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Police violence ‘rarely punished’ at France-Belgium-UK border [1]

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Date: 2024-02 

Mawda Shawri was two years old when she was killed by Belgian police. She was shot in the head during a car chase involving police in May 2018. The incident made headlines and a trial followed. But her family never really got justice.

“Police violence is very rarely punished," said Selma Benkhelifa, the Brussels lawyer who represented Shawri’s family. “And when it is, the sentences are often very low."

Shawri is one of 391 migrants who died on the border between the UK, France and Belgium between 1 January 1999 and 1 January 2024, and whose lives and deaths are recounted in this series.

Some of those migrants have died as a direct result of police violence, as in Shawri’s case. Others have died from the at times lethal conditions created by heavy policing, like being denied access to medical care. And, because hostile law enforcement creates a climate of fear, still others have died while trying to avoid the police.

Such violence is rarely called into question, let alone checked.

A deadly car chase

Shawri’s parents fled Iraqi Kurdistan with their eldest son in 2015. They made it to England, where they applied for asylum, but rather than hearing their case the British government sent them back to Germany. This was possible under EU law – which the UK was subject to at the time – because the German authorities had fingerprinted the family at an earlier stage of their journey.

Shawri was born there while her parents waited for their claim to be processed. It was rejected. So, with no prospects in Germany, the family tried once again to reach the UK in April 2018.

"As people were no longer able to cross into England via Calais, from 2017 onwards, they started trying to cross via Belgium, via the rest areas on Belgian freeways," Benkhelifa said.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/police-violence-rarely-punished-at-france-and-belgium-border-to-uk-migrants/

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