2/4/22

By Camilo Pérez Bustillo

Witness at the Border releases a statement for Commemor-Action, 6th February 2022 - MIGRATION IS A RIGHT! #Commemor-Actions

February 6, 2022

We are honored to support the Global Day of Struggle against the régime of death at borders throughout the world that has been convened by the organizations and collectives which are promoting the CommemorAction initiative. 

Today we join with hundreds of similar groups of migrants and others who stand in solidarity with this call to conscience and action in defense of migrant lives, everywhere. This observance is part of an initial, primarily virtual, phase, which culminates on February 6, and is intended to build towards a physical gathering in Tunisia in September. 

Tens of thousands of migrants have died globally- over 46,500 since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) – due to migration and border policies and practices pervaded by racism and xenophobia. Together, these constitute an overall pattern of crimes against humanity that have resulted in an ongoing migrant genocide on a global, regional, and national scale.

We stand today most especially in solidarity and indignation at the side of the migrant victims of collective human rights crimes such as the Tarajal massacre at Spain’s borders with Morocco on February 6, 2014, and with those who lost their lives in analogous cases such as San Fernando, Cadereyta, Güemez, El Paso, Camargo, and most recently Chiapas, at Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala. 

Our demands here in the Western Hemisphere, and globally, together with you, is for full respect of the rights to truth, justice, reparations, and guarantees of non-recurrence for the victims of these state crimes, and for their families and communities of origin, and their collective, transnational rights as “peoples in movement.”

We are also committed to the ongoing struggle at the borders of the United States and throughout the region for global recognition of the right to freedom of movement and to migrate, which includes the right not to be forcibly displaced. This includes the right to a dignified life in our countries and places of origin, and corresponding responsibilities on the part of countries of origin, transit, and destination to ensure the enjoyment of these basic rights. 

The mounting deaths, forced disappearances, and other crimes which are intensifying against migrants and border communities reflect a global paradigm of terror and persecution that has become consolidated, with tragic consequences, in the US-Mexico border region through policies such as Title 42 and “Remain in Mexico,” as part of the overall negation of the right to seek asylum on both sides of the border. 

This approach has been extended through Mexican territory towards its southern border with Guatemala, all the way to the borders of Colombia and Panama and their environs, and to the Triple Border region where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina converge. It also includes the active collaboration of repressive, illegitimate governments such as those of Duque in Colombia and Bolsonaro in Brazil.

All of this is being promoted, encouraged, and financed through US policy, aid and technical assistance. Our duty as US citizens is to raise consciousness as to the implications of these policies, and to join together in the weave of solidarity that is necessary, beyond borders, with all those who confront analogous conditions of militarization, exclusion, and criminalization in the Euro-Mediterranean and Asia-Pacific regions. 

Our commitment to bear witness regarding these crimes, and to document and mobilize against them, includes the demand for full accountability of the public officials and corporate actors responsible, regardless of the administration or party they may be affiliated with. 

This includes the governments of Mexico and Guatemala which have joined together to impose the most regressive aspects of US border and immigration policy on their territories, along the same lines as the European Union’s policies in Morocco, Malta, Libya, Turkey, and throughout subSaharan Africa, and those of Australia towards its Pacific neighbors. 

All of this reflects how the US, the European Union and Australia have weaponized their diluted interpretation of relevant provisions of the Global Compact on Migration and spaces such as the Global Forum on Migration and Development against the human rights of migrants. 

The results of these kinds of policies and complicities in our region include at least 650 migrant deaths at the US-Mexico border during 2021- the largest number recorded until now, and over 7,000 since 1998. 

They also include a still unknown number of migrant deaths in mass crimes that we have highlighted above (San Fernando, Cadereyta, Güemez, El Paso, Camargo, and Chiapas), and thousands of migrants who have disappeared or been the victims of horrific recurrent crimes on Mexican territory.  

Meanwhile at least 160 deaths of migrants have been recorded as the result of “fatal encounters” with the Border Patrol since 2010, and the deaths of approximately 20 migrants in custody in inhumane conditions both in the US and Mexico; in the US this includes at least 7 indigenous migrant children in 2018 and 2019. 

The Border Patrol at the same time is reproducing these patterns of institutional violence and impunity through its training of migration police in Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere in the region and the world. These abuses include US financing and arming of the Guatemalan security forces which have violently repressed migrant caravans throughout the last year.  

ENOUGH!!

ALL RIGHTS FOR ALL, WITHOUT BORDERS!