Laika's Balkan Route Posters Denounce Migrant Suffering

Laika, a secret-identity street artist from Rome, has created a series of posters along the Balkan Route in Bosnia and Herzegovina to denounce the conditions faced by migrants. She visited the border between Bosnia and Croatia, specifically in Lipa, Bihać, and Velika Kladuša in the Una-Sana Canton. The four posters depict: a man whose back is scarred by border police beatings, with the scars forming the letters 'EU'; a child with frozen tears; a woman pleading with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who appears not to listen; and a girl jumping rope made of barbed wire. Laika describes the migrants' ordeal as 'the game,' a term they use for the perilous journey from Turkey through former Yugoslav countries to Germany, filled with obstacles like barbed wire, barriers, drones, and police violence. She met individuals like Ahmed from Pakistan, stuck in Bosnia for five years dreaming of working in a hotel, and Brahim, a Berber youth from Algeria, who recounts illegal pushbacks in Trieste. Laika calls on the EU to welcome these people, guarantee humane conditions, and punish the violence, stating that silence makes Europeans complicit in human rights violations.