Crossing Continents

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Crossing Continents: Bulgaria: the people smugglers

Bulgaria: the people smugglers

BBC Radio 4 - Crossing Continents, Bulgaria: the people smugglers

The men who risk jail to help migrants across Europe – meeting the people smugglers.

Migration is a global political issue. We’ve heard many stories of hardship told by migrants, but almost nothing from those who enable their journeys: the people smugglers.

Migration is high on the political agenda in countries across Europe, as the number of asylum seekers rises once more. As well as those who risk life and limb on flimsy boats in the Mediterranean, thousands more come via the Balkans, many of them through Turkey and across the border into Bulgaria. They don’t stay there long. Their preferred destinations are further west, Germany perhaps or Britain. And while the migrants’ stories have become well-known in recent years, we hear relatively little from the people who enable their journeys, the people smugglers. 

For Crossing Continents, Nick Thorpe has been to the north-west of Bulgaria, where it meets Serbia to the west and Romania across the Danube to the north. There he meets two men who worked as drivers for a smuggling organisation, shuttling migrants from Sofia, the capital, to the border. 

Presented by Nick Thorpe
Produced by Tim Mansel

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