For Kurdish refugees, fantastic dreams and silent deaths

BUDAPEST, Hungry— Hundreds of Kurds from Syria and Iraq arrive each day in the border town of Robski, Hungry, where they are temporarily placed in camps with limited access to the outside world.

A Rudaw team travelled with a group of Kurdish refugees on a three-week journey from Athens, Greece, to the camps in Robski.

Most of these immigrants, along with those from a host other restive nations, hope for an asylum in the European Union.

It all started the ancient city of Athens, where hundreds of immigrants crossed the border to Gevgelija, in Macedonia. The migrants continued their journey by train to Hungry, where they hope to seek asylum in other EU countries.

Athena has long been a transit route for Kurdish refugees who in the civil war trauma of the mid-1990s left Kurdistan in large numbers for better opportunities in the West.

For some refugees, like 43-year-old Salah, the journey ended in Athena. Salah arrived here in 1996 and decided to stay and start a life in Greece.

He said with no permit to stay in the country after so many years in exile, his life has become too complicated.

“I really work almost every day just to make ends meet,” he said.

For people like Raman, 22, the journey has only started. He said it has been his dream to live and study in a European country.

“I need to find a country that will let me stay because I have had friends deported back to Kurdistan after years in Europe for no reason,” Raman said.

Refugees walking to Gevgelija try to locate the town with the GPS on their smart phones. It usually takes two hours to arrive by foot from the Greek border, but travel time doubles when migrants get lost or fatigued.

Hundreds of other refugees are already waiting in Gevgelija. In small groups of 50 at a time, the exhausted migrants try to cross the border into Serbia assisted by Macedonian police.

A Macedonian charity organization distributes bread and milk among the refugees as they wait for the next train. Those who do not find a seat on the train have to wait for the next trip and spend the night on the railways because the camps are already full.

Macedonian authorities have decided to temporarily allow migrants to enter, but most refugees say they will continue their trip to Germany where they hope to stay.

“Aleppo [Syria] is ruined. We had no life even before that. We needed to get out of there,” said an unnamed man the Syrian city now devastated by five years of war.

“Now, I hope I can bring my children, too,” the man said.

In the Serbian capital Belgrade, the refugees are almost on their own. In order to be able to travel to neighboring Hungry where they can continue their trip westward, they often need to bargain with human smugglers.

One smuggler told Rudaw he received $1,00 per person for help crossing into Germany, some 700km northwest of Belgrade.

For Kurdish refugees, fantastic dreams and silent deaths

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