Watching the torturous scene in Green Border<\/em> from a plush Viennese cinema, I was confronted by this inhumane act at a comfortable distance \u2013 physically remote and safeguarded by representation. But I still felt the loss of life that is all too real at EU borders; Agnieszka Holland\u2019s film is based on events unfolding since Lukashenka, as of late 2021, began admitting refugees mostly from the Middle East and North Africa into Belarus only to force their passage onwards to Poland as a punishment for EU imposed sanctions. Rounded up on both sides of the border and ruthlessly passed back and forth between the deadlocked countries, refugees are trapped in a forested no man\u2019s land, forced into abject survival.<\/p>\n In an earlier scene from the film, a supercilious head of operations, briefing Polish border guards, describes refugees as foreign weapons, not people. Physical aggression wrought on refugees is the palpable manifestation of the structural violence of border regimes. The film encourages both empathy with displaced peoples and outrage at their dehumanization \u2013 so vital in matters of persecution haunted by political gameplay.<\/p>\n Debate in Europe about the fate of refugees is an alarmingly weaponized topic. From the UK government\u2019s human-rights violating, yet rapidly advancing bill on deportation to Rwanda for asylum seekers, to the EU\u2019s plans for offshore migrant processing facilities<\/a>, European policymaking has gone on the defensive.<\/p>\n Hans Kundnani, in an interview with the Green European Journal<\/a>, calls this \u2018Europe\u2019s civilizational turn<\/a>\u2019: \u2018between the end of the Cold War and 2010, the EU had been in expansive, offensive mode \u2026 optimistic and outward-looking, and imagined a world that could almost be remade in its own image\u2019. He compares this to its current position of perceiving \u2018threats against a European civilization that must be protected\u2019. When discussing the Mediterranean, which Kundnani describes as \u2018a sea border with North Africa\u2019 likened to the US \u2018land border with Mexico\u2019, he refers to the witnessed outcome of cruel directives<\/a>:<\/p>\n Human Rights Watch says that EU migration policy can be summarized in three words, \u201cLet them die\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/images-4-300x200.jpeg\")
I shut my eyes in horror, already having seen what was coming. The pregnant refugee, whom activists not long before had given a reassuring mobile CT scan, was about to be turned into a projectile: three guards were looming to forcibly launch the tormented woman from a truck over the razor wire fence between Poland and Belarus<\/a>.<\/p>\nCivility in question<\/h2>\n
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