct, grassroots democracy, withguaranteed female participation and women's leadership at all levels of politicaland civil life. The project is not flawless, but in a region beset by war,poverty and a total breakdown of infrastructure, NES continues to guaranteeremarkably high standards of human rights, rule of law, and due process. Thethree years I spent living and working in NES were an education in both utopicthinking and practical action, as I witnessed refugees coming together aroundcooperative farming projects to beat the Turkish-imposed embargo on the region,and the women of Raqqa taking control of their own autonomous council in defianceof ISIS' continued presence. The revolution is very much alive.You may also be aware that a number of Westerners have travelled out to jointhe ‘Rojava revolution'. At first, many joined the military struggle againstISIS, with scores sacrificing their lives in the process. But these days, themajority of Western volunteers work in the burgeoning civil sphere, in women'swork, health, education - or, in my case, media.I am a professional journalist, and during my time in Syria I filed reports fortop international news sources like VICE, the Independent, and the New Statesman,as well as hosting a documentary series for a Kurdish TV channel. But my mainrole was as a co-founder of the region's top independent news source, RojavaInformation Center (RIC). As RIC, we worked with all the world's top mediacompanies and human rights organizations, including the BBC, ITV, Sky, CNN, Fox,Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, the US Government, and manymore, to help them cover the situation on the ground.Our raison d'etre was connecting these news sources with people on the ground, tohelp them understand the reality of NES, without propaganda. I never sought tohide my presence in Syria, or what I was doing there. On the contrary, I wasproud to lend my voice to both advocate for and criticise a political project Iwanted the international community to recognise, understand, and engage with.Political repressionWorking in Kurdistan as a journalist is enough to incur political repression fromTurkey. Turkey is the world's number one jailer of journalists, has the highestincarceration rate in Europe, and in recent years has dismissed or detained over160,000 judges, teachers, civil servants and politicians, particularly targetingKurdish politicians and members of the pro-Kurdish and pro-democratic party HDP.Turkey's actions reach far beyond Turkey and the regions it invades and occupiesin Syria and Iraq, with Turkish intelligence going so far as to assassinate threefemale Kurdish activists in Paris in 2013, while fascist ‘Grey Wolves'paramilitaries linked to Erdogan's AKP party regularly carry out violent attacksin Europe.But the EU must turn a blind eye to these abuses, because it relies on Turkey tohost millions of refugees who would otherwise travel into Europe. Turkey usesthese refugees as leverage to threaten Europe, even while its invasions of NESand military interventions in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh and elsewhere forcehundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes in the face of ethniccleansing. Absurdly, even Kurdish refugees in the EU must prove that Turkey isnot safe for them, with almost all applications being rejected - if Turkey wasshown to be unsafe, after all, that would mean the EU admitting it was refoulingmigrants into life-threatening danger, in defiance of international law.The issue is not Turkey alone. EU and Western governments regularly target,harass and detain their own nationals for lending support to the democraticproject in NES or the Kurdish rights movement. Volunteers who fought against ISIShave been charged and jailed in Denmark, Australia, Italy, Spain, France and myown home country, the UK. Danes and Australians can be jailed simply for settingfoot in NES - something the UK has threatened, but never enacted.Fighting for women's rights, democracy and freedom should not be a crime. But asmy case illustrates, this repression is not limited to combatants. In the UK,even members of ecological delegations have been detained under terror laws andprevent from travelling to the region. Facing intense, targeted policeharassment, unable to find work as a result, feeling isolated and alone, severalformer volunteers have killed themselves. At least one other British volunteer inNES has been handed the same ten-year ban from the Schengen Zone as myself, andwe suspect other peaceful activists have also been listed on the SIS.Turkish pressure therefore contributes to Western governments' own desire to stopthe spread of the decentralised, transformative vision of society put forward byNES. (Turkey, of course, knows they incur much more negative press when theirbombs kill British or European citizens than when they are simply wiping outKurdish and Arab locals - one reason why continued Western engagement in NES isso important.)Erdogan is able to use the millions of Syrian now resident in Turkey to tacitlyor openly threaten Europe with another influx of refugees if they do not acceedto his demands. The UK is particularly close to Turkey as a key trading partner,the more so post-Brexit, and accordingly takes a much harder line against NESthan, say, France or the USA, both of whom have welcomed NES' political leadersto the White House and the Champs Elysee. Notably, in the UK, repressive moveshave come in response to high-level meetings between Turkey and the UK, inparticular when arrests targeted not only former volunteers in NES but even theirfamily members in the days following Erdogan's 2019 visit to London.The same shared interests lie behind my own, relatively brief, detention. Thepolitical movement in NES resists borders and the violence inherent in thecapitalist nation-state. These ideas are anathema to Erdogan, but they alsoconstitutes a challenge to the EU border regime. Little wonder, then, that Turkeyand the EU work together to stifle legitimate journalism and political advocacy.The author working on the ground in Rojava (North and East Syria) as a journalistand media activistOutside the lawAs the British novelty act in the Greek detention center, I was of course sparedthe racism, the violence, and the worst of the uncertainty. I knew it would onlybe so long before I was back in the UK, where, though I had to sit through a‘Schedule 7' interview on my return, the police assured me that I have no chargesto face and have done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law. It is an immensefrustration to be summarily banned from Europe, but then I FaceTime with friendsstill detained in Korinthos or playing the dangerous ‘game' trying to jump ontolorries at Patras ferry port, and I remember how incredibly free I am.The effect of repression against Western volunteers, activists and journalistswho have worked in NES is to place us, temporarily, outside the normalprotections afforded to UK or EU citizens. Millions of civilians in NES, likemillions of migrants in Europe, exist in this vacuum as their constant condition.Turkey feels it has impunity to rape, murder, bomb and ethnically cleanse in NES,which remains unrecognised by any government or international organisation,despite its leading role in defeating ISIS. The Greek police can beat, humiliateand dehumanise the migrants in Patras, Korinthos or Petrorali as much as theyplease, knowing no lawyers or NGOs are able to enter the detention centres tomonitor their behaviour.The inmates of the Greek migrant detention system and the free people of NES areboth victims of the same system, which sacrifices peoples' lives in the name ofbilateral trade agreements, arms sales, and ethno-nationalist state politics. Butthis is precisely why I, and other international supporters of the politicalmovement in NES, have chosen to make our voices heard, even in the face ofimprisonment and police repression. This is why I hope my ban will be overturned,and that I can continue my peaceful journalism and advocacy in support of thisvital cause.The vision being promoted in NES, of local, decentralised, grassroots democracy,is the only way to resolve not only the Syrian conflict but also a global crisisoccasioned by capitalist extraction overseen by neo-imperialist states. Only inthis way can we provide people with what they want most - a safe home they haveno need to flee.?Matt BroomfieldMatt is a journalist, organiser and co-founder of the Rojava Information Center,the top news and research organisation in North and East Syriahttps://organisemagazine.org.uk/2021/11/30/detained-and-banned-from-europe-witness/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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