Men riding in a bus, interview with man on bus, men on bus

Clark:  These men are on the run - they're at the beginning of a journey which might take them as far as Germany or might end in a matter of hours in a Turkish jail.

00.00.00.00

Most of them come from north eastern Iraq and they're Kurdish.

(ENGLISH)

Man:  Freedom, there is no freedom in my country and Saddam Hussein is one of the men who causes all of the difficulties, all of the trouble in my country.

00.20

Clark:  What they are doing is not only risky, it's expensive.  The trade in illegal immigration is massive. 

0.35

Map of Middle East

Music

cityscape, boats

on harbour, birds flying, people on street, people working, carrying things, walking

Clark:  Istanbul is the clearing house for hundreds of thousands of Kurds from Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  It's one vast market where you can buy just about anything, including passage to the West.

01.12

A tide of people, all making their way West - on a collision course with the rich nations of Europe.

Clark in crowd walking toward and speaking to camera

Clark:  (to camera)  Istanbul marks the start of a journey full of hazards and difficulties, the challenge is to travel from Europe's fringe to its prosperous heart and to do that you need determination, money and contacts.

01.46

Building, man walking down street, man's feet walking along, man in doorway

Clark:  For a price this man will smuggle you out of Turkey, overland to Athens.  Aziz didn't want us to show his face - what he's doing is illegal.  He's a Kurd from north eastern Iraq where he says people are forced to choose between rival political groups or face persecution.

02.03

Intv with Aziz in darkened room

Aziz:  There are many problems in my country.  You have to support either Talibani, Barsani or Saddam Hussein.  People who are not involved in politics have to escape.

02.23

Man walking down streets

Clark:  Aziz agreed to show us how the smuggling trade works and to take us on the first part of the journey.  And there are plenty of people who'll part with the two thousand dollars he asks to get them as far as the Greek capital.

02.43

 Intv with Aziz in darkened room

Aziz:  At the moment it's more than I can handle - 50, 100, sometimes 200 people a day wanting to leave.

02.57

It's a difficult business.  You have to organise vehicles and the men involved in actually getting people across the border, then the people themselves.  And you don't always succeed.  We can be caught at checkpoints and we risk being sent back to Iraq.

03.07

Man entering house, knocking, entering

Clark:  Aziz took us to meet Salam Raza - a fellow Kurd who wants to get out.  After weeks of hanging around Istanbul, Salam is about to head for Athens.

Intv with Salam, looking at photos, intv continues

Salam:  My brother was detained and tortured.  He died in prison.  His wife was also persecuted.  I had to care for their children.

03.47

Clark:  In Iraq, Salam was a sculptor, creating public monuments, but not, always to universal acclaim.

04.10

Salam:  I made a statue showing a figure holding a large hammer in its left hand.  That's a symbol of revolution and against dictatorship.   I felt my life was in danger, that's ultimately why I had to leave.

04.16

I'm talking about democratic countries. They are very different. Human Rights are observed. Comparing it with life in Iraq is like comparing heaven with hell. In one place you have persecution and fear, in the other you have democracy and freedom.

04.33

Buildings across

music

water, boat, birds

group of men playing game, smoking, groups of men at tables

Clark:  Geography, of course, makes Istanbul a natural gateway into Europe for Kurdish people.  The city is already home to a large Kurdish population - people who've moved here from their homelands in south east Turkey and northern Iraq.

05.17

Aziz has been smuggling people out of Turkey for two and a half years.

Intv with Aziz in darkened room

Aziz:  The main difference between the authorities in Turkey and authorities in Greece is that all Turkish police are hungry and they want money, so they all take bribes, whereas in Greece if we get caught we're done for.

05.40

Men standing around at night, board bus, on bus, Salam talking on bus

Clark:  As night falls we board the bus that will take us towards the Greek border.  Salam the sculptor is here - the others I'm meeting for the first time.  Expectations are high.

06.06

Salam:  I have my goals.  I've suffered a lot but now I'm going to achieve those goals. 

06.19

Man:  I want to live in Europe, in freedom and I want to bring my wife and children over too.

06.30

Tracking shot out car window at night, map of Europe

Clark:  It's about a four hour bus ride from Istanbul up to the Greek border - the first objective is Athens, from there, they'll probably go through Albania or Yugoslavia then Italy, before heading into France and perhaps on as far as Germany.

06.41

bus driver, Clark speaking to camera

Clark:  (to camera)  Well it's a bit over two hours since we left Istanbul and we're off the main road, on a sort of back road at the moment.  It's a lot quieter, it's also a quarter past ten at night. 

07.00

But these guys don't take any chances and we've still got a car a few kilometres ahead of us which has a mobile phone in it and if they spot any police cars or anything like that they phone the driver of the bus and everyone sits down so we don't attract attention.

Young man riding in bus, speaking to camera

Clark:  The money they've paid for this trip doesn't guarantee success.

Man:  I've already tried this five times - the last time in 1996.  Each time I was stopped and sent back to Iraq.  I left Iraq last year, 1997 -  now it's 1998.

07.32

Big ship at sea,

FX:  Loud speaker

boat travelling

through water, skipper, crew

Clark:  The main transit point for the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who flow into Europe each year, is Italy.  It's long coastline makes it an easy target - and in the past, claiming political asylum here was little more than a formality. 

07.51

Giuseppe Faracino has been on the front line of coastguard duty for seven years.  He and his crew are always on the look out for smugglers.

08.12

Intv with Giuseppe

Giuseppe:  For us, quite a bit has changed.  Not only are we doing normal coastguard work but we also go out every night to try to catch the little boats which are coming over from Albania.  We have to escort them ashore.

08.22

Big ship in port, boat travelling, crew

Clark:  This ship, with more than 700 extremely anxious people on board was abandoned by its crew just outside Brindisi Harbour.  It's estimated that no more than 20 percent of those coming ashore are detected - that means about one hundred thousand illegal immigrants landed in this area alone in the past year.

08.49

Giuseppe: Covering Italy's 8 thousand kilometres of coastline completely is impossible. This are is where most of the boats try to land. Even though they're using big fast boats, they can't go that far, so we've got this area covered.

09.10

Clark riding on boat speaking to camera

Clark:  (to camera)  Italy's relaxed asylum laws means that it is very easy for people to stay in the country once they actually get in and from here, of course, they can move to other European countries, places like Germany where there are large Kurdish minorities. 

So the Italian government has been under a lot of pressure from some of it's European Union partners, most notably Germany, to do more to stop people coming into Italy in the first place and to try to stop them moving further once they're here

09.35

Country, village scape, people standing, sitting, walking down narrow lanes

Clark:  Overlooking the Calabrian coast is the village of Badolato - once home to seven thousand - emigration has seen that fall to fewer than seven hundred. 

10.08

So when a boat carrying mostly Kurds, arrived off the coast, the people of Badolato did what no one expected - they welcomed them in.  It's an approach which, at times, puts extraordinary demands on the villagers resources.

Men in room having meeting (ENGLISH)

Man:  Even Araz has television - has recorder, has anything.  Why don't we have this?

10.32

Mayor:  We get it on Monday, we get it on Monday. We've already bought it, but it had to come from outside.

10.39

(ENGLISH)

Man:  So Monday - you get a television on Monday. 

(ENGLISH)

Man:  Brown paint and black paint for the shoes.  Washing machine, washing machine.

Mayor: Television and washing machine, lundi. Monday. On Monday.

10.59

Tilt down house to woman, woman waiting outside building, mayor walking down street

Clark:  The people of Badolato saw an opportunity, not a problem when the ship ‘Ararat' dropped anchor with 826 people on board.  The mayor Gerado Mannelli called a meeting.  The villagers decided to offer homes to at least 20 families and some temporary accommodation to nearly two hundred single men.

11.07

Intv with Mayor

Mayor:  It was a shock.  We had 400 new arrivals in a village of 600.  But we held a meeting and explained where these people were from and that they needed help.  And remember - this is a town that everybody has emigrated from, so people here had some understanding.

11.32

Clark:  So do you think these people will stay here?

12.06

Mayor:  Most of these families will stay here I think because we're trying to find them jobs. We're getting some money from the European Community, the European Bank and national and local government. The idea is to find work for them in local industries.

12,08

Araz speaking, Sylvanna speaking, boy playing ball, men on verandah

Clark:  The prize exhibits in the mayor's project are Araz Jamal and his wife, Sylvanna - they married in the village, just a month after they arrived.

12.28

Araz told me he taught engineering in a large town in north eastern Iraq - he had a big house, two cars - a prosperous life he says.  But the turbulent politics eventually forced him and Sylvanna to leave.

Intv with Araz (ENGLISH)

Araz:  My uncle who worked with me, he was electronic engineer.  They killed him first and after him, a man I didn't know who was teaching in the college, so I didn't want to be the third man.

12.51

Sylvanna, family sitting on floor with Clark, intv with Araz continues

Clark:  A group of them left Iraq on foot - two were shot by Iranian border guards.  Eventually they arrived in Istanbul and paid about five thousand dollars each to leave Turkey by ship.

13.05

(ENGLISH)

Araz:  We decided to go by this ship and we know that this is a great danger for us because if the Turkish police catch us they will return us back to Iraq, so we'll be dead.  We'll be finished.

13.18

Kids playing football

Clark: Their nephews now happily kick a football around the streets of this once deserted village.

13.40

Woman with bread gives Sylvanna bread and plastic bag, man at desk, man speaking

Clark:  And the hospitality in Badolato, which includes two meals a day delivered to the door, has convinced them to stay.

13.57

Man delivering food

Man: Don't worry. You'll get it.

14.07

Sylvanna

(ENGLISH)

Sylvanna: I have my uncle and aunt in Germany, some of them in Sweden and others are in England.

14.14

Clark: Do they write letters to you telling you to come to Germany?

Sylvanna: Of course, but we like Italy. We want to stay here in Italy.

14.34

Clark:  Of course, you can't please everyone all the time.

(ENGLISH)

Man:  He helped me, right, but there is no justice here - especially in Badolato - no justice.

Mayor sitting on step

Mayor: You need a lot of patience. The fact is, some people are able to give more than others. They think everything is coming from the state but much of it comes from individuals and you can't force people to give. Some give more than others but people usually calm down when you explain things.

14.44

Men speaking, people shaking hands, faces

Man:  They go from Ventimiglia, along the railway track to Menton ... 

15.23

people sitting

waiting

Clark:  In truth most people who set out on this journey will not settle for free accommodation in a small Calabrian village.  At the other end of Italy, just a few kilometres from the French border is where this human tide ebbs and flows.

15.30

Here, the Red Cross helps feed and house some of the thousands of illegal immigrants who are picked up either in Italy or France and who can spend months, or even years in a kind of limbo, tossed back and forth from one country to another.

15.48

Stefano Zerbone has to deal with up to 200 new arrivals a day.

16.04

Intv with Stefano

Stefano:  The Kurds arrive on the early train from Rome and Italian border police give them a piece of paper telling them to leave Italy within 15 days.  If they manage to get to France they'll probably be arrested.  The French then send them back to us and the problem continues.  This is what happens every day.

16.08

Cars travelling through border gate, guards questioning, country road with empty building, Clark going through papers

Clark:  The problem is that most of the rich countries of the European union no longer have strict border crossings.  So when Italians cross over into France the most they can expect is a cursory glance at the passport, usually everyone's waved straight through.

16.52

As the French border guard at this crossing explained to one driver, he wanted to look efficient because we were filming.

17.14

Go off the motorway and there are often no border checks at all.  We stumbled across this abandoned border post a few kilometres inland.  For those who already live here, this is a Europe without borders.

For those who can get themselves smuggled this far, it's an open door to the rest of Europe. 

17.34

And Europe's haves are worried that they might be swamped by this tide of have nots.

17.50

Immigration is a political issue. Unemployment in France and Germany is at a post war high.

Seaside, people walking along, palm trees, cafes

Nice, on the French Riviera is only forty kilometres from the border. 

people walking on

streets, police checking car

This is where most illegal immigrants will be picked up - everyday on the streets of the city, police are on the lookout for people who've managed to slip across undetected.

Intv with Christian Estrosi

Christian:  France is the most open country for foreigners.  A foreigner can relocate his family and get education, medical and unemployment benefits.

18.23

Clark:  Christian Estrosi is a member of the French parliament representing Nice. 

18.49

Christian:  Those who make for Italy do so with the intention of living in France because France offers more benefits than Italy.

18.53

Police checking car, interview with Christian

Clark:  So the French want the Italians to send illegal immigrants back home.

19.06

Christian:  When you ask me what should be done with them when they reach Italy.  Should they be thrown in to the sea?  There's no question of that - but we could organise a boat to send them back where they came from.

19.12

Clark: Italy's response so far is to say it is doing what it can.

19.29

Stefano Zerbone

Stefano: Unfortunately Italy is bound by geography. We can't send these people back where they came from. Clearly if we know they are coming, say, from Greece, then we can ask Greece to respect the law, but we can't with places like Yugoslavia and Albania, which wouldn't agree to take them back anyway.

19.35

Clark:  But such political and diplomatic realities mean nothing to these men.

20.14

We're close to the border with Greece now - soon it'll be a short and risky dash across an open field - then a river crossing into Greek territory.

Salam

Salam: The Greeks won't accept applications for political asylum but there are other democratic countries which know the Kurdish question and which grant political asylum.

20.35

Clark:  The drop off point will leave them with a three hour walk just to get to the border.

21.00

Intv with young man on bus

Man:  I haven't lived my life yet.  If I can go to those countries where there's democracy I might be able to realise my dreams, because up until now my life's been miserable.

21.09

Men getting off bus, putting back packs on, saying

Clark:  Athens, if they make it that far, is still days away. 

21.43

good-bye, running

off

Aziz is here to guide them.  This is their chance for a new beginning.  None of them know what they'll find at the other end.  ... But they're convinced it'll be better than the lives they've let behind.

ENDS

22.23