Balkan Route Award, here are all the finalists

The technology financed by the European Union for border control and the fight against irregular immigration, the denied bereavements and the legal battles of the families of people who disappeared along the Route: these are some of the themes of the finalist services of the first edition of the Balkan Route Awardthe new recognition established by Luchetta Ota D’Angelo Hrovatin Foundation aimed at those, journalists and photojournalists, who have dedicated themselves to the plight of migrants and asylum seekers.

On the thirty-year anniversary of the massacres in Mostar and Mogadishu, the Foundation renews its commitment to reporting and focuses attention on a phenomenon that sees Trieste as a gateway to Europe for thousands of people, most of whom come from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan, which along the Route are often victims of violence, torture, rejections and arbitrary restrictions.

The Balcanic Route Award was born from the sensitivity of the journalist of the Rai Regional Newspaper Ludovico Fontana and his suggestion was promptly accepted by the Foundation. Fontana, who moved in 2023 from the Trieste office to that of Turin, thus desired to leave a tangible sign of his relationship with the territory, looking at the border city as a place of passage which is never investigated enough and often veil of silence.

“I am happy that the Award illuminates the Balkan Route, – declares the President of the Luchetta Ota Foundation D’Angelo Hrovatin, Daniela Schifani Corfini – The migration of many people is made even more dramatic by the conditions in which it occurs and the desire of many today would be not to see and ignore the problem, as if the suffering of “others” did not concern us. Lodovico Fontana had an intuition that does him credit as a journalist but above all as a man.”

The first edition already marks a record number of applications: thirty received from journalists, most of whom are freelance and under the age of forty. There are two sections included in the announcement, dedicated to the Press (Italian and international) and to Images.

AND THE FINALISTS

Press section
Linda Caglioni (Altreconomia) collected the testimony of Noureddine, a Moroccan father who lost his son Yasser on the Balkan Route in May 2020. The family, however, was only able to celebrate his funeral in November 2022, after a complicated and expensive bureaucratic process for the repatriation of the body from Croatia. Even today, Noureddine fights to know the precise circumstances that led to the death of his son.
Francesca Ghirardelli (Future) addressed the issue of indiscriminate rejections and beatings: Bulgaria blocks migrants coming from Turkey, diverting them to the Balkans or to the coasts, from which the death boats then depart. The entrance to this Route is like a revolving door. You enter through gaps in the border fence or by climbing over secretly, but then you are sent back through other holes in the barrier, equally secretly.

Arianna Egle Ventre (Left) witnessed the indelible memory of the border experience, which is violently imprinted in the memory and on the body of those who lived the border. The story of those who still live in Italy, the traumas of the violence suffered along the Balkan Route, are intertwined in this reportage with the current situation of illegal rejections which are systematically repeated at Europe’s external borders. In a dialogue between past and present, the continuity of a Route that constantly changes but which at the same time maintains violence, in its multidimensionality, as a key structure that seems to give sense and significance to the borders of the European Union emerges in the interviews and testimonies.

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Images section

Giulia Bosetti and Eleonora Tundo (Presadiretta, Rai 3) carried out an investigative trip to the border between Bosnia and Croatia to see how the border control technologies financed by the European Union work and to witness their impact on the lives of migrants fleeing on the Balkan Route. Helicopters with thermal cameras that track people up to 10 kilometers away, equipment that even detects heartbeats, breathing detectors: millions of euros of investments to transform Europe into an impenetrable fortress.
Giuseppe Ciulla (The Horse and the Tower, Rai 3) went in search of the origin of the Balkan Route, wondering what drives many Syrian refugees to leave Turkey, the country that for years has been collecting billions of euros from Europe to keep them within its borders. “Chiusi” is a reportage that tells their living conditions, the stories of those who remain and of those who, like Halal, a 14-year-old Syrian boy who arrived in Holland via the Balkan route, made it. His family lives in a refugee camp in southern Turkey, the father dreams of having all ten of his children leave one by one.
Simone Modugno and Linda Caglioni (Rainews 24) with the service “Denied mourning. The legal battle of the families of missing migrants” they dealt with the relatives of those who lost their lives on the Mediterranean and Balkan route and who often find themselves facing many obstacles to get the body back, to obtain a certificate of death or to find out the causes of death. In the European Union there are no standardized protocols to manage the phases following these disappearances, nor programs that provide valid assistance to families, who in many cases are helped by simple volunteers, both on a bureaucratic and economic level.