A PUSH BACK OF REFUGEES FROM SERBIA TO BULGARIA

In mid-July in Belgrade our team recorded a testimony of refugees from Afghanistan who had been pushed back from territory of Serbia to territory of Bulgaria three times. As they stated, the first time they were pushed back to Bulgaria was when a joint patrol of Serbian and Austrian police had detained them at the bus station in Pirot, a Serbian city near the border with Bulgaria, while they had been purchasing bus tickets to Belgrade. “Two Serbian policemen and two Austrian policemen. They had different uniforms, we saw the Austrian flag at the uniform and this is how we know it was Austrians”, a man from the group told us. The joint police patrol is said to had taken them in a mini van to the green border with Bulgaria and, after they had randomly hit them with police batons and had taken away their personal belongings of value, forced the group to walk towards a forest on the Bulgarian side of the border. “First, they took away our phones and money, and then they started beating us with the police batons. They hit me with the baton in the back of my head.”, another man from the group stated.

After the group had spent the night in the forest, they tried to cross the border again the next day but were caught again by the Serbian police, a few kilometers from the border line and returned to Bulgaria again. Two days after, they had to cross the border for the third time and reached Pirot, where they managed to get on a bus to Belgrade. However, after approximately 45 min drive another police patrol stopped the bus on the road and ordered all refugees to leave the bus, and then drove them to a green border with Bulgaria and pushed them back. Only on their fourth attempt they managed to reach Belgrade. “Look at our feet. They are swollen and full of callouses, we cannot walk. We have spent such a long time in Bulgaria, in the forests, we have seen things. We just want safety, we need protection”, these men told us.

Klikaktiv strongly condemns push backs of refugees from the territory of Serbia and express concerns that this kind of treatment will become a trend at the country’s southern borders. It is of particular concern that police officers from EU member states participate in the push backs of refugees from Serbia, in the case described here it was the Austrian police officers. With this, the borders of the European Union are further externalized and Serbia is being transformed in a buffer zone of the Fortress Europe.