The situation at the EU’s border between Poland and Belarus is still causing immense suffering and has led to the deaths of at least ten people, while human rights of people seeking safety are systemically being violated. In the meantime, the Government of the Republic of Croatia is hosting the Prime Minister of Poland in order to give each other legitimacy to the treatment of refugees at the borders of these two countries, instead of proposing to the European Union ways to share responsibility for people seeking security.
The international network ECRE urgently calls on EU institutions to ensure access to asylum at the borders, and guarantee humanitarian access to the people. The EU and its Member States must respond to the crisis at the border in accordance with their international and EU legal obligations!
At Croatian borders, another shameful page of European history, human rights are still being violated. This week, a journalist has been arrested and accused of being a smuggler, while he was being present at the border for investigating the illegal, inhuman and degrading treatment that border police exercise on refugees and other migrants. It’s impossible to believe what the Minister of Interior and the Ministry says. Up until now, video footage and reportages of valuable reporters have been essential for making the institutions clumsily react to the verified allegations of abuses by border police forces at the border. We heard conflicting versions of the Croatian police and the journalist himself, with the State Attorney Office confirming the version of the journalist, which is also quite significant. What is important to keep in mind in this context is that all these years the Ministry of Interior and the Croatian government have thrown out all possible evidence about it, testimonies, medical documentation, for the first time when the MUP responded to some concrete evidence, these were recordings from journalists, which we had the opportunity to see in public a month ago thanks to Lighthouse report.
Last week, when the ECtHR after four years ruled that Croatia is responsible for Madina Hussiny’s death and the terrible institutional obstruction of the investigation into her death, we heard some astonishing voices and faces. But it is a hypocritical astonishment, says Boris Pavelic in this detailed and profound article: everything, all this time, was very well known. So why would the ECtHR ruling be more credible than the warnings of Croatian and Serbian human rights NGOs? Why more convincing than the protest of the Croatian Ombudsman? Why more detailed and thorough than the honorable legal fight of lawyer Sanja Bezbradica Jelavić, representative of the Hussiny family? No, no one in Croatia can say they didn’t know: we all knew everything. Just everything.
And this is why in Croatia and in other parts of the world we keep on talking loud about Madina Hussiny and those thousands of children, young women, families and men who are stranded at the borders or even worse, lost their lives because of them. In Zagreb, we decided to remember Madina Hussiny on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of her death. As Zagreb-solidarity City, Madina Hussiny Square Initiative and the Welcome! Initiative we submitted a request to the City Administration and the Zagreb City Assembly to include Madina Hussiny in the Name of Settlements, Streets and Squares in Zagreb. We also demanded that families from Afghanistan who are currently stuck at the border be given a safe and dignified refuge in Croatia.
On Wednesday night, while multiple meals were being prepared for the luxurious dinner among Croatian political leaders and French President Macron, 27 people lost their lives trying to cross the English Channel. Calais has been a city of tragedy for years for numerous refugees trying to regain British soil, and the situation has further deteriorated since Brexit. While the political leadership is appalled by smugglers who translate people in search of a better life and those who want to reunite with families in the UK and thus risk their lives, it is worth recalling the policies of the EU and the UK. , leave people at the mercy of smugglers. As long as there are no safe and legal routes, this, unfortunately, will not be the last sound figures of lives lost on the shores.
For the end, we bring good news from Trieste, Italy. Gian Andrea and Lorena, activists from Linea d’Ombra, are now free from the accusation of facilitating illegal border crossing of refugees. The court of Bologna dismissed the charges against them. For Gian Andrea and Lorena “the gist of this story lies precisely in making clear once again the political nature of the complaints against activists in solidarity with refugees and other migrants: thus the complaint against Mediterranea fell and before that against Carola Rackete. We believe that Andrea Costa of Baobab Experience from Rome will also fall“.
