One of the few Arabic signs in Northern Serbia greets you when you enter the Sencansko groblje (cemetery) in Subotica reads: “ممنوع دخول المقبرة و الكنيسة” (Forbidden to enter the cemetery and church.)

In the corner of this cemetery sits two graves. At the front, the grave is marked “NN Migrant 2023”. At the back, it is marked “N. N. 2022”. These are just two of 1015 unmarked graves across Europe (https://unbiasthenews.org/border-graves-investigation/). In Subotica, two people on the move have met their untimely fate on their journey into the European Union. What we do not know of them; their names, families, friends, hopes, dreams, likes, dislikes, we can be sure that they were crossing Europe’s borders in search of safety. From Spain and Italy to Greece, France and Croatia, people on the move are met with the most lethal force of the EU’s border regime: death.

On this particular day, Collective Aid volunteers were carrying out an assessment of nearby Subotica Camp. Formerly a reception camp and repeatedly condemned for its insanitary conditions, the containers sit empty, void of people and officially closed by the Commissariat (https://asylumineurope.org/reports/country/serbia/reception-conditions/housing/conditions-reception-facilities). The conditions for people on the move is well-documented by Collective Aid and its partner organisations on the ground. Destruction of mobile phones and personal belongings, beatings and physical violence causing physical and psychological scars feature on a person’s journey to the Serbian - Hungarian border. As a member of the Border Violence Monitoring Network, Collective Aid has extensively documented the illegal tactic of “pushbacks”. This process, whereby a person is denied the legal right to claim asylum or seek protection, involves the immediate push back over a border after they have crossed it. Although prohibited under international human rights law, pushbacks have long been a favoured tactic for Hungarian and Serbian police.

Following the sweeping military and policing campaign at the end of October 2023, violence against people on the move intensified. Serbian and Hungarian police units, as well as heavily armed Serbian Gendarmerie special military units, carried out evictions of temporary living sites along the Serbian - Hungarian border. As part of this special operation, people on the move were taken to official reception centres under the control of the Commissariat for Refugees and Migration. No official information on people’s location or the camps’ conditions have been provided. Throughout January, Collective Aid carried out assessments at this border. In sub-zero temperatures, remnants of people on the move’s journeys can be found. Medication, energy drinks, food items, shelter, water, razors, sleeping bags, used fire pits and tissues. The camps of Sombor and Subtoica remain shut indefinitely. The Gendermerie and Commissariat continue to patrol this borderscape.

According to Collective Aid’s partner organisations, people have been taken to the camps of Obrenovac (south of Belgrade), Tutin and Sjenica (in the south near the border with Montenegro). As a result of the Special Operation, people on the move are forced to undertake more dangerous journeys. With fewer options and much harsher geographical landscapes, there are reports of pushbacks from Croatia to Bosnia where lies the Una River. One pushback featured a person on the move physically being pushed into the river. Between Serbia and Bosnia sits mountains and the Drina River. The Special Operation has forced people into a more violent topography as they attempt to enter the European Union.

Although the police have transferred people on the move to the south, there are remnants of EU borders’ brute force. The decaying camps are representative of structurally violent conditions people are forced to live in. Returning to the Sencansko cemetery in Subotica, the two unnamed migrant graves are reminders of the cruelty of the EU border regime. Deprived of dignity in life and also in death, they lay to rest without names. Their deaths are a strategic choice on the part of the European Union. The EU gives non EU member states vast sums of money and equipment in the name of ‘strengthening’ Europe’s external borders. Even in the graveyard where they rest, only some can enter. Who can enter the EU and who is met with their untimely death at its gates is a systemic choice. Yet the spectre of the EU’s deadly border regime will long haunt Northern Serbia.

Words and Images by Jessica Gilbert

No Name Migrant: The Forbidden Cemetery of Subotica