Croatian border police are burning the clothes, cell phones and passports of asylum seekers who manage to reach the country from Bosnia, according to the humanitarian organization No Name Kitchen (NKK). An NNK report, to which you have had access The Guardian, With photographs of burned objects, as well as testimonies of sexual assaults and beatings by police, it brings together the latest alleged evidence of brutality against people trying to cross the European Union’s borders.
NNK is an independent movement present in the border areas of the Balkans and the Mediterranean, where it provides humanitarian aid to people affected by violent returns and other forms of abuse.
Every day, thousands of people from South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa and, increasingly, China, attempt to cross the Balkans in a bid to enter the EU. Facilities to accommodate them are scarce and these people are forced to spend most of their arduous journey in makeshift camps or train stations. Many of them are stopped and searched by the Croatian border police. There are accounts of theft and violence forcing people to turn around and return to Bosnia, where thousands of asylum seekers may be left abandoned, in often subzero temperatures.
These pushbacks are a blatant violation of international law, which states that asylum seekers must be able to submit their applications once they are within a country’s borders. NNK detailed the locations of eight large “burn piles” in which Croatian police officers allegedly incinerated people’s personal belongings and documents they needed to apply for asylum upon arrival in the EU.
Activists say some burned mobile phones may contain evidence of abuse by Croatian police, as asylum seekers managed to take photos and videos of the actions.
NNK was aware of these burning piles, as described by some of the people they had helped deported from Croatia, but had until now been unable to verify these accounts. Activists traveled to the Bosnian-Croatian border in late 2023 and early 2024 to collect evidence of the burned piles mentioned in testimony.
The organization identified locations in areas known for returns and was able to document the destruction of identity documents, business bags, hundreds of phones, shoes, glasses, official documents, portable batteries , money and other everyday objects. The images collected coincide with the stories of those expelled.
He also collected testimonies denouncing police violence at the borders. In December 2023, a 23-year-old pregnant Moroccan woman reported being sexually assaulted by Croatian officers before guards burned her belongings, as well as those of others in her group. The woman, who was traveling with her husband, another woman and three children, said a border guard subjected her to an invasive strip search, which included the inside of her genitals, and threatened to kill her. violate. The search “was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” the woman said: “I would have preferred him to hit me rather than search me like that.”
According to the woman’s account, after the guards let the group leave as they turned back toward Bosnia, the officers burned the items confiscated from them.
According to another testimony, as early as November 2023, a group of four Moroccan men were beaten by police officers who then burned their property.
According to this testimony, the police forced the men to walk barefoot in the burning ashes, threatening them with baton blows. NNK activists say the Moroccan man they spoke with suffered burns to the soles of his feet.
Croatia denies abuses
Despite testimonies from aid workers and journalists, Croatia consistently denies deporting asylum seekers to Bosnia or using violence against them. Recently, NNK presented its evidence to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards.
A spokesperson for the Croatian Interior Ministry said the government had a “zero tolerance policy towards any possible illegal activities committed by its staff” and had an independent mechanism to monitor the police behavior. Regarding the testimonies of the pregnant woman and the group of four Moroccan men, the spokesperson stressed that “it is totally inconceivable that such an incident would occur without immediately reporting it to the police.”
The spokesperson notes that human traffickers are often responsible for violence and theft at the border, and that police have documented “numerous cases of fabricated complaints.”
“Regarding the allegations that Croatian police burn items they confiscated from migrants, we would like to point out that, to avoid being returned to Croatia as applicants for international protection, migrants sometimes destroy their documents and abandon their personal belongings when attempting to cross the border illegally. border,” specifies the spokesperson.
In 2019, then-Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović appeared to acknowledge these returns in an interview with Swiss television channel SFR. Although he denied it for months, on that trip to Switzerland he acknowledged that police had used force, but denied that the returns were illegal.
In 2021, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Croatian police were responsible for the death of a six-year-old Afghan girl, Madina Hussiny, who, along with her family, was forced to return to Serbia by the railway track. She died when hit by a train.
Translation by Emma Reverter
