Democracies of walls
Polish, Lituanian and Finnish borders - from April to October 2023
Some east European countries recent walls along Belarus and Russian borders are certainly not the first ones to see the light in this continent, but comparing current positions on this issue to the reactions of European Parliament and countries populations for the long one built in Hungary in 2015 along Serbian and Croatian borders, reveals a significant change of perspective.
Even if concrete measures taken by various institutions in charge were ineffective at that time, an almost unanimous condemnation from the leftist and moderate parties was expressed loudly, drawing attention to the concept of humanity underlying a solidarity with the refugees in the name of the values that originally founded European community. Nowadays the decisions for the creation of new walls seem not only to be taken for granted as a legitimate measure in the name of security and a generic right to defend the borders, but even most liberal parties seem to be afraid of opposing, or not interested in doing it. Today its promoters can even ask Europe to pay for the realization of the walls, and they often obtain funds. As a matter of fact, Ukrainian war has been the perfect motivation for the legitimization of the idea of protection and isolation from Belarus and Russia, but according to data on entries considered illegal by the governments in charge, the people that the walls prevent to enter European territories are not Russian or Belarusian militaries. Most of them come from Afghanistan and Syria, but there are also refugees from Nord African and other Asian countries. The idea of isolation from Russia and Belarus that the barrier installation should guarantee, conveyed in every narration used to promote it, is not concretely realized with the construction of the wall. As a matter of fact, the walls of these three countries obviously kept an open door for trading routes, people with families and jobs or diplomatic rights to cross the borders, so the secludeness of the wall, leaving just one open way, actually has been just creating long queues at the only working customs point left.
The idea of humanity that stands behind most of the slogans created for many political campaigns all over Europe, seems to have turned almost silently into its exact opposite in less than 10 years. The only way for refugees to try to pass from Belarus to Poland is by crossing rivers and small waterways along the wall that Poland recently ended. Refugees come out freezing from the rivers and people sometimes try to give them a way to get dry and to bear the low temperatures preventing them from a potentially mortal hypothermia. Polish border police are constantly controlling all passing-by cars luggage compartments, they can fine all people with blankets in the trunk and they are in charge of prosecuting criminally people caught while helping migrants on polish territories. Back in 2015 the accusation of aiding and abetting illegal immigration for those who brought needy refugees the to nearest hospital sometimes from one country to another by car, created controversy and people involved in the protests tried to remind everyone that they were people try to help other people in need. Even though at that time demonstrations and debates didn’t lead to any effective changes, today the normality of a measure like the one taken by Polish government seems to represent a drastic difference with the past conception of what is ethically acceptable. Immigration policies have followed the same process, going from the first scandal of the agreements with Turkey and then Libya for the control of the so-called “migratory flows” to the recent stipulation with great fanfare between Albania and Italy for the displacement of asylum seekers arrived on Italian coasts. Today the discrimination against foreigners (with a very strong racial component against non-white people) without economic means to obtain entry visas, has become an ordinary event accepted by everyone, and the building of the walls represent its political normalization and its social acknowledgment.
Local communities along Finnish, Polish and Lithuanian borders have been mostly against the walls, cause along borders usually in these countries cultures have been able to communicate for a long time. Although there have been disputes regarding an agreed allocation of territories between Russia and Finland governements after Soviet Union end, in Lappeenranta, a few kilometers away from Imatra where has been built the first part of Finnish wall, the two cultures seem to coexist peacefully. In a country with a large protestant majority like Finland in this border area orthodox churches typical of Russian religion seem to be perfectly integrated among th birch branches used for the Finnish saunas of every house in the area. Symbols of local Russian historical significance coexist without apparent opposition with demonstration of solidarity with Ukrainian people: the wealthy Russian Wolkoffin family represents for instance one of the hallmarks of the development of the area, and their emblem is everywhere in shops, bars, restaurants and there’s even a museum dedicated to them.
Walls lead to traumatizing consequences for ecological context and local economy as well. Transport of people and goods, animal migrations and turism business are all affected significantly by a wall that separate two worlds that have been linked up until that moment. Bialowieza is a forest on the border between Belarus and Poland, and it is one of the last and largest remaining parts of the immense primeval forest that once stretched across the European Plein. Here 20.000 animal species live, lincluding rare European byson, alces and lynxes: biologists and local community are trying to spread awareness on effects of the wall on environment and local turism.
Rejecting any possible do-gooder or rhetorical interpretation, in my personal experience, the anthopological research on sustainability of borders i am working on, seems itself to describe properly the time we are living, since that apparently on mainstream channels damages on local animal lives rise up more attention than talking about human deaths.
