Field visit - Belgrade
18. 06. 2020
Our first field visit to Belgrade. We were in the Park of Luka Ćelović and in the park across the bus station. Park of Luka Ćelović is generally almost unknown by that name. People mostly refer to it as “Park at Faculty of Economy” or as “Pussy’s park” due to the few decades-long activities of sex workers in that park. But since the beginning of the refugee crisis among refugees, people, and organizations that are included in work with the refugees this park is also known as “Afghan Park”. Park across the Bus station is officially called “Bristol hotel park”, but as is the case with Park of Luka Ćelović that name is not in use. It is commonly known by a different name: “Bus station park”. That park doesn’t have so many different names as Afghan park, but it suffered much more structural changes than its neighbor in recent years. The arrival platform of the bus station and the whole quart of buildings including the building of “SIMPO” department store has been destroyed and removed, which gives the sense of much larger space and depth to park which before that was clearly limited by big buildings. The only building left standing nearby is Hotel Bristol, which is also covered with signs: “Beware! Work in progress. Get on the other side of the street”. From that same hotel, just a few months before dozens of families of war veterans were evicted by force. After that veterans were protesting for months in front of the building.
In the Afghan park, there are not so many people. It’s very hot, so people are mostly in the park across the street which is rich with lots of stables of big trees which cover a lot of green grass surfaces with strong and pleasant shade. We are crossing the street and starting the conversation with about ten guys from Afghanistan. Soon after that, more people are joining the group and conversation and in one moment we are speaking to more than 50 people. We are talking and answering questions about asylum procedures in Serbia and in E.U., about the Dublin agreement, possible new quarantine because of the covid-19 pandemic, and also about their experience with border police and violence. One boy of 18-19 years in one moment joins the conversation and in fluent Serbian says: "Mi dođemo na granicu, policija zajebava. Ja stalno idem, policija zajebava. Ne znam kako dalje. Dođeš ovamo ne može. Odeš onamo - ne može. Samo zajebavaju." (We go to the border, police are fucking us up. I am going all the time and all the time police are fucking me up. I don’t know what to do next and how to continue my journey. You come at one place - you can’t pass. You go to another place - you can’t pass. They are just fucking us up.)
Everyone from the group starts laughing at the amount of surprise which they can see on our faces. We are stunned by his knowledge of the Serbian language, and we are laughing too. He is also laughing discreetly. He’s been in Serbia for five years.
He is having a fresh haircut and is wearing a Hawaiian shirt. All of that including a sudden Serbian language is completely matching his charisma which is felt by everyone in the group. After we spoke with him for a while I saw him few more times in different places in the crowd which was standing around us, and then one boy which was passing the street shouted something to him in the Pashto language, they hugged each other as old friends which haven’t seen each other for a long time and then they went somewhere to speak alone.
Once again the park looks to me as it has been grown since there is no arrival station and buildings which were surrounding it. In the park, besides people from Afghanistan, there is a lot of people from Maghreb countries. Arabic people. There is also a lot of people from their groups who are English speakers which are coming to us to ask about various topics, about the help that we can or can not provide to them, the current state in our country, asylum procedure, fingerprints left in Serbia or some other country and many other things that they are interested in. The vast majority of them are lying and sitting on the grass without anything beneath them and they are not complaining about that at all. Under many trees, there are groups of people. After the explanation of asylum procedure in Serbia and the EU (the procedure is the same) some of them wanted to fill in an anonymous questionnaire about pushbacks and violence the have suffered on the borders with Hungary and Croatia. Besides free legal aid and psycho-social support, one of our main activities is gathering information about the treatment to which refugees were exposed from border police or military (of Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia) while they were trying to cross the borders. According to the information we have gathered until now refugees have most often been beaten by Croatian police, right behind them there is Hungarian police, while for Serbian police they mainly say that the treatment depends on which patrol they cross the path with. The purpose of filling these questionnaires is in gathering a large number of testimonies after which would we as an organization be able to publish the results of the questionnaires and to try to influence the change the relation of certain countries’ governments towards the refugees.
—- VUK VUCKOVIC
