BALKAN ROUTE -
REFUGEES ON HUNGARY'S BORDER FENCE
Hungary is building a 4-meter-high fence along the 110-mile long border with Serbia to stop refugees and migrants on Balkan land route, making an already perilous journey even harder.
A smile on the face of Al-ghanem from Syrian town of Ar Raqqah, sitting on a lawn with her two sons, shows her happiness being only 4-miles from her final destination. European union. 2.500 miles away from daily shelling and constant four-year war, a rough escape through Turkey, Greece and Macedonia, she is finally in Serbia, near the Hungarian border.
A small group of Syrians, Palestinians and Iraqis are waiting for the night to fall, so that they can run for cover through the endless fields of corn, pumpkins and sunflowers. Their only equipment is Google GPS navigation.
In constant fear of police patrols, they whisper, hiding in cornfields and river channels.
Some of them are caught by the Hungarian police and taken to the detention centers. Al-ghanem and her two sons were one of them. After day or two in the nearby detention center they are on their way to another asylum center in Hungary.
On the Serbian side of border there are more and more people escaping from the war and life-threatening environment to reach a place, where they finally feel safe. Without any help from the Serbian government, some residents help them with food and water in a makeshift camp at an abandoned brick factory in the outskirts of Subotica, with a meaningful name – Jungle.