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Pushed Back Seven Times
The main respondent is a 22 year-old man from Egypt. We sat in the snow with him and his group of friends who he crossed the border with to do the interview. This group of five left on Friday the 29th of November 2024 to cross the border from Bosnia into Croatia. Once they crossed the border into Croatia, they began to walk in the forest there. They walked for three days, and each day, they encountered a police car and escaped from it. However, on the third day, the police released dogs into the forest, and they were found by the dogs when they were trying to go to the bus station to take the bus. The police then put them in the car and took them to prison. They took their phones and money. They were jailed for two days and released on the third day. When they were in prison, there was not enough food. They were given only one meal a day (bread and cream cheese). There was very little communication between them and the police and they did not explain why the group was being put in jail. The police were also speaking English, but none of the group spoke English very well and they were not provided with a translator.
Lipa Camp, where the respondents were taken back to. The exact location of the pushback incident is not known.
However, they did communicate that they wanted to go to the refugee camp in Zagreb to apply for asylum. The police laughed at this, and said that they would take them to the camp tomorrow. The very next day the police pushed them back over the Bosnian border, so the respondent thinks they were simply telling them this to calm them down. On the third day of their detention, they released them at the border and began to treat them violently. The main respondent describes that the police were dressed in blue and on the back of their clothes was written the word “police”. From their description, we think it was the Croatian border police. There was one normal police car, and the second one was a bigger van.
The police put them in the back of this second van and drove recklessly to the border. They were so reckless that one of the people threw up in the back of the van. Once they arrived, they were beaten by the police with their batons on their face and body and kicked them. After the police left, the group walked a little bit until they arrived in a Bosnian village. In the village, they went to a gas station and took a taxi from there to Lipa camp. Once they arrived, they borrowed money from someone to pay for the taxi.
overview
5 people ,
from Egypt and Iraq,
aged 22, 36, 42, 44.