Volunteer Diaries: I am Criminalized
A year ago I was apprehended while on vacation in Greece visiting friends and family. I didn’t know it at the time, but this incident would be one of the most transformative experiences of my life — in good ways and bad.
While in police custody, I was denied the right to call my lawyer, although I was pleasant and compliant. I was sexually assaulted in an attempt to intimidate me. My travel companion was also taken and interrogated despite no warrant being issued for her, and in addition to my devices being seized, they also stole my diary. I lost thousands of dollars of electronic devices and my computer was taken just days before I was supposed to hand in my bachelors thesis and graduate. I wasn’t permitted to email myself any documents from my device and had to start over.
This was in Greece. In the European Union. At the hands of a judicial system that claims to uphold European human rights standards and values.
In July of 2021, a criminal investigation was announced based on what the authorities claim to have found on my devices. The details of this case file have not been formally disclosed to my legal team but rather incrementally leaked to the media in an attempt to try and intimidate me and my colleagues into silence and to stop us from doing the work we do. We are seen as part of the problem, part of the “pull factor” luring these “economic migrants” into Europe. We are labeled smugglers and traffickers (which is a contradiction), we are labeled 21st century slave traders, we are labeled the criminals. This is a convenient argument to make when you’re in a hurry to deny people their basic human rights and scrambling to cover up the crimes committed by your own state authorities at militarized borders.
At the time, it felt like a slap in the face to be treated this way by authorities I had been cooperating with for years and by a country I had come to call my second home; but I soon learned just how sinister this practice is and how many horrific abuses of power and authority are going unchallenged in Europe and the rest of the West.
First and foremost, this experience has caused immense trauma and psychological problems in my personal life. I no longer feel safe in my own home, we always have a healthy fear that our phone calls may be tapped, I am extremely cautious about what I say and how I say it so my own words won’t be twisted and used against me. I am always looking over one shoulder, I sleep with one eye open. While I used to be an open book and shared my experiences for the benefit of the people I work for and those who wish to gain insight into the reality of humanitarian disasters, I’ve been censored by caution and fear.
As all survivors of sexual assault know, some days your body feels stiflingly unsafe. I have spent hours in a hot bath scrubbing my skin until it burned red trying to brush off every cell that was violated.
And as those of us who are caught up in these bogus criminalization cases know, moving on with your life suddenly seems like a massive gamble. We face nothing but unknowns. If we are charged would we be arrested or extradited? Will charges be dropped? Will we be acquitted? Will we be called to trial again and again only for strategic delays to plunge us back into limbo? We face an uncertain future and unknown legal costs. We face infinite “what if” scenarios. In my case, the toll of this led me to extreme anxiety, burnout, and suicidal ideations. Having this hanging over your head is exhausting.
Life as a criminalized humanitarian is not ideal, but it’s also not terrible.
I have the privilege of stepping away from my job and recovering. I have access to amazing therapists, to legal support, and to the support of institutions like Amnesty International all the way up to MEPs who speak out against this practice and rally to support us at an EU parliament level. I have an amazing support system of other criminalized humanitarians who have held me through some of the darkest periods of my life to date.
The same can not be said for criminalized asylum seekers.
In my six years of intense frontline work in humanitarian crises, I have never seen this level of unchecked authoritarianism and blatant violence against forced migrants. The border industrial complex has turned border regions into military zones where all human rights go out the window and violence, brutality, and torture are carried out in the name of security.
Security for who?
Is promoting the use of force and the construction of exclusive, deadly borders the way to cultivate a more secure global community?
No, it is not.
In his book The Naked Don’t Fear The Water, journalist Matthieu Aikins recounted his journey along the migratory pathway alongside his translator and friend Omar. Leaving his passport and all his privileges as a Western man behind, the experience was a reconciliation of just how brutally biased our treatment of humans on the move actually is. He summarizes his experience, and many of mine, perfectly when he pens “In liberal democracies, the border has a unique power to transmute ordinary needs into criminal desires.”
Migration has been politicized and painted as an issue. THE issue. Migration is not the issue, migration is a response to the issue. Forced migrants are not the problem, the conditions that forced them to flee are the problem. Criminalizing humanitarians was the next logical step after borders closed, humanitarian pathways were eliminated, and the migrants journey became a crime.
Such practices and ideologies do nothing but dehumanize and create incredibly volatile and unstable conditions in society. Security is an illusion. It is the product that is sold to you in todays world where militarization has become a booming industry and people profit off of fear. This is not safe for anyone. We have to do better.
While in police custody, I didn’t crack.
I let them take away my devices, my hard-earned bachelors thesis that was pushing 25 pages of work I had compiled over two years of school, my tedious notes and personal accounts of my life that were detailed in my notebook, which one officer read with a smirk.
When they opened the case against me and my colleagues, we didn’t falter. Life went on. We continued to distribute food, to provide medical care, to document and publicize illegal pushbacks and other human rights violations.
When our friends cases were advanced and they were called to trial, we rallied. On top of the infinite checklists we tackle each day, we held protests, we signed petitions, we organized letters and fundraisers and public campaigns.
We kept going.
Yes, I looked over my shoulder, jumped at loud noises, and exercised extraordinary caution, but I still showed up and did my damn job. I still do.
This has been a life-altering 12 months. One of the most painful and transformative in my life to date.
Some days this clown show of a prosecution wins.
Some days I am scared and defeated, but while they might win the race from time to time, history has proven again and again that those of us in it for the long run will be the ones to win.
History, morality, and humanity are on our side, and I truly believe that one day, we will win.
The best thing this horrible experience has done for me is solidify my modus operandi — it has fueled my dedication to seek justice and reform and it made me realize that this struggle will literally be the hill I will die on. I have no regrets about the work I have done; I know I have always done my best to do the right thing.
Please be sure to follow our work at Free Humanitarians and to check out the free online module we made about criminalization of humanitarians through In-Sight Collaborative
Most importantly, if you feel compelled to act, stand up first for those most vulnerable — for the forced migrants and detainees and victims of war and conflict. Desperately seek out those who are marginalized, pushed to the periphery, and silenced through violent systems and structures. Justice will trickle down. I graduated, life will go on. My livelihood will not be altered by this, but those who are most vulnerable will not be able to recover. Don’t worry about me, fight like hell to protect them.
