Once, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Europe decided that every human being had a right to seek asylum on foreign soil and given the opportunity to prove with help of a lawyer that they were in need of shelter, and to receive it.

European countries didn’t really want to do this, but couldn’t openly admit that they didn’t actually like carrying out one of the most important measures that had been put in place to prevent the next Holocaust. So instead, the right to seek asylum became something you could do once on European soil.

And so rose a system of militarized borders, where one side of the fence means you have no rights and the other side of the fence means you have the right to seek asylum. It doesn’t matter in how much danger you are, if you are not on European soil, you’re fucked.

But with climate change and neocolonialism creating great suffering in Africa, those borders get more and more militarized. In places where no one is watching, like Melilla in this video, the borders keep getting higher and more militarized. In places where Europeans are watching, like on the Meditteranean, the border is pushed back into Northern Africa, where violent regimes and crime gangs can be paid to do Europe’s dirty work. 

European policymakers know that the worst of climate change is still coming and that Africa will in all likelyhood be hardest hit by its effects. They are preparing to keep their borders closed through mass dying on a scale we can hardly imagine.

This is why they are constantly finding new lows in their battle against refugees. Funding slave traders, shooting at refugees, criminalizing those who rescue refugees at sea, imprisoning children. This period in European history will probably one day be remembered as a time as dark as its history of colonialism and slavery. And we haven’t even seen the worst of it yet.

All because Europe is not willing to make good on the time it said ‘never again’ and ‘we will give shelter’. This is what we mean when we say borders kill.