The ideas that became socially acceptable with the rise of Serbian nationalism in the 1980s soon found their concrete political implementation. What emerged was an ideological cocktail of racism, demographic panic, conspiratorial paranoia, and revanchism that ultimately proposed an urgent need for action against an allegedly existential threat.
The plan of the Serbian government to evict the squats and move people to remote areas is happening in line with overall EU practices pushing people out of sight and detaining them in isolation with no possibility to organize.
“Nobody asked if we were okay, if we had been beaten. All our clothes were ripped, and we slept outside. The next day we walked back to Subotica.”
As a result of the combination of closed borders, illegality, and the theft and violence perpetrated by mafias, many non-SIAs find themselves blocked in Belgrade without any financial means, neither to continue their journey with smugglers nor to provide for themselves during the time they remain in Serbia.
Without foregoing for a moment our basic demand for open borders, we feel the need to gather our forces toward the creation of decent living conditions for refugees in our neighborhoods.
Freiwilligenarbeit entlang der Balkanroute wird immer aussichtslos bleiben, so lange die Nationalstaaten sich wie Nationalstaaten verhalten. Dazu ergibt es auch keinen Sinn, die Balkanroute als einen flachen Pfad mit einem Anfang und einem Ende zu sehen.
The Balkanroute is not a route, it is an ecosystem. It is an organism. It is a “constellation of vital phenomena.”
