From Tuzla to Sarajevo, from Bihać to Velika Kladuša:the volunteers and activists, Bosnian or international, who support from below the rights and needs of migrants in transit in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Of Duccio Facchini And Manuela Valsecchi (report published with permission from Other economics.It is possible to support Altreconomia here with a donation or subscribe to the magazine)

“Everyone knows what happens around here:the Croats who beat us if we try to cross the border, Europe which rejects us.What do you want me to tell you?”.Zakaria is a young Afghan man of Hazāra ethnicity who left Kabul.He reached the town of Velika Kladuša, in the Una Sana Canton, in the North-West of Bosnia and Herzegovina.At the beginning of November he is here, alone and blocked in an informal settlement in the open air called "Helicopter":there is no landing strip but only mud and a few trees.The rest of his family is in Sweden.He, who was brutally rejected several times by Croatian officers when he tried to cross the woods, considers himself lucky:“Next to me there is a partner who has a wife and three children in tow,” he says, pointing to the neighbors' tent where very small children are eating on the floor.

It's cold and winter hasn't arrived yet.As of October 31, the United Nations estimates between 800 and 1,100 people outside the institutional camps (which host just under 3,000).It is people like Zakaria that the EU intentionally denies access to protection, preferring to confine them in Bosnia and Herzegovina in degrading conditions.A strategy of deterrence that has continued for years in the country which, since 2018, has become a crossroads for tens of thousands of refugees coming from areas of conflict and high political instability in the Middle East and in particular from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Pakistan.Between January 2018 and the end of 2021, at least 84 thousand people paid the bill, those who entered "irregularly" into Bosnia and Herzegovina and who were registered by international institutions (UNHCR, IOM).

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Among the few who support people of this squats there is also a small local volunteer organization called Rahma.Its members bring blankets and clothes to people living in tents, which are frequently evicted.They also weld car rims to create camp ovens where they can burn wood, cook something and keep warm.

Rahma is one of the entities financed in the spring of this year by the Italian network Aimed at the Balkans, born in 2019 and made up of over 35 organizations (Altreconomia is among the founders and has contributed to the creation of important dossier of complaint).Between the end of October and the beginning of November 2021, a delegation from the network carried out a mission to monitor solidarity projects towards people on the move, supported overall with 55 thousand euros, part of the donations received thanks to the fundraising campaign launched in December 2020 after the fire in the Lipa refugee camp.We went with them to meet dozens of volunteers and activists, Bosnian or international, working on a field abandoned by European institutions and beyond:that of daily solidarity, from below.

The journey begins in Tuzla, the city of "liberation" for those who escaped the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, north-east of Sarajevo.For four years, migrants in transit have been arriving here mainly from neighboring Serbia.It is a nodal point on the internal route of the country which leads to the border areas with Croatia such as Bihać and Velika Kladuša.The key place of solidarity is the bus and train station, where in January 2020 there was a tent city inhabited by 1,000 people.For over four years, various volunteers have been helping families or individuals passing through night and day (lately also coming from Ghana and Gambia), providing them with basic necessities such as food, clothes, sleeping bags, bus tickets to reach Sarajevo and try to continue the route (the train to Bihać was cancelled).

Nihad and Senad are also among them.The first economist, the second journalist, they welcome us in a restaurant in Tuzla to tell us about their daily commitment.“What we do is not 'help' - Nihad stated - it is solidarity, it is respect for human life”.It happened that they accompanied people to the hospital or hosted them at home for the night.“We open the backpack and give what we have in there.”They denounce the inability of government authorities as well as the "media" presence of international organizations.“At four in the afternoon they switch off and leave, they just take a photo with the migrants as they deliver the aid”, it's a big problem, accuses Senad, who has been attacked and defamed on the internet for his activities. social networks (brought those responsible to court).When we visit the volunteers' warehouse - financially supported by RiVolti - some workers are assembling railings to protect the site from "incursions".In addition to helping the migrants, Nihad and Senad also find themselves cleaning the passage area, deliberately neglected by the authorities to fuel a climate of intolerance.The finger and the moon in one of the most polluted cities in Europe due to coal.

Two other Tuzla solidarity projects are those carried out by the Emmaus association and the Puz centre, also supported by RiVolti ai Balkani.The first provides a "daily center" where "exhausted people can take a shower, drink hot tea, wash their clothes and get new ones, recharge their phones, cook something, cut their hair and talk", says Dzeneta.In the courtyard there is a mural in English which recalls:“My dreams are not illegal.”It is a place where 20-30 people on average per day can meet a "friendly" figure, receive psychological support, collect information on their rights and on the Bosnian reception system.The Puz center coordinated by Daniel, for example, in just three years has helped something like 18 thousand people, made two "safe houses" available over time for the most vulnerable (at least 800 of those welcomed), and supported almost 200 asylum seekers in the process.With RiVolti funds he is paying the rent of three apartments in Tuzla to provide a roof to those who have applied for protection, developing nine individual floors in an embryonic "widespread reception" project.

A few hours' drive from there is Compass 071, one of Sarajevo's solidarity antennas.The capital is another hub on the route.The organisation, born from a group of individual street volunteers, has equipped itself to offer essential services in a newly renovated premises also thanks to the Italian network.Every day between 70 and 140 people pass by to take a shower, wash their clothes, have a drink, get psychological and legal support as well as charge their phone or use a PC.“Our center - explains Ilma, one of the volunteers - is open to everyone, no matter ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual or political orientation.We just want to create a safe place for anyone who needs it.”There is no shortage of detractors and every now and then the police stop by to visit.We're at the point where kids have to sweep the street to demonstrate their "good intentions".

Not far away is the perspective of Hasan Avci, a young Turkish refugee who collaborates with the volunteers of the NGO Collective Aid.In the space of a few months he provided a medical examination and a pair of glasses to at least 100 people on the move at controlled prices (paid by RiVolti ai Balkani) at his shop inherited from his father-in-law.When we meet him in a neighborhood bar he talks about a letter he received from one of the people he supported:“He wrote to me that he had never used glasses before.'The world is beautiful'."

Lenses, shoes and telephones are the first migrants' possessions that the Croatian police destroy, shortly before sending them back (a "chain" of rejections that can also start from the Italian-Slovenian border).Anela knows this well, and since the end of 2017, in Bihać, close to the Northern border, she has been helping "migrants and anyone who needs help".He started collecting and distributing food and clothes together with friends.Today, with her newly adult son and a neighbor, she has repurposed an entire "domestic" warehouse to store jackets, blankets, boots, food, tents and medicines.The "guilt" of helping people attracted hate campaigns and her small pension business lost out.

The authorities, moreover, play against solidarity:in the Canton Una Sana, where the town falls, propaganda bans are in force such as the one that prevents "unauthorized" informal organizations from distributing aid to people in need.Anela, a point of reference for international volunteers, underlines the collaboration for example with the Red Cross of Bihać or with Ipsia-Acli for the distribution of aid.Also in Bihać, RiVolti ai Balcani contributed decisively (over 40 thousand euros) to the preparation of the kitchens of the local Red Cross, also equipped at its headquarters with a laundry system that uses what comes from the remote tent city of Lipa, 30 kilometers from the Anela warehouse.Bihać is a city that wants to breathe.It is not said that the distribution of aid is mandatory. 

Marine, founder of the association, remembers this u Pokretu ("Moving").In a building in the Municipality of Bihać, right in front of the rustic skeleton of the Dom Penzionera which has been cleared several times and now closed by grates, they are renovating a space for socialising, sharing, dialogue and interaction.Since the spring of this year - also thanks to funding from RiVolti - the volunteers have organized a film festival and markets open to people in transit but above all to residents.They are renovating a building to hold workshops, training courses and exhibitions.A humanity that bonds with the volunteers of the Tuzla station and that is found in the words of Dario, owner of a small market in Velika Kladuša.Having taken refuge in Toronto in 1994, he returned home twenty years later.Your shop joins the initiative voucher digital solidarity programs that guarantee a basket of goods to migrants (for expenses from 9 to 35 marks, or 5-18 euros).It covers it No Name Kitchen, another reality supported by the network.Dario does it first and foremost for himself.“There are at least 500 people in the woods around here.Temperatures plummet in January and February.Aren't they entitled to go shopping like everyone else?And then I haven't seen children running in the street out here in a lifetime." 

Preview photo:Anela, Bosnian activist from Bihać, a town in the north-west of Bosnia and Herzegovina.In the home warehouse he collects basic necessities.Since 2017 it has been a point of reference for international volunteers and is not scared by the authorities' propagandistic bans © Manuela Valsecchi