On January 30th, an advocacy team from Collective Aid met with three Afghan men, Amir, Ali and Basim, who described their attempt to cross the Serbia-Hungary border on the last day of 2023. They were with a group of six other men on the afternoon of December 31st when Hungarian police officers arrested them right after they crossed the border. The police illegally pushed them back over the border and brought them to Serbian police officers who were accompanied by Italian officers with the EU logo on their uniforms. After having talked to Amir, the only one of the group who spoke English, Serbian police officers started to beat him in front of everyone. The group was then forcefully put into a van and driven to a police station in Subotica where they stayed the whole night without any food or water. In the morning, police officers took them to court where they were forced to sign papers without being told what they were signing. A translator, who only spoke Turkish, told them that they would go to a refugee camp to rest for a few days.

“They told us we would rest and eat for 3 days. Right after that, they put us in a police van and threw explosives at the van, with us inside. Then, they put us in prison for 20 days in total.”

Police officers drove to what they had been told would be a camp but they arrived instead at a detention center. As soon as they got there they were told to take their clothes off and were strip searched before being put in a room with eight other people. When they asked questions, nobody answered them. Nobody told them how long they would stay there. As the days passed, the only word they got as an answer for everything they asked for was sutra : tomorrow in Serbian.

Amir, Ali and Basim reporting their pushback

The living conditions in the detention centre were described as inhumane. They were not allowed to go outside and could not have any fresh air because the only small window in the room could not be opened. There was no shower, no free space, only a toilet in the middle of the room and a water tap. Doctors visited the prison but they were not willing to help them properly. Amir fell off his bed and got a wound on his tibia that got infected - the doctor told him that it would heal by itself. Ali got scabies - the doctor gave him ointment that was out of date. When the Collective Aid team met them they still had visible wounds. In total, they were in jail for twenty days.

The injuries from the scabies on Ali’s hand.

This testimony was the first one taken by Collective Aid in Sarajevo that involved people being put in jail for an indefinite length of time without them knowing what was happening. Since the beginning of the year - and the closure of the Serbia-Hungary border during the Special Operation in the run up to the elections - multiple local organisations have reported that they are receiving an increased number of similar reports. In the days following this encounter with Amir, Ali and Basim, we met other people-on-the-move who had also been put in prison in Serbia after having been pushed back from Hungary in the same way Ali and his friends were. Some of them were held in detention for one month. As a result, many people who are pushed back from Hungary, are now making their way in BiH and trying to reach the EU through Croatia, but the situation is no easier for them.

The story of Amir, Ali and Basim reminds us of how hard the lives of people on the move in the Balkans are. Organizations on the field are observing increased criminalisation of people-on-the-move in Serbia with frequent denial of basic human rights. Many people will continue to experience violence as they cross the border into Bosnia and Herzegovina and subsequently try to reach the EU. Some people we have spoken to have already been pushed back from Croatia 10 times.

Meeting people on the move everyday and seeing the impact of these border policies over and over again underlines for us the need for safe and legal routes for those who need to seek safety over borders instead of the increased militarisation which is so often seen as the first and only option.

You can read more about the special operation in our latest blogs : Special operation in northern Serbia and No Name Migrant : The Forbidden cemetery of Subotica.

Pictures: Guillaume Flament

Words: Fiona Grand-Moursel

The ongoing Impact of Serbia’s Special Operation