Death in the Alps | Unreported World

[Music] the alps the mountains that mark the border between italy and france [Music] every week in these frozen peaks people are risking their lives but they're not here for fun so this is uh this unmarked grave here is the one of an african man who was found dead in the mountains they initially called him alpha but nobody really knows what his name is or who he is his family probably don't even know he's he's dead alpha's not alone locals say many more probably died their bodies never recovered they're often trafficked from north africa and if denied asylum in italy they risk crossing the mountains to try their luck in france [Music] this is hassan he's 27 he's from darfur in war-torn sudan he says that four years ago he had to leave his home after violence broke out in his village he's pretty shy but he's agreed to talk to me he says he traveled across chad where he was robbed by bandits he walked and hitched over 3 000 miles to libya where he was forced to work by human traffickers before risking a journey to italy in a smuggler's boat he says italy denied him asylum and if sent refugees back to sudan in the past his only option is to gamble with his life one more time by trying to cross the mountain into france [Music] it's 6 30 p.m close to the french italian border is that police on the left and there's cops everywhere shut your shut your camera what's up they want to see your id yep we're all right it's people like hassan without european passports they're looking for steph the mountaineer who's driving us says she's rescued many who got into trouble climbing into the mountains to avoid police they are risking their life in their home site or warning away from the police but you know in the mountain everybody is spending one night in the mountain especially in wintertime with snow so you're wet you're cold you're frozen it's dangerous she tells me some of these mountains are more than two and a half thousand metres high and the temperature at night can drop down to -20 degrees she's brought me to clavier an italian ski resort close to the border there's tourists about but we spot hassan on the road he's borrowed warm clothes from a refuge and he's gonna cross tonight he says we can go with him but he wants us to keep quiet because police patrol around here it's an extremely dangerous thing he's doing because well it's an auditious thing he's doing because he's just walking i think he's gonna walk straight across i don't know what path he's gonna take but we're gonna leave that up to him let's see what happens here [Music] i follow him onto the ski slope and he heads for the cover of the trees [Music] the border checkpoint is just a mile up the road [Music] we go deeper into the forest but he spooked by light up he ahead just shot off um what's driving him is a is a new life i can't help or hinder him i'm going to try and follow him at a distance this is it for him the border is here the police are here it's dangerous it's just up ahead he'll stream to our right he can't cross that so he's just gonna skirt around after about an hour i catch him up [Music] he's got directions that he got from a guy in a refuge but they don't seem to be doing any good he's got he's got a we've got a map written on a piece of paper and he thinks he's going the other way now i'm extremely worried now because he's looking at the floor for a bit and then he was looking up there for a bit so he's been following this route for over an hour do you know where you're going you don't know where you're going we passed the road but right now what you've got right now right here you've got a fan lost in a mountain not knowing where he's going and it's becoming really unsafe [Music] we end up back on a ski slope i ask him if he knows how far it is to france [Music] medina on france he's everything on the line right now he says he could be killed if he's sent back to sudan france is his only option i'm worried for him but it's got to be his decision foreign i hope you make it [Music] i'm hoping and praying for him but quite honestly i'm scared for him it takes us an hour to get down off the mountain steph picks us up and the police are on us checking we're not migrants [Music] they ask what do we do around here we don't know if they've spotted hassan as well would you expect if if i was looking for people crossing would i see them on yes yeah we cross the border into france [Music] we don't know if he's lost her or freezing hiding from the police [Music] so we're looking out for him but i'm very worried i i it's cold and it's he didn't have a he didn't have a backpack he didn't have any food or water with him no because he needs to be light as mister as he can and you know he needs to be not seen by the police [Music] we drive down the winding mountain road it's now 90 minutes since we left hassan and there's a man maybe tonight is him this is him this is him yeah we need to take him sorry oh my god [Music] i can't believe after all that he's here in france on the road hey you're so here you're strong my man i'm good this is unbelievable this is unbelievable [Music] i think we i think we need to get him to um a doctor or someone some health professional to get him checked out yeah yeah i think also can you check his feet and if it's too wet you take off the shoes yeah yeah yeah we take him to the nearest french town bryanson to a refuge run by volunteers early morning just down from the very mountains has sand crossed this is mongenev a french ski resort full of families and school trips i wonder how many of them know that every night people like hassan are risking it all right up there just over there is the border that's the french italian border the police are there they'd stop anybody coming through so around this area this line through the mountains is what people are trying to cross over there in france to get a better life i meet another guy who like hassan made it over the mountain but four years ago his name's mamadou he's from mali and he's now got a permit to live in france hey how you doing bonjour he works full time in briana was rescued and he was lucky to survive [Music] [Music] i want to catch up with hassan to see if he's got any injuries the refuge in bryanson has had over 9 000 like him passed through in the last three years inside he's being treated by a volunteer doctor [Music] he's lucky he's got a few scripts but the doc says he's gonna be all right foreign outside the refuge steph's telling me that even though hassan's made it here he can't relax so even when they get to this refuge just here they don't feel safe no they don't feel safe because they are not safe because the police can uh catch them in brian's home as well and bring them back to italy it's like after all that stuff with hassan i just want to be able to say to him oh well let's go into town and have a coffee and stuff but he can't he can't do that no he cannot well it's uh to his own own risk he can be catched by the police and bring back to italy so he better stay inside till he goes to marseille and ask for a zealand migrants and refugees can be sent back to the first eu country they arrived in for many like hassan it's italy [Music] i'm leaving france heading back over the border part of the reason refugees and migrants want to leave italy and go into france is because of this guy salvini who used to be the interior minister and his policies make it made it particularly hostile to refugees and migrants in italy and a lot of the people who are who are coming from italy to france are from former french colonies in north and west africa so they want to go to france because they think well i can speak the language i might be able to get a job there the new italian government is more liberal but salvini's policies live on and italy's asylum rejections have gone up every year since 2017. 7 30 p.m on the italian side of the border where oops uh train station and we're going towards the buses a lot of tourists just got off the train and they're heading towards the bus and our bus will take them from oaks into brian's on so across the french italian border and we're looking to see if there's any people who who are going to try and cross tonight tourists don't need to worry about dodging border police but i spot some guys get off the train from turin they're from west africa and they're nervous but they say they're heading for france [Music] later 15 kilometers up the road in clavier we meet up with them [Applause] this is sorry he's from guinea and he's 23. [Music] that's the village did you say now to this place here you have to go up you see the cruise yeah you have to go up okay before no he tells me he had a permit to live in germany for two years but when he expired he was deported back to italy he's already been caught by border patrols four times trying to cross over into france [Music] this is a prison attempt to get across the border we've just passed a bunch of flats you can see that people are in there [Music] i've heard that locals sometimes call the police when they spot people trying to cross at on the night and every so often probably because i'm paranoid i think i'm gonna hear a schedule with the police a car drives right past us so they scramble up into a steep forest come off the road one of the gentlemen was explaining to me that the police are just out there and they might see them we are now looking right down onto the police checkpoint [Music] the guys can't hire to get away from it [Music] this lad at the back is really struggling every time they make a break very he just starts laying down and crawling [Music] this lad is literally crawling for his life [Music] we finally hit the edge of a french ski resort sorry and his mate hunker down planning their next move i've seen border police all over this place so we've left them to it now headed under that tree they've made it into france and we're just going to be a danger to them getting found out so we're off [Music] there's so many cops about i can't see how sorry and his mates can get past them but as soon as we left them we saw the police and then we saw the police again and we just thought well let's let's just get out of here now i don't know where they are um hopefully hopefully i'll find out when i get back to uh back to brian's on i'll look for them in the morning i guess back in brian's on i want to catch up with hassan who's still at the refuge steph set up a meeting with corinne a social worker she's helped people like hassan get asylum in the past this is a huge moment in hassan's life there may be a life in france for him he might have to go back to italy i don't know he's very strong we've seen that but right now i'm seeing the absolute opposite i'm seeing somebody shrunken who's vulnerable who's who people are trying to help who people are lifting [Music] back at the brianson refuge i hear sorry has made it but it was his fifth attempt to get across first time the police catch you go back yeah a number in number the road yes you come two times the three times you can pass you know now what is the police you have simone experience to pass now he says since he came to europe both his parents died now his future lies here i need the one place where i would say yes i'll mix job i'll job i'll make family i would say pacific now in africa not have family this is my story now that night sorry heads for marseille so he's been taken in to the train station by a couple of volunteers just to make sure that the police don't pounce on him uh make sure he gets off all right [Music] sorry how are you feeling you're good you're good you're gonna get tomorrow say yeah okay it's completely into the unknown for him because what i do know is that in marseille it's a rough town and there are just lots of people like sorry on the streets he says he does have a contact in martial but it's all very patchy whether you can steer there tonight or whether you can contact them and all that kind of stuff so this is just like another leap of faith for him a couple of weeks after i leave i hear that hassan has left the refuge headed for a city in northern france but sorry is sleeping rough on the streets of marseilles [Music] so [Music] thanks for watching click the logo to subscribe for more award-winning documentaries from the unreported world team we upload videos every sunday keeping you up to date with content from all over the world you

Channel: Unreported World

Views: 89,913

Rating: 4.7918725 out of 5

Keywords: Unreported world, unreported world documentary, migrantcrisis, migrantroute, migrantjourney, seekingasylum, theAlps, Italy, France, humandocumentary

Id: k14UGomCsSM

Length: 23min 51sec (1431 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020