‘They made crosses on our heads’: refugees report abuse by Croatian police
Details have emerged of more than 30 migrants allegedly robbed, beaten and spray-painted with red crosses on their heads by Croatian police officers who said the treatment was the “cure against coronavirus”.
The Guardian has interviewed asylum seekers, obtained photographs and collected dozens of testimonies, including from minors, revealing how the Croatian authorities were laughing and drinking beer while spraypainting migrants attempting to cross the border from Bosnia-Herzegovina, as EU parliamentarians have now begun pushing for an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the abuses.
According to migrants’ accounts, confirmed by numerous charities, at least two groups of migrants were apprehended by military personnel and handed over to police between 6 and 7 May near the Slovenian border, on route 61 in the area of Rijeka.
“We were caught at 3am by a couple of military guys in a green uniform,” said a migrant from Pakistan. “They searched us to make sure we were not smuggling anything and then they called the police. A police van with four officers in black uniforms arrived. They crammed us into the van and took us to a police station where we were photographed. They made us sign some paper. We asked for asylum but they told us to shut up.”
That night at the police station, Croatian officers would have allegedly taken in dozens of asylum seekers, predominantly from Pakistan and
Afghanistan, who were captured in different locations. Following these events, about 4pm on 7 May the Croatian police allegedly piled them into four vans and drove them near to the border with Bosnia.
“Our group was in a van with a glass partition from which I saw the van stop at a store where they bought beer,” said another man from Pakistan. “They were drinking along the way before we stopped near a small river close to Velika Kladuša.”
According to the migrants, that is where the abuse began. The police allegedly asked them to get out of the van one by one. Then, with a spray can, they began painting crosses on their heads and faces.
“They made crosses on our heads and on some guys they coloured their moustaches or foreheads,” said an asylum seeker. “They then made us take off our clothes and shoes, took our money and mobile phones and set fire to our clothes and belongings. Around 10 of them stood in a line and made us walk past them while they beat us with wooden sticks and police batons. After this they pushed us into the river and told us not to come back.”
Of the 33 people interviewed by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), one of the main responders providing healthcare for migrants in Bosnia-Herzegovina, “29 reported being beaten with police batons. A family of two people (father and son) reported being forced to place their heads between the body and the door of a police vehicle, while police officers kicked the vehicle door. The family further reported that the Croatian police fired at them (7 shots) after they had swum across the river to Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
All of the refugees interviewed by the DRC reported having crosses sprayed on their heads with orange or red paint by Croatian police before being forced across the border to Bosnia-Herzegovina. “One group of 11 persons (including an unaccompanied minor) reported that police were drinking beer while ‘marking’ and beating them – beer which they had stopped to buy at a store while they were driving to the border,” said the DRC.
In another case involving four people, interviewees reported Croatian police telling them “this is a medicine for corona”, while painting their heads with crosses. The family of two (a father with his son, a minor) reported that police officers were laughing while spray-painting their heads.
The group of four said that the abuse took place near the village of Glinica; the family of two maintained they were abused on the other side of the border from the village of Sturlic, both in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
“We cannot speculate as to the reasons behind this practice,” said Nicola Bay, the DRC country director for Bosnia. “What is clear however is that ‘branding’ humans with painted crosses is an extreme example of abusive and degrading treatment of people attempting to cross the border to Croatia. While these incidents are truly shocking, they unfortunately seem to fall into a pattern of abuse consistently reported by refugees and migrants attempting to cross the border between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.”
In April alone, DRC teams in Bosnia-Herzegovina recorded 1,641 cases of refugees and migrants pushed back to Bosnia from Croatia. Of these, 891 reported being subjected to violence or physical assault; 1,253 reported having their belongings confiscated or destroyed (set on fire); 871 people said they’d had identity documents confiscated or destroyed by Croatian police; 445 people said they had been denied access to asylum procedures in Croatia, despite having explicitly requested it.
Contacted by the Guardian, the Croatian police and the Croatian interior ministry did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
However, after the Guardian reported the Croatian police’s spraypainting of migrants on 12 May, the country’s interior minister drafted a lengthy rebuttal on the ministry’s website, calling the allegations “completely absurd” and accusing the Guardian of organising a “pre-meditated attack against the Republic of Croatia”.
Following that report, a group of EU parliamentarians in Brussels is pushing for an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the abuses. “We believe the European Commission
should join the investigation efforts of the UN to stop the alleged abuse and hold the perpetrators accountable for their actions,” reads an internal memo circulating among MEPs. “If these allegations prove to be true, this is a serious case of abuse and in clear violation of the Schengen Border Code. In view of the seriousness of the allegations, we expect the Commission to undertake swift and thorough action in order to answer these questions, and to inform the European Parliament as soon as possible.”
“The very fact that of the €6.7m (£6m) which was given (by the EU) to Croatia to deal with border issues, only a paltry €300,000 was given for an independent monitoring mechanism to oversee and ensure that human rights and international law was being upheld, shows the priorities,” said Irish MEP Clare Daly, a member of Independents 4 Change. “They have, in essence, enabled the Croatian authorities and are therefore culpable in the latest round of vicious abuse and unlawful pushbacks. It is an utter scandal, a shameful abandonment of everything they claim to stand over in terms of respect for fundamental rights. Shame on them.”
Despite the protests of journalists, charities and even the UNHCR, all calling for an investigation into the alleged abuses of migrants at the hands of the Croatian police, the EU has not intervened.
“The only conclusion you can reach about why they are silent is that as long as the borders are reinforced, then human rights obligations can be conveniently ignored,’’ said Daly. “For business reasons they are keen on the extension of Schengen and if refugees and migrants are sacrificed in delivering that then clearly for them, so be it. It makes me sick and ashamed to be a member of an EU which would operate in this way. I have no doubt whatsoever that the commission is fully aware that the allegations are correct and they have sacrificed refugees and migrants and their obligations under international law, in the interests of extending Schengen for big business & geo-political reasons. [They] will not be allowed to get away with this, accountability must prevail, or the EU is over.”
In an email the Croatian Ministry of the Interior denied police had acted violently towards migrants, but added that “an extensive investigation of the allegations” would be conducted.
The email suggested migrants could have fabricated the news. “We find it highly probable that thousands of migrants are ready to use all means at their disposal to accomplish their goal, including giving false testimonies against police officers,” it said. “When lacking evidence, the simplest and easiest thing to do is to fabricate events which never happened or to portray real events in a distorted manner.”