Tunisia - Serbia - EU?
We have noticed a peculiar trend during our field work this year – in squats near the border with Hungary, at the Tisa river bank, we have noticed an increasing number of people who carried with themselves suitcases: men smartly dressed as if they had left their houses the same morning, women dressed elegantly and with vibrant make up as if going out for a walk, as if in only couple of hours they would return to their homes and resume their daily lives. The sight of them in moody squats with no adequate shelter, food or water is quite surreal and unexpected, people we meet here look as if they were lost, and most importantly – they look like people who are still unaware of the hardship that awaits them when they try to enter EU states.
Dozens of suitcases parked near the tents in the forest are owned by refugees from Tunisia, for whom the squats in the border area between Serbia and Hungary are the first locations where they sleep rough. It is a new route: Tunisia – Belgrade – Serbia’s border area – EU. There is a visa free regime between Serbia and Tunisia, which means that citizens of Tunisia can enter Serbia as tourists without a visa, so they fly in directly from Tunisia, starting their refugee experience in Europe from Belgrade.
It is specifically important that there are many young women among them, as well as families.
What is characteristic for these people is that they are uninformed about the situation of refugees in EU and about the asylum process, unlike refugees from the Near and the Middle East who have formed a vague idea of the difficulties on the road during their months or even years long journey.
Additionally, the psychological shock is substantial and usually follows their attempts to enter EU and when they experience violence at the hands of EU member states border police, as well as social rejection just a couple of days after leaving their countries and homes. These people look unprepared but unfortunately, after just a couple of weeks of rejections at the borders, after they had left their suitcases in which they had packed all of their lives, they become experienced refugees – people with a goal of reaching a more safe place to live, no matter the cost paid in money, pain and daily struggle.
At the beginning people from Tunisia with suitcases were only identified in the vicinity of Djala and Srpski Krstur villages, but at the moment they are present in many of the squats in the north of Serbia. A week ago we visited a squat near Sombor were mostly Syrian refugees stayed. In conversations with the peol,e we had seen several suitcases again. When we inquired about them, a man answered: People from Tunisia left it to us. It is incovenient to take when one tried to cross a border, while us here can have some use of it.“
This field report is prepared within the Project "Protecting Civic Space – Regional Civil Society Development Hub" financed by Sida and implemented by BCSDN".
The content of this document, and the information and views presented do not represent the official positions and opinions of Sida and BCSDN. Responsibility for the information and views expressed in this document lies entirely with the author.