What has just happened?
In July 2020, a Bosnian volunteer handed over more than “1,600 pages of media reports and personal testimonies to Austria’s parliament, documenting the brutality of Croatia’s border police against irregular migrants”. [[1]] The Border Violence Monitoring Network has observed an “increase in violence against refugees on the Croatian side since spring 2017”. [[2]] Yet most, if not all, reports of violence by Croatian police continue to go unchecked.
What does this mean?
Reports in the media have revealed the appalling conditions and treatment of refugees and migrants on borders and migrant and refugee camps. Migrants and refugees are not only suffering violence in Bosnia, but from “groups, individuals or police officers who believe that rough treatment will discourage them from staying in the country”. [[3]]
Such vile reports are not new, in fact, at all forms of borders around the world, migrants and refugees frequently experience discrimination. Including “arbitrary decision-making, unlawful profiling and disproportionate interference with the right to privacy, torture and sexual and gender-based violence, dangerous interception practices, and prolonged or arbitrary detention”. [[4]]
The Schengen border code, which sets out rules on the control of EU borders, explicitly states that “border checks should be carried out in such a way as to fully respect human dignity”. However, it is clear that such codes have been ignored. [[5]]The degradation experienced by people simply looking for security in Europe by “painting crosses on their heads”, being “forced back across the border, beaten, stripped, having had their documents burned, or having had dogs set on them”, are just a few of many incidents that has been reported. [[6]][[7]] Such abhorrent acts are a “symptom of a wider trend of violent pushbacks and other severe human rights violations taking place at the EU's external borders”, which have also been seen in Hungary, Greece and Bulgaria. [[8]][[9]]
Concurrently, there have also been instances of “hate speech and intolerance towards refugees and migrants across the region - including attempts to portray them as the main carriers of coronavirus and a threat to public health”. [[10]] Some countries have even “imposed mandatory quarantines on refugee and migrant camps”, without providing those who have been confined in such camps with “essential support or the resources to effectively protect themselves against infection”. [[11]][[12]]
There has been no “public denunciation, no call for the Croatian government to properly investigate the evidence or serious attempt to engage in independent monitoring” of the horrific treatment of refugees. [[13]] This most likely has to do with the fact that “national law and administrative regulations can also characterize borders as zones of exclusion or exception for human rights obligations and seek to exempt them from compliance with the human rights safeguards, checks and balances that are usually embedded in national laws”. [[14]] Which in turn, is only allowing, even promoting these violent incidents to continue and accelerate in severity.
Written by Connie Barnes
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References:
[1] ‘Croatian police brutality against migrants reported to Austria’ (Al Jazeera, June 30th, 2020)
[2] 'The Croatian Case – Border Violence Monitoring Network' (Border Violence Monitoring Network) <https://www.borderviolence.eu/the-croatian-case/> accessed 1 October 2020.
[3] Ibid
[4] ‘Recommended Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights at International Borders’ (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Migration/OHCHR_Recommended_Principles_Guidelines.pdf
[5] Official Journal of the European Union, 'On A Union Code on The Rules Governing the Movement of Persons Across Borders (Schengen Borders Code)' (2016) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32016R0399
[6] Eve Geddie, Birte Hald, Anita Bay Bundegaard, ‘EU silence on sickening scenes at Croatian border’ (EU Observer, June 23rd, 2020)
[7] Ibid
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid
[11] Ibid
[12] Ibid
[13] Ibid
[14] Ibid
Disclaimer: This article (and any information accessed through links in this article) is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.