Wednesday June 23, 2021
“Women pushed across the EU border”
Croatia justifies pushbacks
An international research network films Croatian border police during the deportation of women and children to Bosnia-Herzegovina. The government in Zagreb does not deny the rejections, but calls them legal. The incidents could have consequences in Brussels.
The Croatian police are deporting allegedly vulnerable asylum seekers to Bosnia and Herzegovina without giving them the chance to apply for asylum. In any case, this is the result of joint research by “Spiegel”, Lighthouse Reports, SRF Rundschau, ARD Studio Vienna and the Croatian newspaper “Novosti”.
The researchers succeeded in filming the so-called pushbacks for the first time. According to their own statements, within a week they documented the illegal deportations of around 65 asylum seekers, including pregnant women and small children, some with disabilities. In the pictures, the Croatian border guards are clearly recognizable, it said.
The so-called pushbacks violate Croatian, European and international law. At the request of the magazine, the Croatian Ministry of the Interior announced that the actions involved legal refusals to enter the country directly at the border. Here it is not necessary to determine the “needs of the migrants”. The Ministry of the Interior ignored the fact that those seeking protection stated that they had already penetrated deep into Croatian territory before being deported, the newspaper reported. In this case, EU law prohibits deportation across the green border and also stipulates that an asylum procedure should be made possible on request.
EU Commissioner agrees to investigate
After viewing the videos, EU parliamentarians fear for the credibility of the EU, the magazine continued. The EU Commission must force Croatia to grant asylum seekers an asylum procedure, said the Dutch MEP Tineke Strik. The Croatian government is also threatened with trouble because of a report by the Council of Europe’s Anti-Torture Committee. Behind the scenes it is said that the completed but not yet published report confirms the allegations against the border guards. The Croatian government is against a publication. The Croatian Interior Ministry denies that, it says in the “Spiegel” report.
The EU Commissioner responsible, Ylva Johansson, admitted on request that she had received numerous similar reports in the past and that every single allegation had to be investigated. However, during their visits, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković had shown understanding and promised to establish an independent mechanism to monitor human rights at the border.
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