The five men have bruises on their backs, chests, legs. One of them shows bad hand injuries. They come from Tunisia, and the Hungarian police have just brought them back to Serbia. They were taken by surprise shortly after crossing the border: officers stole their money, destroyed their phones, and then beat them, being careful to avoid faces. After discovering that one of the cell phones had been hidden, the police took the young owner’s fingers and crushed them with pliers. The message is clear: there is no place for them in Europe.
Border authorities work hard to ensure that the concept is conveyed effectively. In the event that traditional means are not sufficient, we move on to something else. As with Faisal, a Syrian: beaten and beaten amid the laughter of the officers, he discovered that it was possible for them to go further: “As soon as I thought they were done, they threw a dog at me,” he says, showing the bite wounds on his arm.
“Night after night, all over Hungary, people are captured and brought back to Serbia without the possibility of seeking asylum. They are trapped at the borders of the European Union due to its unfair policies ”. Kathy is a volunteer with Medical Volunteers International, and she has spent the past two months providing medical assistance in the squat present at the northern border of Serbia: informal camps with terrible sanitation and hygiene conditions, populated by thousands of people waiting to enter Europe.
Men, women and children who live weeks or months in the cold, without the slightest assistance, and who try the infamous every day game, the border crossing. Many times without success.
Kathy and her team have helped over two thousand people: “They often come back with injuries caused by barbed wire, which literally cuts through the flesh. It is a form of torture, because these people are desperate, they do not even stop in front of such obstacles: we have seen broken limbs and sprained ankles due to falls », continues Kathy. “Migrants are sometimes rejected after being deprived of shoes and heavier clothes, but also of medicines or medical aids.”
Hungary has long been the scene of similar human rights violations towards migrants. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made the fight against illegal immigration the main workhorse of his electoral campaigns, including the last one, which led to yet another re-election.
Until the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Hungary’s hostility towards those attempting to enter Europe through its borders manifested itself in multiple ways, outlining some of the most brutal policies recorded among the countries of the European Union. «For us – Orbán said in 2016 – immigration is not a solution, but a problem. Not a medicine, but a poison ».
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, Hungary – as well as other European Union countries, such as Poland and Romania – has tried to change its image: from being a sworn enemy of refugees, Orbán has rushed, few days after the onset of the crisis, to declare that he wanted to “let everyone in”. And so it was: of the more than 4 million and 300 thousand people fleeing Ukraine, more than 380 thousand passed through Hungary.
The change of approach seemed instrumental and aimed exclusively at gaining electoral support in view of the elections of last April 3. But illegal pushbacks to Serbia continue unabated. «Migrants are stopped. Refugees can get all the help, ”Orbán said on his way to the Ukrainian border.
Between 2020 and 2021, in the Vojvodina region alone, in northern Serbia, over 46,000 people were rejected: 22,000 from Hungary, 20,000 from Romania. The majority of migrants, mostly Syrians and Afghans, are rejected several times. This is demonstrated, perhaps unwittingly, by the European agency Frontex, which recorded over 60,000 illegal crossings into Europe from the Balkans in 2021, despite the fact that at the end of October only 26,000 people transited the area.
The period that has elapsed since the beginning of the war in Ukraine was no exception, and there is no distinction between the various countries: «I have heard horrible stories – says Kathy -. People mainly say that the Romanian police are the worst because of the beatings and thefts, but I have seen people pushed back from Hungary after being attacked by dogs for a police game and I have heard stories of families with small children and forced babies. to be outside for ten hours at ten degrees below zero ».
The European Union is not doing much to limit these rejections: «Last year – adds the volunteer – Frontex suspended operations due to the illegality of Hungarian practices. However, recently we have had more and more feedback from migrants describing agents wearing Frontex uniforms involved in pushbacks ».
In Serbia, on the other hand, migrants come mainly from North Macedonia and Bulgaria. They first pass through Greece, but prefer to leave the territory of the European Union to venture into the Balkan hell: since June 2021 the country has declared Turkey a safe country for those coming from Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, so the the likelihood that asylum applications will be rejected is very high.
There are currently more than 4,600 migrants in Serbia. Over 3,700 are housed in the country’s 19 government centers. All the others live in the squat“Refugee camps are supposed to provide medical assistance, but it doesn’t happen very often,” says Kathy.
As temperatures rise, it is very likely that refugees encamped in the squat will increase. The squat they are all in localities near the border, each with its own characteristics, none decent: «In Subotica – says Kathy – about 150 people live in abandoned buildings near the railway. A horrible place, where there are many minors who now seem immune to the conditions in which they live. Here, a fascist group recently attacked migrants saying they were protecting the population ”. This type of paramilitary unit seems to collaborate with local authorities: they hunt down migrants and once captured they beat them and call the police to take them away.
This is the state where hundreds of people live on the doorstep of the European Union. The European institutions themselves seem to indirectly support these dynamics. In October, the collaborative journalism project Lighthouse Report published testimonies of violence against migrants by the police forces of Croatia, Romania and Greece, explaining how the costs of the activities of the agents engaged in Croatia in the “Koridor” operation were financed. from the Union Internal Security Fund.
All this, of course, still continues today, at the same moment in which Europe opens its doors to millions of Ukrainian refugees (also through the institution of temporary protection): “What happened in Ukraine is terrible, and its people deserve every possible help from the Union, ”says Kathy. “But I think this should be extended to all people forced to leave their country. Refugees arriving from Syria and Afghanistan face xenophobia and forced detention, while Ukrainians find open arms in people’s homes ”.
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