Travel to Border for Freedom of Movement
Nhandan Chirco (Cesena, Italy)
We go to meet the migrants, to deliver aids — but now it is different. Now between Sentilj and Spielfeld there is a large militarized area, landscape from a war zone, deep militarization. Now they do not let us to get closer — to the migrants. The migrants — heroic travellers — are isolated in pens, locked, blocked frost and then led like beasts in the corridors of nets, fences, guarded by the army and police, from machine guns, jeeps, agents on pedestals rise on the no man’s land — black silhouettes legs large and holding weapon sideways towering over a crowd indistinct blurred between fumes of burning plastic — burned against the cold.
It is called the no man’s land — no man’s land. No one to help. No one can enter, nor distribute food or water or blankets. No relief operations. No man’s land, but someone is there — and many many people in fact – to keep migrants detained, to prevent us from entering. So many machine guns around in this no man’s land, and therefore that’s someone’s. This is the land of Europe, emblematic land of European policies, extreme border on the edge of two borders that should no longer exist — between Austria and Slovenia. Atrocious confinement in the heart of Europe to those who dreamed of it and then finally reached it… here it is.
Excerpt from #FrontièresWalls — Volume 1 Issue 1 of STORIES. Full text available in the print publication.
