Tags / Migrants

Bihać, Bosnia Herzegovina, January 2021.
Migrants. Almost half of the 140.000 migrants currently in the Balkans are single men on the road for several years, sometimes “just” two, sometimes even more than 5. They left Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and middle east areas due to religious persecutions, political intolerance, poverty, conflicts, and they slowly moved towards Europe by any means of legal or illegal transport. They are mostly between 15 and 30 years old and they have spent part of their youth illegally crossing borders, illegally because their passport worth nothing around the world. Now, due to the current European political situation and the Covid-19 pandemic, these thousands of people are stuck in Bosnia Herzegovina waiting for the right conditions to crack “the game”. GAME, migrants expression for their chance to enter the European Union by land and seek asylum. They walk through the woods in the middle of the winter season for two weeks, they sleep under the sky, afraid of wild animals and worried about local authorities. Each of them has tried the game at least twice. Therefore, they have walked for days and days in the middle of a snowstorm, socked with wet clothes, colder and colder, with little food and no shelter. If their portrait is among those, it means they have been caught by Croatian, or Slovenian, or even Italian police, and with any respect of human rights, been beaten and deported back to Bosnia Herzegovina. Once back, some of them find shelter in the Temporary Reception Centres of the Una-Sana Canton, the area closest to the Croatian border, others live around the city in broken buildings, waiting for the best moment to try again. After the recent closure of the TRC of Lipa due to a fire that occurred on December 23rd 2020, part of the over 1500 migrants resident there, decided to move from the ruin of the tends to the neighbouring city of Bihać, 30km away from the TRC. Dom Penzjonera, the former pension for retirement, located close to the Una river in the center of the city, now welcomes about 115 migrants. It has never been finished and it doesn’t provide water, electricity and any kind of heating. They are all single men between 15 and 30 years old, all of them determined to crack the game, all of them stuck in the Balkans area but determined to enter in the European Union, to thrive education, job, dignity and a better life, all of them determined to fight for their rights.

Irfan Kamal Tahir, 17 years old from Pakistan. 7 times to the game.

Sadiq Khan, 17 years old from Pakistan. 2 times to the game.

Wali Hassan, 24 years old from Pakistan. 3 times to the game.

Ali Akhtar Muhammad, 17 years old from Afghanistan. 4 times to the game.

Jahan Zib, 26 years old from Afghanistan. 8 times to the game.

Jan Sharif, 15 years old from Afghanistan. 4 times to the game.

Migrant inside the Dom Penzjonera building looking at the city of Bihac.

View of the city of Bihac from inside the Dom Penzjonera building.

View of the former pension for retirement Dom Penzjonera.

Ataullah Afgan, 25 years old from Afghanistan. 6 times to the game.

Abidullah Noori, 16 years old from Afghanistan. 6 times to the game.

Fida Muhammad Nazir, 24 years old from Pakistan. 13 times to the game.

Asifullah Kohistani, 20 years old from Afghanistan. 8 times to the game.

Milad Banisad, 28 years old from Iran. 3 times to the game.

Anoosh Mostafaei, 23 years old from Iran. 3 times to the game.

Sharif Khan, 22 years old from Pakistan. 8 times to the game.

Imad Ahmad, 27 years old from Pakistan. 5 times to the game.

Mohammad Osman, 26 years old from Pakistan. 9 times to the game.

Ijaz Shinwati, 16 years old from Pakistan. 3 times to the game.

Mosa Safe, 25 years old from Afghanistan. 10 times to the game.

Zakir Khan, 27 years old from Pakistan. 2 times to the game.

Nisar Ali, 30 years old from Pakistan. 4 times to the game.

Adnan Shami, 20 years old from Pakistan. 10 times to the game.

Italy, Rome: A woman fells on ground after being hit by a water cannon used to disperse refugees who were evicted from a palace in the center of Rome on August 24, 2017. The UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) voiced "grave concern" over the eviction of 800 people from a Rome building squatted mainly by asylum seekers and refugees from Eritrea and Ethiopia. Almost 200 people expelled from the building sleep on the streets from 19 of August.

Bilal,13, from Syria, is a self-described geek. He wants to study and learn English and German, but he needs new books and wants to reach Germany as soon as possible to go to school and learn more about the world. He sits on an abandoned car while translating verbs from Arabic to English.

This collection of photos documents daily life in the Idomeni camp where refugees live in limbo on the border between Greece and Macedonia. Some refugees who were photographed are identified by an initial because they did not want their names used.

R., 32, from Syria kisses her nephew. They live in an abandoned train at Idomeni railway station in Greece, at the border with Macedonia. Some 12,000 refugees live in small tents and the ruins of an old railway station in Idomeni.

A night shot of the border fence between Greece and Macedonia at the Idomeni camp.

Raha, 41, from Syria, is in Idomeni with two sisters. She waits to reach her two sons, aged 15 and 20, who arrived in Germany months ago. Raha is still stuck here after two months.

A Kurdish girl spends an evening playing with a recycled table football game at Idomeni refugee camp, a makeshift camp on the Greek-Macedonian border where thousands of refugees are stranded.

Panagiota Vasileiadou, also called "the Idomeni refugees' grandmother" is a 82 year-old Greek woman who houses five Syrian refugees in her home.

In a improvised cinema, refugee children watch a cartoon movie at the makeshift camp of Idomeni, in Greece. Movies keep refugee children entertained, despite all the sorrow and trials they face.

A Pakistani group of between 50 and 70 refugees live in an abandoned hotel building close to the Greek-Macedonian border in Idomeni, Greece.

Syrian refugees have dinner along the railway at Idomeni camp. The railway connection has been blocked for a month by refugees who are protesting Macedonia's decision not to let them through. Police have tried to clear the tracks but refugees still resist and occupy the railway while waiting for an European solution.

Asif, 23, from Pakistan, is living in an abandoned building with about 50 people along the highway that runs close to the border with Macedonia.

S. is from Pakistan and he lives in an abandoned building along the highway that runs close to the Greek border with Macedonia. He shares a little room with four to six other "travel mates". They have been waiting and surviving here for two months without electricity, windows, doors and bathrooms.

Among Riace Marina and Riace Superiore are welcomed more than 400 immigrants and asylum seekers, so the country is also known as the hospitality city.

Bairan, 49, posing in front of the restaurant that helped to restructure. He is the immigrant with the longest presence in the small Calabrian town. He landed in 1998 along with 200 other Kurds just in front of the coast of Riace Marina.

Roberto Lucano, 89, is the father of the mayor of Riace. Despite didn't voted for Domenico Lucano in the first elections, now he recognizes all the goodness of a policy of integration and support for refugees.