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On August 19, six Syrians and one Egyptian arrived in Belgrade seeking help. They say they were forcibly sent to Serbia by the Romanian border police, but not before they were beaten and tortured, Euronews reports. One of them has an amputated leg and says that the Romanian police beat him with their own crutches. The Romanian border police deny these accusations.
Upon being detected by surveillance cameras with thermal sensors while trying to cross the Romanian border, they were intercepted and detained by men in black uniforms, the tallest of them with a whip in his right hand. They say that the Hungarian police had already beaten them with sticks, but had not hit them until then. One of them almost lost an eye.
The story is not unique: another group of migrants who crossed Turkey, Greece and Albania to reach a refugee camp in Serbia went through a similar experience.
These testimonies have been compiled by various NGOs in Serbia, and all come to the same concluzie: copThe Romanian border, as well as the security forces at the borders of other countries where the refugees pass, are behaving with extraordinary violence against them.
On the border with Romania, along the Danube, in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, illegal beatings, intimidation and expulsions have become part of the daily life of refugees. The border has become a „hotspot” AA-a-zisei „Balkan routes”.
The exact figures are impossible to determine. An NGO in Serbia estimatesthat “at least 50 people” are forcibly expelled from Romania to Serbia every day. Another estimates between 400 and 600 per week.
Border police deny the allegations. Serbian NGO: “We saw with our own eyes the bruises on her skin“
According to testimonies, border guards use sticks to beat people and lash them with cables. Some of the migrants were subjected to electric shocks or had their clothing set on fire. People are intimidated by the shooting and some speak of “command-uri”, Agents dressed in black with masks or masks on their faces so that they could not be recognized.
Romanian organizations working with the UNHCR (UN refugee agency) to help victims of human trafficking, such as Romania’s Young Generation or Romania’s National Refugee Council, say they were not aware of the alleged violence that is taking place on the country’s border.
Contacted by Euronews, the Romanian border police denied the accusations or that they acted in this way: “All actions taken by the Romanian border police against migrants acting illegally at the border must be in line with national and international law, including respect for human rights”.
Romanian agents have been equipped, in recent years, with increasingly sophisticated tracking equipment to avoid illegal border crossings, even at night. In the first 7 months of 2020, authorities say 1,823 migrants “were found in grainwith Serbia trying to get to Romania illegally ”.
The law does not allow expulsion without the written consent of a judge or without procedural guarantees or without the possibility for migrants to appeal against the decision. Above all, however, no migrant is allowed to be deprived of the right to request political asylum.
Rados Djurovici, director of an NGO in Serbia, says that illegal deportations from Romania “are becoming increasingly violent.”
„They started at least a year ago, but this type of violence is recent, it started 3-4 months ago. It especially started once migratory pressure increased in Romania as well. The more migrants there are, the more cases of violence increase ”, he added.
The testimonies are also confirmed by another NGO. Ivana Vukasevici Beti, from the Center for Humanitarian Integration and Tolerance, says that the number of expulsions from Romania started to increase in the second half of 2019 and continues to increase regularly, month by month.
„These migrants should have had access to the procedures to obtain political asylum in Romania. We saw with our own eyes the bruises on her skin“, she said.
Publisher: Adrian Dumitru
