Cinzia D'Ambrosi

The Hate Hurts projects investigates and exposes structural violence against refugees and asylum seekers. In 2015, I was invited to take on a photography residency in Athens in Greece. It was the time in which refugees were escaping their war ravaged countries seeking safety in Europe using the Balkan route. Athens had many refugees on the street, in parks, in squares. The project began by the accounts that I was receiving of violence from police and security forces. Since then, I have travelled back and forth in the Balkan region, mostly along borders areas.
In my quest to investigate the enormity and the structurality of the violence inflicted on refugees, I have been recording accounts even where access has been very difficult. I entered centres where securities had denied me entry, been in squatted building, abandoned premises and in uncharted areas, in forests along the borders of Hungary, Croatia and Serbia. My reporting has taken place in the form of audio recording, photographs and videos. Often in very limited time, I met with refugees and recorded their visible scars, their photographs of wounds and aftermaths episodes of destruction of possessions (such as mobiles, tents, clothes, shoes). I have created a dedicated website where these accounts are uploaded as well as I publish material that refugees send to me for this purpose.
The accounts are horrendous: dogs unleashed to bite, bones broken, knees smashed with electric batons, knives, skin being pulled ‘like a Kosher’. Humiliation is another tactic adopted by border police; being left naked in the cold winter weather to walk to the nearest village. And also emotional and psychological trauma caused by indefinite detention and limbo conditions. The effects of these on emotional well being is tangible. The scale of physical violence and the psychological harm is not abating, rather recent accounts that I took in Bosnia Hercegovina point to heightened cruelty, and this time from Croatia police. The scale of violence is so widespread, that women and children have being also indiscriminately subjected to.
I am working on the Hate Hurts project to bring to light the existing and ongoing violence and this must stop. I am also bringing to attention how violence is systematic and linked to political nationalistic gains, taking hold in Europe. Collectively we need to be aware of the danger of this.