The Migrants’ Revolution

There is an incredible number of people marching only 5 hours away from where I live, Tirana. They cross Macedonian and Serbian borders. They come from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan… There is an unstoppable flow of people walking towards “fortress Europe”, hoping somehow to cross its borders and possibly benefit from the protection and solidarity that can be given only to the lucky few: those that succeed to enter the EU alive after such a trip.

I wanted to meet these people, wondering if I could be of any help. I went with my friends working for Caritas to the refugee camps in Gevgeljia, the first Macedonian town after the border with Greece, and in Presevo, the closest Serbian town to the border with Macedonia. (You can have a look at some more of my pictures also on Caritas Internationalis Album)

I met hundreds of people. A stream of people heading north, receiving primary care in the camps, being halted by the police, but only in order to be registered for a couple of hours before making way for other behind them. More than four thousands migrants per day are crossing these countries: every ten minutes 50 people cross the borders. This has been happening every day, 24/7, for months…

Even though I was only there a few days, I met hundreds of men, women and children. I met a woman who didn’t know in which country she was: she just followed the crowd. I met a group of young boys who were still deciding where to go once they arrived in the EU, I met others who instead were very sure about their destination. I met refugees with excellent English, with a British accent – doctors, professors, students that had left everything behind.

And then I saw them. They were at the entrance of the camp, queuing with their parents: two little twin boys. Same age as my twin daughters. I followed them into the UNICEF tent. While their mother was changing one of them, I started to play with the other one. I played the same games I play with my Rosa and Alma. That was the moment I took this picture. Our game lasted some minutes and nothing else mattered: it was just him and me, my daughters safely at home, his long journey behind and his long travel still ahead.

Last summer, while discussing with my friend Valerio (he is working hard on documenting this emergency) we agreed that nowadays the most revolutionary act is to try to illegally cross a border, especially an EU border. An act rooted in despair and fear for one’s life. If we, from this side of the fence, fail to save them from the scourge of war at home, they stand up and demand from us to protect their rights in the only way we permit them: by crossing our borders.

This has already happened millions of times. Everywhere. An individual, revolutionary act of secretly crossing imaginary lines that separate human beings.

This time it’s different; no one is hiding. They cross the border with their head held high, in the daylight. No one is stopping them. The revolutionary act of crossing borders is being undertaken by thousands of people, every day, for months now. All these people together have the power to force the EU to open its borders, to grant them protection, to rethink EU foreign policies and home affairs. In doing so, they are clearly demonstrating the failure of our closed-borders policy and the absurdity of our system to process asylum seekers. The marching taking place right now in the Balkans is not only a desperate flow of migrants, it is a revolution.

Ps. It took me more than a month to write down these few lines. Sometimes it’s very hard for me to explain feelings and moving experiences by writing. That’s way I photograph.

• Categories: Social, Travel
• Tags: Antonio Fantasia, asylum seekers, Balkans, borders, Caritas, EU, migrant, refugee, revolution, UNICEF