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“We were treated like animals” 40 people beaten, stripped and abandoned in the forest.
A group of around forty men — of Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian, and Palestinian origin — were victims of a violent pushback at the border between Bosnia and Croatia. The respondent, a forty-year-old Egyptian man, was traveling that night with two of his Egyptian companions. The group had departed from Serbia and were transported by smugglers in a van to the Bosnian-Croatian border. From there, they walked for about an hour and a half, following the smugglers’ directions. The respondent said they did not know the exact route because the smugglers were in full control of the group.
Location where the group crossed the border
When they reached the indicated point, they found five units of Croatian police waiting, with a dog unleashed and without a muzzle. The dog was very aggressive: once released, it bit a man on his right shoulder, knocking him to the ground. The police were armed with both flexible and rigid batons made of heavy plastic, shaped like baseball bats. As soon as the group was stopped, the officers began beating people randomly and firing shots into the air, shouting orders no one could understand. Everyone raised their hands to show they were not resisting, and no one tried to escape, yet they were all hit and attacked by the dog. After being apprehended, the police ordered everyone to strip completely, leaving them only in t-shirts and underwear, without shoes. The respondent reported that the group was forced to walk naked through the forest for a long time in the cold, while the dog kept barking and the officers continued to hit them. All phones were destroyed, their money was confiscated, and even food and water were taken away. The respondent emphasized that the tone of the officers was humiliating and aggressive, and that the entire group were “treated like animals”. The respondent explained to the police that they only wanted to cross peacefully to reach Europe. Once the search was over, the police loaded the clothes and food of all forty people into one van, while the forty men, many of them injured, were crammed into a large white van with a capacity of about twenty. The officers shut the doors and left them inside for two hours, with no air. The respondent reported that after about forty minutes, most people could no longer breathe and several were suffocating. After two hours, the van started moving; they drove for around thirty minutes, then were left stranded in a rural area in Bosnia. The respondent remembers the van being white with a dark blue stripe and the officers wearing dark blue uniforms. After later seeing photos, the respondent confirmed that the perpetrators were members of the Croatian Border Police.
The respondent stated that the group was left in the northern area of Velika Kladuša, where armed Afghan gangs that he referred to as the “Afghan cartel” operate. Another group of people, recently pushed back by other officers, were already there. The gangs approached but did not manage to kidnap anyone, only because the group was large and stayed together. The respondent reports that the forty men regrouped in a rocky area to protect themselves and then walked for about six hours, still naked and barefoot, until they reached Velika Kladuša. The respondent concluded by saying that they were treated in an inhuman and degrading way, beaten and bitten by the dog for no reason, even though no one had resisted or acted aggressively. He insisted that they only wanted to cross peacefully but were robbed, beaten, stripped, and abandoned in the cold.
overview
40 people ,
from Moroccans, Egyptians, Syrians, and Palestinian,
aged from 18 to 60.