Website Documents Police Violence Against Refugees in Balkans

21.12.17

I CARE - - News - Internet Centre Anti Racism Europe - 11/12/2017- Marking International Human Rights Day, the German human rights NGO, Rigardu, has launched a website documenting allegations of police violence against mostly Middle-Eastern refugees traveling westwards along the so-called Balkan Route. The NGO, Volunteers of Rigardu, and two NGOs based on Serbia’s borders with Croatia and Subotica – No Name Kitchen and Fresh Response – have gathered 110 reports of alleged illegal push-backs over the border and police violence involving at least 857 refugees from January to late November this year. Some 52 of these cases included minors. Of the total, 289 come from Afghanistan, 116 from Pakistan and 123 from the Maghreb region. Other nationalities included people from Bangladesh, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Cuba. The report states that refugees suffered violence “such as beating, kicking, electric shocks and even dog bites, and were deprived of their belongings, including their clothes, and forced to wait for hours at sub-zero temperature”. Besides photos, the reports contain details of the violence used, the number of police officers involved, as well as the dates and locations of the incidents. “Three or four policemen beat the interviewed man with a fist to all body parts, also to his face, for about 10 to 20 minutes,” it said of a 27-year-old Pakistani, who testified about the violence he allegedly suffered from the Hungarian police in November. “The police put a branch of a tree to his mouth and, to fix it, rolled his jumper around his head. They shouted, ‘Don’t speak, go back to Serbia’,” another report said about an Afghan, who described the violence allegedly used by the Croatian police in October.