Stories
A WAY OF LIFE
The streets of Belgrade can be uncormfortable and rough. Concrete tower blocks of the new town are omnipresent and the social gap grows and grows. The socially deprived try their best to make assure to get attention and many of them are using the Hooligan scene to represent a strong and powerfull identity.
In Serbia and a number of other countries, football hooliganism is associated with nationalist and far-right politics, often at a superficial level such as crude racism. Racist abuse of non-white players is common. In the 1960s and early 1970s football hooliganism was associated with the skinhead subculture.
ESCAPE INTO HOMELESSNESS
The current debate about asylum seekers takes place at the refugees’ expense. Not the amount of refugees is alarming but the social and institutional ways of dealing with those leaving their homes due to war, persecution and poverty.
Apart from refugee camps being exorbitantly crowded and authorities being unable to cope with the situation, tents, blankets and sleeping bags have to be bought by the new arrivals. So, shelter is only available against payment. Such camps and other official institutions are avoided by those affected. Since most asylum seekers are informed about the Dublin Regulation, they are trying to evade registration due to the fact that applications for asylum would be rejected later on in other European countries.
Living in inhuman conditions, a lot of asylum seekers take over deserted trains, houses or factories. Especially young men set off to pass through the long and dangerous Balkan route. Up to 700 people per day are passing the Evros river at the Turkish-Greek border to travel via Thessaloniki further into Europe. Some of them are either walking, boarding container ships being a stowaway or entering cargo trains. Exceedingly few are escaping with the service of expensive smugglers.
While Europe is paying attention to the Mediterranean Sea, masked paramilitaries resort to extreme measures. Immeasurable brutality, physical abuse up to robbery and false imprisonment has been reported. These intimidating and humiliating experiences are supposed to teach them a lesson. These “pushbacks” are tolerated by the officials, violate international law, the Fundamental Rights Charter of the European Unions as well as the Geneva Convention. According to documents of the Turkish Ministry of Internal Affairs more than a quarter million people got deported illegally from Greece since 2016. The estimated numbers of unreported cases are decidedly higher.
HUNTED BEAUTIES OF THE OCEAN
Rays are seen as exceptionally beautiful with their aliform fins which make them move so elegantly. Thousands of tourists every year travel to South Africa, Thailand and the Maldives just to see them in their natural habitat. Since 2006 however you find rays on the redlist of endangered species with market prices over 500 €/kg for their #gills only. This makes them to a favored object of hunting especially in China and Sri Lanka. It is believed that the gills have a high healing effect and play a serious role in traditional Chinese medical science.
MORE STORIES
Portraits
Multimedia
Travel
E-KIDS FROM THE BLOCK
Contact
O-Young Kwon is currently based in Hamburg, Germany.
+49 157 789 66 789