Dimitris Kleanthis

Forensics

There is a big river in northern Greece named Axios that crosses the borders between Greece and North Macedonia.From 2014 to 2016 the thick forest on the river banks helped many thousands of refugees from countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya to hide and illegally pass the borders from Greece to North Macedonia and from there continue their journey to northern Europe, in search of a better life. I walked along the same paths next to the river but didn't come close to any of them.I only saw far from me some fleeting human figures, figures that would disappear at the slightest sign of another person's presence.The fear of being arrested and detained indefinitely in Greece was very big and made them move very carefully. I found however many objects scattered on both sides of the river, ephemera they were leaving behind.Tents, shoes, clothes, cooking and personal hygiene tools, pills, torn documents, life jackets, even a pocket edition of the Koran among other things.Some were left in good condition and in visible places, destined probably for the next who would pass from there as an act of solidarity and mutual aid. Under a bridge that crossed the river I found some messages written in Arabic and English : “We proud to be Afghan”, “ Keep your hope to reach to aim”, “War is forever”, “Waiting, waiting, waiting”. Seeing all these, clear traces of people in a tragic fate, I was thinking that in a way these left objects were forensic evidence of global crimes, crimes of religious, political and economic violence that has condemned hundreds of thousands of people in the nightmarish life of the refugee, a life where nothing is stable, a bare life where the right to have an identity is lost in the constant movement, in the permanent temporariness. These items scattered next to the river were the only tangible proof of these ineffable people’s existence, evidence of a violent and unjust global reality.