This archive report was first published on 12 December 2019.
Published on December 12, 2019, reports have emerged of the Croatian government's policy of violent nighttime deportations, targeting migrants suspected of entering the country from Bosnia.
According to interviews with dozens of migrants, residents, and aid workers in Bosnia, a consistent pattern of migrants being beaten, robbed by the police, and deported without due process from Croatia to Bosnia has been observed.
Doctors Without Borders, a medical aid group, has been working with Bosnian government doctor Semra Okanovic to treat wounded migrants in northern Bosnia. She described the treatment of migrants as follows: “They get beaten, their telephones broken, their money stolen. Some of them have their arms broken. Some say their clothes are stolen and pushed in the river.”
One migrant, Sunday Awojobi, a Nigerian national, shared his experience of being deported in a similar fashion. He had a valid visa until March 2020 and had entered Croatia legally on November 9, but was still deported.
Two Nigerian table tennis players, Eboh and Abia, have been confined inside a government-run center in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, after an international outcry over their fate. Their mobile phones were confiscated, and they can only be contacted by the center's landline.
They expressed their frustration, saying, “We have been locked up and it’s not fair — we are human beings,” and “You have to take us away from here.”
