Every year, on the Balkan route, dozens of migrants lose their lives trying to cross rivers. Their identification remains difficult.
Every year, on the Balkan route, dozens of migrants lose their lives trying to cross rivers. The Drina, which separates Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina with its impetuous current, is one of these natural and dangerous obstacles.
“The problem is that we don’t actually know who is buried. All of these graves are marked as unknown people and only the year of death is given. So very often we don’t know who is buried.” explains Milica Švabić, lawyer of the NGO “Clickaktiv”.
Nobody knows how many migrants have drowned here in the Drina, just like in other rivers in the Balkans. The institutions do not keep official records. A few kilometers further, at the Loznica cemetery, we find 12 identical burial mounds, far from the other graves. The only source of information and identification is the 4D online database, managed by activists.
Before the dangerous crossing, some migrants left their belongings in these fields. A farmer sees them regularly: “They sleep here, go to the store in the morning, buy cigarettes, come back in the afternoon. They still keep trying to cross the Drina.”
Dramas told by documentary filmmaker Vojin Ivkov: “I imagine how many people die without anyone knowing about them. I’m really talking about those moments of about 20 minutes, when they walk and cross these mighty rivers, and that’s all I mean… He fall asleep somewhere and they continue on their way. Then they stay there. We will find these bodies in these jungles around the borders in ten years.”
The corns of migrants drowned on the Balkan route are listed here. But only 400 deaths have been recorded since 2015.
