Script  - The Balkan Route
By Giampaolo Musumeci

Narrative voice

Serbia, a country of some seven million people. Still affected by the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and embroiled in an ongoing dispute over the independence of the Republic of Kosovo, which the government refuses to recognize, Serbia is now chairing the organization for security and cooperation in Europe.

One crucial aspect of Serbia's role in Europe is connected with the strategic position it occupies on the "Balkan route" - a route for irregular immigration that passes through the Balkans and which migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, but also from sub-Saharan African countries such as Somalia and Eritrea, are increasingly using to enter the EU.

Although Sicily and Lampedusa in Italy registered a record number of migrants last year, the Balkan route to Europe - longer and safer, but more expensive than the Mediterranean route - is also growing in popularity.

According to Frontex, the European agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders, the number of irregular immigrants detected at the Serbian-Hungarian border in 2013 was in the region of 19 thousand - three times the number recorded in 2012  - and the figures are continuing to grow.


Rados Djurovic is the director of a local NGO called Asylum Protection Center
TC:1:44

(Intw Rados)
It's very difficult for the migrants coming to Serbia. They need to cross countries like Greece, Macedonia Montenegro and then may be Albania to reach Serbia. It's quite exhausting road, people are trying to reach somehow the Hungarian border, usually. And to reach the Hungarian border is really a matter of time, connections as well money. So to be migrant in Serbia is very difficult because Serbia is just one step on your road, and nobody actually seems to care about you, one part of the migrants Is seeking for aylum in Serbia lead them in front of the asylum camps. Asylum camps are in the limit of their capacity. Nowadays they cant respond to the need of the influx of people seeking asylum. So it's first difficult for migrants to enter in the camps, to get the asylum paper from the police and to start the asylum procedure.
 You are in risk as a migrant to become exposed to the various kinds of bad practice and maltreatment especially if you do not have the id cards you are not existing for the police for the healthcare for the social assistance, actually you are like in the south of Italy or in Greece, let on your own, like a shadow moving from one place to another, really exposed to various kinds of interest of criminal groups, that would like to use your fragile position.

Although there are 5 camps for asylum seekers in Serbia, nobody wants to stay here. All the migrants want to join relatives or friends in the UK, Germany, Sweden, or Norway. The very few people asking for political asylum here are doing so to buy time so that they can organize the rest of their journey safely from Serbia. Officially, around 5 thousand asylum seekers reached Serbia last year, but that figure is likely much higher, since many migrants move from one country to another without ever being detected.

These Kurds, who have just arrived in Bogovadja, fled Iraq and the war. This Afghan man, who previously lived in Italy, was forced to go back to Afghanistan and is now trying to reach Europe again.

He tells us he fled Afghanistan because of the Taliban and the violence. He was a target, he reveals, because he worked for the United Nations, a symbol of the Christian west.

Intw Afghan (original in Italian, subtitles)
TC: 4:20

I passed through a number of countries without any papers. In our country there is the problem of the Taliban... I came here because of this, 2 months ago, but this isn't where I want to stay. I'd like perhaps to go to Italy, yes.

I submitted an asylum request in Italy, yes, but it was rejected.

The Taliban recruit soldiers and give money to people who don't have a job. What are Afghan people supposed to do? They steal, they become vagabonds, mafiosi , because there are no jobs.

About the long journey he is making, he says:

It's very dangerous - the sort of thing you usually only see in the movies. It seems unreal, but migrants have bigger problems - they have no choice but to come... yes... that's it.

In the asylum camp in Banja Koviliacia near the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, migrants can learn Serbian, but very few people are interested in actually building a new life here. This man, from Iraq, has been waiting for his asylum papers for 4 years.


Intw Iraqi
TC: 6:31


They said to me before 4 years...you can get the document after 4 years and I wait, after 4 years they say "sorry we do not have law for you" and I say I wait, because it's too much 4 years, and I wait.
Somebody say "you can get your document, only wait for one hour, sorry one year, I say ok no problem, and I wait. Until now I wait 6 years and nothing. I have my family I have my son, I don't see him.
Leave me leave me I want to see, give me document, I never forget what you give me, never, believe me through these 6 years I say thank you for all the people, every person, I'm not the man who eat and forget, no! I eat I drink water from the Serbian river and I will never forget, but give me... I want to see my son.
Now hes' gone to Jordan, Jordan yes because in Iraq too much problem. I'm afraid about him, believe me I don't know where is he now... I don't' know.


Intw Rados
TC: 8:23

Unfortunately the picture will not be, according to my opinion, it wont be so optimistic, in the future we are really face with problems: on one side we have the state that is not capable t understand immigration, is not capable to make comprehensive approach to immigration and asylum, on the other side we have this bad geographical position if I would say between the two parts of the European union, so on side we have the northern border the Hungarian border wich
Is protected with the Frontex, and is really making problem to people trying to cross the border making them to stay more and longer in Serbia, in some desperate position, often without documents and somekind of illegal in suburbs areas, on the other side we have the countries that are not capable to fight immigration and they are actually stimulating or doing anything to stop immigration like Macedonia, like Albania, Montenegro. And what we are concerned is that migrants and asylum seekers could become new opponents for various interest groups, like football fan groups wich in Serbia are very strong and present, for political parties, right wing parties, wich will eventually turn these issues and try to score on them. In that circumstances Serbia wich is very economically and socially very poor would have the new opponent and new issue to deal with and then it could causes serious problems.    

The majority of migrants, like these men from Sudan and Darfur, are trying to reach the UK. Some of them have never been detected by the Serbian authorities. Starting their European journey from Greece, they pass through the Balkans like shadows, sometimes travelling with their children and spouses. They sleep here in the woods, in ruined houses like these or else outside the asylum camp, waiting for a bed to become available and passing the time before the traffickers show up.

Their first stop is Bogovadja, a small village one hour by car from the Serbian capital Belgrade. New people arrive here every day because it is the point of departure for the journey to the Hungarian border organized by a group of people smugglers.
Europe is 300 km away.

This is a smuggling operation.
Serbian law forbids drivers from carrying migrants close to the Hungarian borders and have imposed an official limit of 12 km, with the aim
 of discouraging migrant smuggling.

But a Serbian smuggler who refuses to let me use my camera or voice recorder reveals that the drivers we are seeing bring the clients up to 2 kilometres from the border.
He also says that he personally manages to get even closer - up to a few hundred meters from the border. He knows the roads very well as he drives a taxi and he also pays bribes to the police. When night falls, he shows the migrants how and where to cross the border. In a few minutes, his clients are in Europe. Average price: 200 euros per person.

To complete the whole of the Balkan route, from Greece to Italy or Hungary can cost up to 6-7 thousand Euro and last months, or sometimes even years. Sometimes migrants don't have enough money for the entire journey and at other times are arrested by the police and deported. These journeys have the potential to become real-life odysseys. And with criminal organizations and individuals - very often single traffickers, taxi drivers or truckers - all looking for a piece of the action in the countries along the route and shops close to the camps raising their prices, there would appear to be no shortage of people happy to make money by exploiting the migrants' desperate situation.
Here, miles away from the beaches of Lampedusa, the business of people smuggling is well and truly flourishing.