Mourning, Memory, and the Human Cost of Fortress Europe: Remembering the victims of 2024's Drina tragedy
Image: The Drina river near where the tragedy took place. Zoran Cvetkovic / Wikimedia Commons CC3.0
Today, 22 August, marks the first anniversary of the capsizing of a small boat in the Drina River, along the natural border between Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Over the two days that followed in 2024, the bodies of 12 victims of the tragedy were recovered from the Bosnian bank.
Two small boats left the Serbian side of the Drina on the night of 21 August. As the Serbian NGO Klikaktiv noted in its recently-published report into deaths on the Drina,
“One successfully made it to the other side, and passengers, including 12 minors, were rescued. The other boat, however, sank under the weight of too many passengers.”
Survivors told rescuers there were roughly 25–30 people on the small, overloaded boat when it capsized at night near Tegare/Bratunac, while crossing from Serbia into Bosnia. Many managed to swim or scramble to the banks; authorities found 18 alive, including three children. Some reports at the time stated that 10 of the survivors were children, six of whom were unaccompanied.
Following the tragedy, identified victims were buried according to their religious traditions, while one person lies unnamed next to them in the Muslim cemetery in Loznica. Among the dead was a young Syrian family from Idlib; Ahmad Ibrahim Hilal, his wife Khadija Najib Shaaban, and their nine-month-old daughter Lana. Their lives were cut short in what is often described as an ‘accident,’ but is, in fact, mass murder; carried out by European governments and institutions that could guarantee safety but choose instead to fortify borders. Other victims included Mustafa (15) and Ammar (20), also from Syria. On 14 July 2023—just five weeks before Lana, Mustafa, and Abdulwahed and the others lost their lives—the body of another man, whose name is unknown, was recovered from the same river.
A constant threat to life
By denying freedom of movement to people seeking refuge, governments weaponise borders like the Drina until, like the nation-states that claim them, they cease to be ‘natural’ at all. Landscapes are transformed into tools of exclusion, deployed against an “invasion” that exists only within the racist, xenophobic, and colonial discourse, once monopolised by the far right, that now increasingly defines Europe’s political centre.
Between 2024 and April 2025, the Serbian NGO Klikaktiv documented at least 43 deaths along the Drina — likely an underestimated figure, and one that continues to rise. In July 2024 alone, a body was reportedly recovered each week from rivers and lakes in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the borders of Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia.
Image: From the report ‘Death and Disappearance on the Drina River,’ published by Klikaktiv, June 2025
So far this summer, two people have drowned in the Drina. Most recently, on 12 August, the body of a person was found under one of its bridges near the Šepak border crossing, on the Bosnian side. Whilst their identity has not been confirmed, it is reported that they were ‘most likely a man who is a foreign citizen’.
Collective Mourning for Lives Cut Short
Navigating the emotions that death provokes is profoundly challenging. When faced with the death of human beings whom we have probably never known personally, a sense of inadequacy often arises. Our thoughts go out to their families, friends and fellow travellers who may have witnessed their last moments, as well as to their local communities, and those who found their bodies.
To counter this sense of inadequacy and despair, we would like to re-emphasise the importance of collective mourning without borders; calling on everyone—local communities, activists, organisations—to take responsibility for preserving the memory of those who are buried thousands of kilometres away from their loved ones, and just as far from where they had hoped to find refuge.
As we reported in our latest research, there are dozens of graves in Serbia which lie unmarked or in a state of increasing disrepair,.. Bringing a flower, or taking care of the maintenance of crosses or wooden plaques, has a significance that goes beyond the gesture itself: it is an act of solidarity, a hand extended, against Fortress Europe, and in recognition and affirmation of the humanity from which it seeks to separate us.
Today we stand in solidarity, and join the silenced grief of the families and loved ones of all those who tried to fulfil their lives somewhere in Europe, but whose young lives were instead brutally swept away, far from home, at this border.
Against the erosion of humanity, in life and in death.
Words by Sara Chianchiano and Poppy G, with research from Abbie Adcock
Image: ‘NN’ graves in Loznica main cemetery, October 2024, Collective Aid