SOURCE: RTS 30.06. 2013.

In recent years, Serbia has become a transit route for the illegal migrants from Africa and Asia that flee to Western Europe. Illegal migrants pay to our smugglers from 3 to 10 thousand euros for transit.

Serbia is a transit route in the last few years for illegal migrants from African and Asian countries that are fleeing to Western Europe. During the last week of June 2013, police of Nis revealed 21 illegal migrants for only two days.

                

 Few days ago, on June 25th, 2013, in Presevo was arrested Slavisa Mitrovic, the assistant chief of the police in Krupanj, who was caught in carrying a group of illegal migrants, that are most likely entered in our country from Macedonia. This is not the first case of arrest of the police officers that are suspected for trafficking.

Sentences that are prescribed for smugglers are between 3 and 12 years of the prison.

Police of Nis has filed criminal charges for trafficking against six of our citizens in 2012.

Most of the illegal migrants come from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Bangladesh. Migrants usually illegally enter Serbia from Macedonia. They can also come with the alternative directions to the administrative border with Kosovo, mainly to Presevo and Bujanovac, from where the road continues to the north. Migrants pay smugglers from 3 to 10 thousand euros for transit.

Vlada Veljkovic, head of the border police in Nis, said that the motives for arrival of the illegal migrants are the escape from war or the economic reasons.

Police of Nis has discovered nearly 400 undocumented foreign citizens during the last year. They are mainly transported by buses, van transportation, trucks or freight wagons. Every sixth of them has sought the asylum.

One of the ways that migrants can be smuggled is by hiding themselves in the containers that are coming from Greece through Serbia on the road to Hungary and Austria. Migrants most commonly use containers for the illegal crossing of the Serbian border.

At one occasion migrants were discovered by the railway workers who have heard a crying of a child in the wagon.

Since the migrants are usually without money, the Magistrates Court determines the sentence of imprisonment instead of the amercement for those who are adult. Before they go in one of our asylum centers, the unaccompanied minors are accommodated in the Institute for Youth Education in Nis. In the past two years through this center has passed 56 children.

“Before, the children have stayed here for longer, between 7 to 10 days, until a place vacate in the asylum centers in Bogovadja and Banja Koviljaca. But, this is no longer the case and they now retain here only two to three days”, says Goran Stamenkovic, director the Institute for Youth Education in Nis.

Most of the migrants are men, but lately there are also the families with small children.