The Dungeons of Empire

A few months ago I wrote a piece called the moats of Europe which was about how border guards and frontex officials would use rivers as a way to deter migrants. They would often strip them of their possessions and force them to swim across the river out of the country. This is known as a pushback which is illegal but it also lead to many deaths of migrants. I was going to follow this up with a post about detention facilities that are used to disappear migrants or torture them as a way to force them to return to their home country. This at the time proved to be a bigger task than I was able to take on. The title of that piece was going to be “The Dungeons of Europe” but as I started looking into it I realised that Europe was just one small piece of a larger picture. A better title would be The dungeons of Empires. We have all heard about how the USA is sending people to CECOT in El Salvador. Or how Australia sends people to Christmas Island or Manus island in the past. So as you can…