The reports on pushbacks and violence against migrants on the Croatia-Bosnia border are shocking and need to be thoroughly investigated, European Union Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said on Thursday.
On Wednesday, Croatian commercial RTL television showed videos of men wearing ski masks pushing back migrants from Croatia across a backwater of the Korana river, hitting them with batons such as those used by riot police. Some of the men also wore vests like those of riot police.
RTL said the footage was from June and that it was taken during an eight-month journalistic investigation in which an RTL crew took part with colleagues from Lighthouse Reports, an investigative journalistic network based in the Netherlands, the Swiss SRF Rundschau, the German ARD, ARD Monitor, the French Liberation, the Dutch Pointer, the Croatian Novosti, and the German Der Spiegel.
Croatian authorities formed a task force that would go in the field after the release of the videos and investigate the case.
The EU commissioner condemned the actions seen in the video.
“Some of these reports are shocking and I am extremely concerned about these reports that have been recently published. Of course, this needs to be investigated but there seem to be – they seem to indicate some kind of orchestration of violence at our external borders and there seems to be convincing evidence of misuse of EU funds. And of course, this needs to be investigated thoroughly,” said Johansson.
Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Dunja Mijatovic joined the condemnations, noting that the latest report adds to a “long line of reports on unacceptable normalisation of pushbacks and violence against asylum seekers and migrants.”
She called for urgent action and investigation.
Researcher for Amnesty International Jelena Sesar noted that this was only the latest of evidence of the unlawful pushbacks and violence against asylum-seekers and migrants happening on the EU's external borders, particularly in Greece, Poland, Spain, and Croatia.
“Lighthouse’s report includes disturbing images of masked police and border officials beating migrants and asylum-seekers with sticks as they force them out of Croatia, in blatant violation of EU law. Yet by their own admission, European Commission funding has been used by Croatian authorities to buy police equipment and even pay the salaries of border officials, rendering the EU complicit in these violations,” Sesar was quoted as saying on the Amnesty International official website.
Sesar called out the EU for “turning a blind eye to the staggering violation of EU law,” while continuing to “finance police and border operations in some of these countries.”
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