End fortress Europe

During January and February KlikAktiv was visiting refugees’ squats in Sombor, Subotica, Horgoš, Majdan, Šid, Kikinda, and Vršac. The main problem that refugees are facing is police violence on EU borders, as well as violent pushbacks from the EU countries. Based on the information we have gathered the biggest problem during the last few months is Romanian police – refugees are in fear of them due to the specifically cruel treatment they have been practicing. That implies beating the refugees and taking their money and personal belongings. The people we have been talking to say that they did expect to experience violence, robbery, and hunger while fleeing from their home countries, but they did not expect that all this will happen at once, in an encounter with the Romanian border police. Moreover, the situation is not much better when encountering Hungarian and Croatian police either. Several men we met in the woods near Sombor told us about the torturing they went through on the Croatian border. The Croatian police stripped down each one of them and forced them to stand outside, leaning against the wall for several hours, only in their underwear. This happened in February, during extremely cold weather. They told us that they could not bring their hands down to their bodies, their vision became blurry, and they would fall because they could not walk due to frostbites.

Several times we also talked to people that were returned from Austria, Italy, and Slovenia. The police in these states would capture people in the city streets and without any further investigation on their situation and status, and without taking any responsibility for the lives of people on their territory, they would be taken away (sometimes across several EU states) to external EU borders and thrown out.

The hypocrisy of the EU policies and practices, in which the leading EU countries have the most prominent role, is increasing each day. On one hand, public discourse is full of human rights narratives and the EU is constantly preaching to others about how they should behave. On the other, at the very EU borders we have everyday cases of robberies, violence, and neglecting basic human needs of people that are fleeing discrimination and violence in their home countries.