Although we have been facing alerting border violence against refugees for the past two and half years, this past week two documentary movies, the ARD’s titled “Deaths along the Balkan Route” and the Al-Jazeera’s “Revision – At the Line of Separation” and Deutsche Welle’s article „Refugees Die Along the Balkan Route” brought stronger attention to the unlawful practice of pushbacks and tragic ramifications of the lack of safe and legal pathways such as – deaths. Besides an ongoing criminalization of those seeking safety, one encounters highly problematic cases of police pressure on lawyers and civil society organizations involved in illuminating the circumstances of the death of the six-year-old Madina and destiny of her family, and those publicly condemning systematic, unlawful and violent denial of access to the Croatian territory to thousands of asylum seekers and their collective expulsions to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
In the recently shown Re:vizija, our attention was captured by the claim of the Head of the Border Management Unit of the MoI Zoran Ničeno who said: “ A person who enters Croatia has the right, according to the domestic law and Schengen Border Code, to seek the international protection. A person who does not enter Croatia, cannot obtain that right neither at the border crossing neither at the borderline.” The Croatian Act on International and Temporary Protection, Article 33. says: “Third country national can express intention to seek asylum during the police control at the border crossing”. We do remind that the basic precondition for enjoying the protection and safety is access to international protection. Besides that, many individuals fleeing from war and conflicts are not able to access or to have different needed documents for the legal entrance in different states thus Ničeno’s claim worries, disables practicing domestic and legal framework, and distorts possibilities of practicing solidarity and humane treatment.
Quelle: Welcome!Initiative, Zagreb
„Refugees die along the Balkan Route“