Text and photography by Manu Brabo/MeMo

BELGRADE, Serbia — A trip along the refugee track within Serbia reveals that the old route through the Balkans is still being used despite strong border control, harsh conditions and frozen temperatures.

Near the center of Belgrade, hundreds of migrants and refugees, mainly from Pakistan and Afghanistan, live in tough conditions in abandoned warehouses and old factory buildings. Inside the buildings, the air is dense due to the smoke from the many fires lit to heat the space. Coughing can be heard at every corner like a constant soundtrack.

Despite the existence of camps built by the Serbian state, the migrants are here trying to make their way into European Union countries illegally. So they cannot risk being identified and registered for fear that they will be sent back.

This winter has been especially cold in the former Yugoslavian republic, and these below-zero temperatures have raised the prominence of this situation in the mainstream media. Once the frozen temperatures are gone, the images and stories of these people will disappear again. More pressing than the freezing conditions, they face the reality that the old Balkan route, the same path as the 2015 refugee wave, is now closed, and that the surveillance and control is stronger than ever.

At an abandoned brick factory in Subotica where migrants gather and prepare for the border crossing, refugees talk about the severe beatings and abuses suffered by those who are caught attempting to cross into Hungary and Croatia. “I’ve tried 35 times in the last three months, and I’ve been beat up every single time,” a 24-year-old migrant from Pakistan says. A friend of his adds, “They throw the dogs on us, and they steal our shoes, so we have to come back here walking barefoot.”

Still, every week dozens of refugees arrive in Serbia from Bulgaria and try to reach the neighboring EU countries. But very few make it.

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