MIGRANT ROUTES Plješevica a cemetery without identity

By: Nela Karić

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A public secret! Can something secret be public and, conversely, can something public be a secret? In Bosnia and Herzegovina, crime is usually called a public secret, about which everyone knows more or less everything, except for the various prosecutor's offices. Municipal, cantonal, federal, republican, and state. Prosecutors always miss information that every shopkeeper, every taxi driver, every traffic policeman knows.

Thus, in the Una-Sana Canton, it is a public secret that members of the Border Police return migrants, who are slowly becoming part of the local population, to Bosnia and Herzegovina when they encounter them in the border area. At the same time, migrants from Serbia are allowed relatively unimpeded border crossings near Bijeljina and Zvornik, as well as those coming from Montenegro, who enter near Gacko and Trebinje.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has shown its charity and humanity regarding the migrant crisis. At least its official institutions, the Ministry of Security and the Border Police. Thus, BiH is the only country that has shown neighborly readiness to help neighboring countries by allowing migrants into BiH. Our fascism appears when they are "on our territory".

Until then, we show all awareness in good neighborly relations. "Let them be with us, we don't even know what to do with ourselves" – that would roughly be the Bosnian slogan for approaching the solution to the so-called migrant crisis.

Then, people whom we usually say are staying illegally in our country, precisely due to the lack of a system, we welcome like Chinese tourists these days. Policemen then act like ninja conductors, throwing people with duly paid tickets off trains and buses. No one has yet explained the logic of "removing migrants" in the town of Bosanska Otoka and the village of Velečevo near Ključ. Although in private conversations, the policemen themselves will admit that they are ashamed of what they are ordered to do. Except for the few who perform their job of "camp guards" with great pleasure, we still remember them well from the nineties.

With the arrival of migrants, they discovered their life mission of guarding the holy Bosnian land from the godless, poor, and destitute Arabs. The rich ones do not bother them at all. Only local taxi drivers understand the logic of expelling migrants at inter-entity borders. It is a public secret that wild taxi terminals have been established throughout Krajina, transporting migrants from Bosanska Otoka to Bihać, of course, those migrants who have a little more money than "for bread". Taxi drivers charge them for transport "per head", not per kilometer traveled.

Most of them are expelled with duly paid and purchased tickets from Sarajevo to Bihać. They are transferred to Bihać, Cazin, and Velika Kladuša due to the proximity of the Croatian border. Those who have no money for bread, and most of them are like that, walk that part of the journey from Bosanska Otoka to Bihać, for which they had a purchased ticket. Tired, exhausted, hungry. Flight is the only word that comes to mind. Flight and profit. Profit for taxi drivers, profit for smugglers, profit for the state.

Many small profits at the expense of the state and at the expense of migrants. It is our Balkan way to all profit a little from someone else's misery, without worrying about the bigger picture and the essence of the politics that surrounds us. It has not yet become a public secret, but it is whispered that Mount Plješevica, the most common route for crossing into Croatia, is slowly becoming a cemetery for migrants.

Abandoned by their frozen, miserable, and suffering companions to die, because they are hindering their journey. We have fresh memories of that too. The consequence of the "profiteering" mentality and policy is a frightened local population and, on the other hand, a violation of the most basic humanistic principles, not basic human rights. Although drivers, according to the established protocol, with duly paid tickets, accommodate migrants in the back of trains and buses, the era of segregation has just begun. We have not yet shone with our full fascist brilliance, nor with a storm.

But we have just begun, the ball has not yet started rolling.

According to information from a recently held meeting between the new Minister of Security, Fahrudin Radončić, and the Head of the IOM Mission in BiH, Peter van der Auweraert, slightly more than 5,000 migrants and refugees are currently accommodated in reception centers. The exact number of migrants not registered in BiH is difficult to determine.

Some hide the same data from the public, others do not have it. Although it is speculated that the number is much higher. Due to the lack of a systematic approach in which BiH has left the migration problem to international organizations, and behaves like an offended bride dissatisfied with the dowry, we are on the right track to turn migrants into the largest population of beggars.

The state has not found it necessary to provide the most basic necessities for the people it has allowed into its territory, which it is obliged to do by conventions it easily signs, but never implements. BiH does not implement its laws, meaning it does not respect the laws it passes itself. It does not respect international conventions either. BiH does not care for its own citizens, let alone for those of others. That is no longer a secret, but an easily provable fact. It is high time to stop with public secrets and start proving and prosecuting them. Secrets will bury us. Along with us, at least 5,000 more hungry and frozen people without identity.