The Reutlingen couple Ulrike and Martin Binder were recently at the "bottleneck of the Balkan route" to help the refugees who had landed there.On the Bosnian-Croatian border, they saw how the EU is abandoning these people.The way they deal with refugees from Ukraine shows that things can be done differently, they say.Joffi, the lively poodle, is happily making a racket in the Lerchenbuckel district of Reutlingen.The idyllic garden that surrounds the family home has two small ponds.Dragonflies buzz across the water, birds chirp.Coffee and buttered pretzels are ready in the cozy seating area in the garden.Ulrike and Martin Binder are a retired couple.She is a social worker and was the head of a private school for educational assistance, he is a general practitioner.The border town of Velika Kladuša, dubbed the "Needle Ear of the Balkan Route".Photos: privateThey recently spent four weeks in Velika Kladuša, a small Bosnian town on the border with EU country Croatia.The place is also called the "Needle Ear of the Balkan Route".After Hungary closed its borders with Serbia and Croatia with barbed wire fences in 2016, the Balkan route shifted west.Bosnia has therefore long been the point of contact for migrants from Greece.They try to get from there to the EU country of Croatia and then to Italy, to Trieste.The area was repeatedly in the headlines because of the catastrophic conditions in which the refugees had to camp, especially in winter.Martin Binder, retired doctor, has been active at the non-governmental organization (NGO) Medical Volunteers International since 2020, which has been sending medical professionals to crisis areas on a voluntary basis and for a limited time since 2016.For him "an immense expansion of horizons".He was deployed to Lesbos twice: in 2020 for three months in the Moria camp, in 2021 for a few weeks in the Kara Tepe camp.And recently in Velika Kladuša.Where he found a completely different situation.Sometimes suspected police officers burn down the houses occupied by refugees - such as the "white house" in which Pakistanis live who whitewashed the soot.Because there is no longer a refugee camp in Velika Kladuša, it was recently closed and the people were shipped to the Lipa camp, 80 kilometers away.A village in the middle of the forest that has been uninhabited since the Bosnian War.The refugees who stayed behind in Velika Kladuša and the newly arrived ones now live in the many ruins left behind by the Bosnian war, in decaying, empty factory buildings or unfinished houses left behind by the people who emigrated to the USA during the Bosnian war."To spend the night, many take their sleeping bags and mattresses and move into the forest when the weather permits, because there they are safer from the police," reports Binder.Their situation on the ground is desolate.There are only a few localities or shops where they are welcome.And the helping NGOs are not particularly popular either.But the Binders left the police alone."That may be due to our solid pensioner appearance," speculates Ulrike Binder."For the border crossing I put extra knitting in the front of the mobile home and a travel guide. You can't simply answer the border guards who ask what you want in Bosnia: We want to help refugees."Compared to official camp times, however, the general situation in the border town has relaxed.Where once thousands camped, there are now only a few hundred.The exact number is difficult to estimate, Martin Binder explains, "because they are not registered anywhere."A nurse treats a refugee, the trunk is her medicine cabinet.Families with children rarely end up stranded in Velika Kladuša. It is mostly young men from North Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan who are traveling alone and who keep trying to cross the border into the EU unnoticed.According to Martin Binder, they are usually tracked down by the Croatian border police."At best, they're caught and taken back to Bosnia. At worst, they're beaten up and humiliated. They're stripped of their clothes, their cell phones are destroyed, and then they're dumped naked in the forest."This has been reported by many of the victims the Binders met."It's often our job to treat the bruises, the nasty bruises. We feed them up to make them fit for the next attempt."How many manage to flee to the EU cannot be estimated."People have told us they've tried 30, 40 times."Of course, those who can afford a tractor have it easier.But that costs two or three thousand euros, the direct trip from Greece to Italy even 15,000, reports Martin Binder.The fact that the refugees are spread over a larger area in Velika Kladuša makes the work of the medical team more difficult.There is no station there that the refugees could come to.That will not be tolerated.There are two people on site: a nurse who coordinates everything and a doctor.Together they visit people, do a round in a rented car every day – with Bosnian license plates so as not to attract attention.Those in need of help report via a Facebook messenger, they make an appointment, treat twisted knees and ankles, infections, skin rashes, suppurating bone injuries, lacerations.This often happens under dire circumstances.Binder remembers operating on a large abscess in a burned-out helicopter hangar, in the dark, with only a headlamp.Ulrike Binder accompanied her husband to Bosnia this time.She has also helped with other NGOs on site, who take care of clothing, water and firewood for the people there and who make provisional repairs to the dilapidated accommodation.The police often get "a rattle", clear accommodations, pour in petrol and burn out the ruins.Then you have to do everything all over again.Makeshift accommodation in an abandoned apartment.Ulrike Binder remembers "filthy ruins" and the great hospitality there.Fateful stories like that of a young Afghan visibly get under her skin: "Now I'm stuck here in this shitty Bosnia," he told her, "keep trying while my mother is seriously ill waiting for me to pay her the money for her send the OP. Actually, I should be in Italy and earning money by now."Ulrike Binder also reports, touched, of the cordiality that always greeted them: "They sit in these filthy ruins, fry a chicken or cook a soup, and they ask you to sit down with them, and then you get something out of a plastic cup 'a Coke."Ulrike Binder went along to "find out what path the people who come to Germany via the Balkan route have to take if I look after them here".Because she has been involved in refugee aid for many years, including in the Reutlingen Asylum Café.She made many friends there and is happy to get to know other cultures and ways of life."The world is becoming more and more open and moving closer together," she says.An Eritrean lives in the Binder's house, one of their three children, daughter Rebekka, works in migration counseling in Augsburg and is married to a Syrian.During his time as a resident doctor in Reutlingen, Martin Binder also looked after the asylum seekers' home in Ringelbach, with on-site consultation hours.The Binders both grew up in Reutlingen.They met as young people while skiing in the Bernese Oberland.Sure, we knew about each other beforehand, Reutlingen was even smaller back then.And both were active in the music scene.She as a choir singer, he as an oboist who financed his medical studies through music.When it comes to the EU's refugee policy, the two get angry.It starts with the EU funds that are intended for the care of the refugees, but never get there.And it continues with the so-called "pushbacks" at the EU's external borders, which are illegal: "If they tow the refugees off the Greek islands back to Turkey, even though they are already in Greek sovereign waters. Or people who are already on are on the island, collect them, put them on the boat and bring them back again."Not to mention the massive use of force by the Croatian border guards.And what is the EU doing?Instead of stopping the illegal pushbacks, they announce that they want to clarify the cases.In fact, that had happened a long time ago."Various NGOs founded the Border Violence Monitoring Network to document these illegal pushbacks," explains Martin Binder: "There have been over 10,000 cases so far. There are two thick volumes that were presented to the EU Commission and Parliament. But the reaction The EU's only concern for this evidence is that they ignore it and uselessly install a new surveillance system that is doomed to fail because it's attached to the Croatian Ministry of the Interior. It's clear where this is headed."Martin Binder operates on an abscess in a burned-out helicopter hangar, a headlamp strapped on."We're not getting anywhere with this policy of isolation," he says. "We have to take in those who have set out and at the same time tackle the causes of the flight. Instead, the British now want to deport asylum seekers back to Rwanda. I feel cold down your back."It's also terrible that people always play down the term "economic refugees," says his wife.After all, no one leaves their homeland who is not really in existential need."As a reasonably humanely thinking person, you help, no matter where someone comes from, what they believe, what they look like."The fact that it is possible to treat people in need humanely and to offer them prospects is now shown by the way the EU is dealing with refugees from Ukraine.Suddenly it goes from 0 to 100, that they get offers that other refugees only dream of."Why does it happen so suddenly and so quickly with you," asks Ulrike Binder, "and with others you have been fighting for decades to make the smallest improvements?"And why is it necessary for a Syrian family to leave their apartment and return to the container accommodation to make room for a Ukrainian family?The refugees she knows here would have to pay for the bus, the Ukrainians wouldn’t.It's a two-tier society.Such injustices visibly pain her.Even if she talks about the moment when she and her husband were simply waved through at the Croatian border while "her boys" were stuck over in Bosnia.She always realizes that: "What value it has to have the right passport."Martin Binder will continue to work for Medical Volunteers International.In the fall he might go to Serbia, to Subotica, near the Hungarian border.Or to the French coastal town of Calais.The restaurant where their wedding was supposed to take place no longer exists.It was bombed in the first days of the war.Valeria Maksimova from Kyiv is now teaching German to refugees in Stuttgart.A conversation about…Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees have been living in Turkey for years.Most of them are exploited as cheap helpers and face an uncertain future.Now many are threatened with deportation.No matter where they go, members of the Roma minority are harassed, discriminated against and persecuted all over the world.Even if they are fleeing the war in Ukraine.Zahra escaped from Somalia.After seven years she sees her family again.The story of a family reunion at Stuttgart Airport.80 years ago, the Nazis carried out the first mass deportation of Württemberg Jews from Stuttgart.What is little known is that three years earlier there had been a kind of dress rehearsal, the "Poland Action".After that, thousands of Jews in the German-Polish…Vera Sompon came to Germany in 2002 and studied social education.Then she founded an association to support migrants from Africa in everyday life.Her credo: "Become active yourself and get involved in society."The Sompon…The war in Ukraine is a manifest act of aggression by Russia.Of the…The racist attacks in August 1992 in Rostock-Lichtenhagen were a beacon.An idle…Do you want to be one of the people who make sustainable journalism possible?Then click here!Be the first to comment!With this registration, you will regularly receive our latest issue by e-mail every Wednesday morning.The KONTEXT:Wochenzeitung has been around since April 2011 and is currently financed by around 1,500 supporters.You too can support KONTEXT – for quality journalism that is independent, critical and profound.with the solos |with a donation |as a memberKONTEXT is an advertising-free and independent newspaper from Stuttgart, which is supported by donations.Every Wednesday online from 12:00 a.m., every Saturday as a print supplement to the nationwide taz.am weekend.Spread the idea of ​​journalism as it should be with us.On the following channels you will find news and information that are independent of our weekly issue.Our website uses cookies.These have two functions: On the one hand, they are required for the basic functionality of our website.On the other hand, we can use cookies to continuously improve our content for you.Since context is free of advertising, the data collected in this way is only used by us and cannot be misused.Revoke consent: privacy policyThese cookies are required for the smooth functioning of our website.With the help of these cookies we try to improve our offer for you.The user flow can be analyzed and assessed using pseudonymised data from website users.Since context is free of advertising, the data collected in this way is only used by us and cannot be misused.