In a joint statement published on 19 June, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe González Morales, and the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Nils Melzer, said that they “are deeply concerned about the repeated and ongoing disproportionate use of force by Croatian police against migrants in pushback operations. Victims, including children, have suffered physical abuse and humiliation simply because of their migration status.”
The Special Rapporteurs mentioned that physical violence and treatment against migrants had been reported in more than 60 percent of all recorded pushbacks from Croatia between January and May 2020. The reported abuse included physical beatings, use of electric socks, forced river crossings, stripping of clothes despite adverse weather conditions, forced stress positions, gender insensitive body searches and spray-painting the heads of migrants with crosses (see 21 May Croatia update on this platform).
González Morales stated that such violent pushbacks without proper or official procedure or any due process safeguards constituted a violation of the prohibition of collective expulsions and the principle of non-refoulement. Melzer requested that Croatian authorities investigate all reported cases of violence against migrants and to hold perpetrators and their superiors to account.
The UN Special Rapporteurs were also concerned that in several cases, Croatian police officers ignored requests from migrants to seek asylum or other protection under international law. The statement comes following an official visit from González Morales to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in 2019 where he had already received information concerning violent pushbacks by Croatian police to BiH. Melzer had received similar information during his official visit to Serbia and Kosovo in 2017.
- UNHCR, “Croatia: Police Brutality in Migrant Pushback Operations must be Investigated and Sanctioned – UN Special Rapporteurs,” 19 June 2020, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25976&LangID=E
- A Group of Migrants Walk Through Countryside in Northern Bosnia after Being Physically Expelled by Police from Croatia, (Elvis Barukcic, AFP, Getty Images, “Croatian Police Use Violence to Push Back Migrants, President Admits,” The Guardian, 16 July 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/16/croatian-police-use-violence-to-push-back-migrants-says-president#img-1)
