Amnesty calls on EU to do more against abuse of migrants

BELGRADE: The European Union should do more against ”systematic, unlawful and frequently violent pushbacks” of asylum seekers by Croatia and shares the blame for the abuse, the Amnesty International rights group said in a report published on Wednesday.

It urged the EU to “decisively” call on Croatia to halt police violence at its borders and use “appropriate measures to ensure Croatia’s full compliance with international and EU law.”

The European Commission expressed concern about the report and said it was in contact with the Croatian authorities.

People arriving across the EU frontier from Bosnia are “routinely denied an opportunity to seek international protection and are often violently pushed back,” Amnesty said.

It surveyed 94 refugees between June and January for the report — nearly all of whom said that they were pushed back by Croatian police, often violently. Many attempted to pass multiple times.

They reported beatings, lengthy detainment, harassment without access to asylum procedures and removal of clothes, shoes, mobile phones and other property. Some said they were forced to walk for kilometres barefoot in the freezing weather.

The mountainous Croatia-bosnia border became the main Balkan gateway into the EU a year ago, as migrants and refugees tried to avoid the fenced-off Hungarian border with Serbia and a long trek through the flatlands west of the Croatia’s border with Serbia.

Several thousand people are stranded near the border, in the Bosnian towns of Bihac and Velika Kladusa. They live in abandoned factories, and the authorities are poorly equipped to deal with the crisis.

But problems along the Western Balkans route “are not solely a byproduct of... anti-migration practices” of those countries on migrants’ path, Amnesty said. European Commission spokesperson Mina Andreeva said they had seen Amnesty’s findings.

— dpa