Helena Maleno is a human rights defender at Caminando Fronteras. We have spoken with her about the rights in the border territories and the persecution suffered by human rights defenders.
You can watch the video interview at this YouTube link.
I am one of the women who works on the border defending the right to life, and I have spent many years defending that right to life in that border territory, because I also come from a border context, I am from El Ejido, from a impoverished area, the southern border of Europe. Which suddenly became the northern border of Africa, and where migrants began to arrive, and situations of exploitation began to arise, which at least in my family had been experienced with my grandparents and my great-grandparents. And that shocked me a lot, I started to investigate more, I am also a social researcher, especially the issue of outsourcing and border control policy.
And there, organically, life took me through the migrant communities, and organically we also grew, we formed a collective called Walking Borders, and from there we were able to build with the communities, to be an organic part of that border where there is violence, where there is death, but also where there is a lot of life and many policies of resistance that come from migrant communities and people, from that people on the move that are manifesting a series of things that are happening in this world nowadays.
What do you do at Caminado Fornteras (Walking Borders)?
Our organization, walking borders, has a human rights observatory in the border territories, in the territory of the western Euro-African border. We have two alert phones: a phone that started in 2007, for vessels that are at risk; This morning we received a call from 56 people, including 25 women and 8 children who were adrift in the Atlantic and who sent us a position and activated the rescue services of the countries concerned. We recently started another phone to help families. This year we are going to reach the largest number of victims on the western Euro-African border and the families want answers, they want to know the truth of what is happening, they want to have access to reparation and justice, and above all they want non-repetition.
What is the status of human rights defenders?
Human rights defenders are being actively persecuted from Europe. I believe that, in the last 5 years, if my memory serves me correctly, there have been more than 250 judicialized cases of persecution in different places. It is legislating to pursue solidarity, to pursue social justice. Not only are rights being denied, but defending those rights is being denied too. And this is a drift that Europe has taken, which is not only done from Europe, in my case, for example, it was done bilaterally. Europe used the externalization of borders to externalize the persecution of a defender. What they want is to get exemplary cases so that people stop working and defending rights at the border.
Migrants are the first defenders of their rights, and that is why they lose their lives. And we are also being persecuted with legal proceedings, but also with stigmatization, with threats, with assassination attempts; this is a continuum that we are living. I think it is also something global. When I faced my case, I was and continue to be accompanied by international organizations that work with human rights defenders and I have learned a lot from other defenders in other parts of the world. And something common is the persecution of people who defend life; Berta Cáceres defended the river, defended her territory, we also defend life in another way.
Do you think that women defenders are even more persecuted?
Women defenders are persecuted by attacking us through our sons and daughters, through our sexuality. This persecution is designed against us, there is like a special rage. I saw it in my legal proceedings when the first thing the Spanish police did was tell the judge a list of my alleged sexual relationships, including with a woman… f I’m a whore, a lesbian, I’m more dangerous, I’m worse, you have to punish me. And you could see that in the police dossiers, it was terrible because the other female defenders had already told me these things, but until you see it with your name and surnames, you can’t realize how violent and terrible the system is.
But what must also be said is that we are creating networks between defenders and that we are protecting ourselves and that is very important; that taking care of ourselves and establishing protection networks is part of our day to day. Because in our case, being on the border, both the States and criminal networks attack us. We must start deconstructing this normalization of death at the border. It is not normal, we must not normalize that a person dies for crossing a border and we must take another step and think that perhaps people are building privileges, they are defending their privileges and not human rights. Following that path is what will lead us to realize what our immediate reality is and how networks can be woven in that immediate reality so that they reach the border and so that together we can defend rights.