borderline europe - menschenrechte ohne grenzen e.v.

Justice for Mawda Shawri - victim of a dysfunctional migration system

by Chloé Portais

Mawda, a two-year old Kurdish girl, was shot in the head by a police officer at the Belgian border during a car chase. Her story has become a symbol of the dehumanization and criminalization of people on the move.

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How does a car chase end in manslaughter

On Thursday, 16 May 2018, at night, as part of a cross-border police surveillance operation, the Belgian police spotted a van on a motorway service station that they found "suspicious". The van was transporting a two-year old girl named Mawda, her parents and about thirty more people, searching for a life in safety and hoping to reach Calais in France and from there the UK. Once the people in the van had noticed that they were followed by the police, they got scared of a potential arrest or even deportation, and tried to escape. The police decided to chase after them which ended, a few kilometers later, with the killing of the two-year-old Mawda.

The police car tried to overtake them and one of the police officers pulled out his gun, allegedly trying to shoot the left tyre and to stop the van. According to the official police statement, his colleauge then suddenly turned the steering wheel which deflected the bullet into the back of the van. Mawda got shot in the head.

The van stopped. Police surrounded them, weapons drawn, paying more attention to arresting the migrants than to taking care of the little girl covered in blood. When an ambulance was finally called, both parents were forcibly and violently prevented from accompanying Mawda to the hospital. Instead, they were arrested and taken to an immigration detention centre. They learned of their daughter's death in custody and were allowed to see her body only two days after.

From an individual story to a political debate

After the killing, the first thing police focused on was arresting the people in the truck. The authorities initially claimed that no shots were fired and that the death of Mawda was due to a head trauma.

However, the next day, an autopsy report proved that Mawda's death was caused by a gunshot to the head, which led to an investigation. A series of statements were made both by a police spokesperson and the public prosecutor’s office of the city Mons to cover up what had happened. They suggested different scenarios: the girl was thrown out of the window of the van or being used as a ‘human shield’. The public prosecutor’s office even supported the ‘second shot’ theory - that another shot was first fired from the van and that the police merely reacted - in a press conference on May 18th. This version was quickly picked up by the media and used to form a story around Mawda being caught in crossfire between migrants and police.

This attempt to cover up the killing as an accident triggered fierce criticism and highlighted more fundamental issues like police impunity and the dehumanization of migrants. From this point, the case took a political side, questioning the responsibility of Belgian and European migration policy for the death of Mawda, the criminalization of migrants and structural police violence against migrants.

Cooperation between the Belgian and French police forces in question

At the time of the events, the French police had an operation ongoing focussed on the prosecution of human trafficking and, according to them, was on track of a Kurdish smugglers network that was supposedly operating in Belgium since February 2018. For this reason they had been tracking the van for some month and placed a GPS tracker on the vehicle. Although the French and the Belgian police were supposed to collaborate in this operation, officers from the latter one stated that they had not been aware of these actions, otherwise they would not have acted the same way to avoid compromising the French investigation.

18 hours after the tragic event, the control committee of the Belgian police, also known as the "P" Committee, was assigned to conduct an investigation into the behavior of the Belgium police patrol that night. However, the investigators collaborated with the law enforcement agencies and many questions remained unanswered. The report only vaguely criticizes the use of firearms in these circumstances and recommends better training and communication.

At no point anyone questioned or criticized the fact that, by chasing after cars of alleged "smugglers", putting the life of the people inside at risk is perceived as an acceptable risk by law enforcement.

An emblematic trial, a failing European justice system - policeman gets away with a one-year suspended sentence

In November 2020, a trial was opened to determine who is responsible for Mawda's death. In light of the many controversies the case had sparked, the Court specified in the beginning that the trial would be only about the facts and not Belgian or European migration policy, which is out of its reach. Three people were judged in this trial:

The Police officer, Victor-Manuel Jacinto Goncalves, accused of involuntary manslaughter
He claimed that he fired by accident, targeting the tyre to slow down the van that was "driving dangerously". He also stated he did not know that there were children on board, otherwise he would not have fired, which is contradicted by his colleague's statements. During the trial, it was discovered he may also have withheld crucial information at the beginning of the investigation.
He was given a one-year suspended sentence, as the public prosecutor's office considered it as disproportionate and unreasonable that he used his weapon in these circumstances.
The driver of the van, Jagrew D., accused of causing a dangerous traffic obstruction with aggravating circumstances of death, armed resistance and trafficking in human beings. He denied all the accusations against him.
He was found guilty sentenced to 4 years in prison.
The alleged smuggler, Radol D. A., claimed to be just a migrant like the others.
He was found not guilty and acquitted.

The blatant disparity between the sentence of the police officer and that of the driver is emblematic of a wider (in)justice system designed to uphold the impunity of the state and deny responsibility for the systemic criminalization of migrants. Meanwhile, the police officer appealed the jugdement and is asking for an acquittal. The prosecution appealed the acquittal of Radol D.A. Although they were upset about the verdict, Mawda's parents decided not to appeal in order to finally get some rest.

Reversal of responsibility

A series of contradictory statements succeeded during the trial. Among the questions that can be asked, the main one remains whether the police officer deliberately fired knowing that the van was full of migrants, including children.

The accused police officer claims that he did not know that children were in the van and that he fired accidentally, trying to aim the tyre, as he had been taught during his training. The bullet in Mawda's head would be the involuntary result of the police van swerving. In the final judgement, the court followed this story.

However, many testimonies contradicted this version, starting with the one of the police officer from the region of Namur also involved on the night of the shooting. He stated that children were displayed in the windows of the van to dissuade the police from continuing the dangerous chase. Ms Benkhelifa, the lawyer of Mawda's parents, also argued: "Drawing the weapon, loading and then firing proves the voluntary nature of his gesture". Finally, Mawda’s father testified that “I saw the policeman point his gun. He did not hesitate in drawing it. I saw him shoot and the bullet hit my daughter.”

The magistrate ruled that the police officer's attitude was unreasonable and dangerous but the behavior of the migrant driver is seemingly used to excuse the Belgian policeman’s shot. By a rhetorical and semantic process the guilt was often assigned to the driver who "should have stopped" while the policeman who drew his weapon. The arguments against both the driver and the alleged smuggler relied almost entirely on the depiction of them as "illegal migrants" involved in criminal cross-border activities. Their “status” already made them guilty. This reversal of responsibility is an example of how the legal and political western system constructs an enemy figure into the migrants.

This is the more fundamental issue highlighted by this trial, the investigation focused on criminal responsibility but there is also a political responsibility to this case. As the lawyer Benkhelifa stated, the issue is not limited to the police officer who fired the shot but is connected and rooted in a wider context of ongoing migrant hunting and structural racism in the police force.

Structural deficiencies in the political and legal European system

Dehumanization and criminalization of migrants

This story reveals the way migrants are perceived in the dominant western imagination.

In the night of the killing, the people in the van could witness how little respect had been shown for Mawda's body. According to testimonies, police officer compared Madwa's static body to a trash bag. A declaration which Ms Benkhelifa described as "inhuman, degrading and racist". All testified that they were terrified after the shooting and that severe police violence followed after the van had stopped.

All these facts are irrelevant for determining the criminal responsibility for the death but it unveils a more structural issue: dehumanization and criminalization of migrants. This behavior is the result of a depiction of migrants in media and political discourse as criminals or victims, but never as human beings.

No matter how they are being shown, they are never represented as ordinary people, human beings in exile. They are often portrayed as an undifferentiated mass, depersonalized and dehumanized “strangers”. To this is often added the stereotype of them as unhealthy, dangerous, uncultured. These representations construct a hostile image in public opinion.

Another way of illustrating this is the example of the "psychological cell" to deal with those who may be traumatised after an incident. Such a structure was set up for the police officers present that evening but none for the migrants who were in the van. Not even for the other children and unaccompanied minors who were in the van and were deeply traumatised by the scene, including Mawda's brother who did not speak for several days. Instead they were requested to leave the territory without any follow-up of their psychological state.

Police violence reflects the failed migration policy

Unfortunately, Mawda is not an isolated case but part of a series of victims of a repressive and deadly migration policy. The systemic police violence against migrants is the result of a migration policy of rejection and hatred.

The interception of the van took place as part of a wider operation to control migrants called "Operation médusa", in which police monitors the roads in order to identify and arrest supposed networks of migrant smugglers. A mission that looks a lot like a "migrant hunt", according to Ms Benkhelifa. This police operation was one of many that take place at the UK-France-Belgium borders, where a hostile environment had settled, obsessed with intercepting and deterring migrants from crossing the border. These three countries are jointly implementing a policy of immigration deterrence along the northern French border region based on securitization, surveillance and policing. This creates a tense atmosphere and creates an hostile environment between people on the move and police officers who are aiming at locating undocumented migrants (not traffickers).

Since the increased crackdown against migrants traveling by land vehicles and the heightened security measures at the major ports in Calais and Dunkirk implemented by the UK and French governments, there has been a rise in small boats trying to cross or travel to UK from France or Belgium. The result is increasingly dangerous crossing paths, leading to further tragic death, yet not unpredictable. In response to this situation, politicians place the blame on the ‘smugglers’ or ‘criminal facilitators’ who facilitate the journey rather than on the anti-immigration policies that render the crossing of borders even more dangerous and push people into their business model. Politicians use the insecurity they have created in the first place to argue for the need to strengthen the border police and surveillance.

The exact same thing took place with Mawda’s trial, in which she suddenly became the victim "of the recklessness and unscrupulous smugglers' ' rather than of the policeman who shot her. Instead, police is seen as the solution to resolve a situation that is perpetuated by the political and judicial systems itself. Like this, Mawda’s trial was instrumentalized to help anti-immigration policy rather than examine its deadly effects.

International reactions

This case has provoked many controversies and reactions from civil society, political activists, and politicians in Belgium and wordwilde. Many collectives, activists, and artists have expressed their support for Mawda's family. Among them the British director Ken Loach, the bassist of the band Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, as well as many Belgian personalities (David Murgia, Yannick Renier, Thomas Lavachery).

This solidarity support came in November 2020, a few weeks before the opening of the trial. This mobilisation was a tribute to Mawda but also a call for solidarity and action, so that such an event doesn’t happen again.

Sources

Sunday, 16th May 2021

Justice for Mawda Shawri - victim of a dysfunctional migration system

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