THE WINTER OUTSIDE CAMP LIPA

Despite the extreme conditions, People on the Move choose, for different reasons, not to submit to the policy of closure that tries to keep and control people in camps.

Those who dare to spend the winter outside the camps place themselves at the mercy of autonomous organizations. However, it is impossible for us to support people to the extent that would be appropriate, also because we are again dependent on capacities and especially donations. Therefore, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your donations, which are essential for us to be able to provide better care.


In spite of everything, we try as best we can to ensure the bare necessities so as not to leave people alone with inhumane policies. We as a collective position ourselves against the instrumentalization of the camps for isolation and wish to be able to enable people to be helped in the places where it is necessary and they want it themselves, so that they can reach the places they want.


In addition to circumstances that are now increasingly inhumane for People on the Move, winter also makes our working conditions more difficult. In Bihać, temperatures are currently falling below zero every day, so that the water tanks, which are one of the essential foundations of life, can freeze.
In addition to water and food, firewood is also an important survival resource with which people must be supplied on a daily basis. Due to the lack of dry wood, people on the move often have to choose between cooking meals or heating. The mountain range, which opens up behind the town of Bihać and represents the border crossing for the game, is snowed in. It is life-threatening to go out at this time of year.

So some people retreat to abandoned houses, which we also try to make more habitable through construction work. While this work in the summer was limited to providing energy supply through solar cells, it now also consists of designing stove-heated rooms so that people can live more protected from the winter. Those who do not find refuge in abandoned houses try to make their tents more comfortable with blankets and tarpaulins. On some cold days we can ensure warm showers, we can always distribute clothes, but above all the coldness of politics, with which people are abandoned, can only be combated symptomatically by us.