When Ibrahim was caught on the Romanian side of the border with Serbia, he and his fellow asylum-seekers thought they were lucky. The guards smiled, and promised to take them to the closest city to request asylum. Instead, they drove the migrants back into the Serbian forest, donned masks and beat them with batons before speeding away.
Ibrahim, 22, protected his face with his hands, and escaped with a broken wrist. His friend, a fellow Syrian refugee, was struck on the head so hard he lost consciousness. Ibrahim cannot bring himself to tell his family what happened: after surviving air strikes, Isis and conscription, it is in Europe, he says, he reached his lowest point.
“I had no idea they’d treat humans like they do in Syria,” Ibrahim says from the Kikinda border camp in Serbia near the Romanian border. “Maybe the idea of Europe is a big lie.”
Violence, increasingly routine at the doorstep of the EU, is hardening into what asylum-seekers and rights groups see as brutal, if unofficial, policy.
Interviews with 25 migrants and several aid organisations suggest beatings and “pushbacks” — the forcing of asylum seekers out of a country before their applications can be reviewed — are now systemic, despite violating EU law. The normalisation of violence grows as migrants seek new routes. Initial criticism focused on Hungary, before allegations rose in Bulgaria and Greece. In recent months, as more migrants try Balkan routes passing through Croatia and Romania, accusations of violence along these borders have soared.
“This idea of [using] violence is spreading instead of shrinking,” says Jovana Arsenijevic, programme co-ordinator for the International Rescue Committee in the Balkans. “It is a huge shame that Europe, a place that has built a reputation as the cradle of human rights, is not treating people in a dignified manner.”
The use of these dangerous routes, she says, is inevitable when Europe has made it so difficult for asylum seekers to flee and apply for refuge legally.
Rolling back such tactics will only get harder as populism across Europe, which has grown on the back of anti-migration sentiment, politicises any discussion around rights violations. Europe’s growing tolerance of aggression became evident when Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, praised Greece as Europe’s “shield” even as videos showed border forces using tear gas and rubber bullets, and harassing boats of asylum seekers, earlier in March.
Critics say the EU risks eroding its own human rights laws, while defenders say such crossings are illegal, and blame Turkey for ushering refugees towards Greece in a cynical bid to manufacture a new crisis. Ankara had signed a 2016 deal with the EU to reduce arrivals after more than 1m people, mostly Syrians escaping civil war, flowed into Europe almost unchecked in 2015.
Although the EU is working with Turkey to reduce border tensions, the resort to such primitive tactics comes even as EU border police adopt ever more sophisticated technologies. Surveillance helicopters, robotic camera and sensor systems and drone “swarms” are now tested on border patrols.
Most of the migrants interviewed claimed to have suffered at least one severe beating. All recalled being stripped down to their underwear, made to wait for hours on icy ground, and receiving their clothes back with shoelaces and belts removed, their mobile phones smashed.
Responsibility for the violence allegedly meted out to migrants is often levelled at countries supported by the EU for migration control, such as Libya, yet more and more EU member states are now directly complicit, with the unofficial policy spreading along the union’s borders, say rights groups.
Romanian border police say migrants detected on their territory are investigated and instructed on asylum procedures. In a statement they said: “All the actions taken by the Romanian border guards when detecting migrants acting illegally at the border are carried out in accordance with the national and international legislation, always respecting human rights.”
But at the Serbian border camp where Ibrahim sleeps, many of the men packed on to mattresses in grimy rooms show signs of abuse: two wear casts and slings, one sports two black eyes, and another walks with a painful limp.
Since the coronavirus outbreak struck Europe, the Serbian and Bosnian militaries have locked down migrant camps, arguing it was for the safety of those housed there. But it is a reminder of how the virus may exacerbate hostility towards asylum seekers at a time when economic recession and social strife in the wake of the pandemic could trigger even more migration.
Comprehensive statistics are impossible to collect given how many migrants go under the radar, but a January study by the Border Violence Monitoring Network, a rights group in the Balkans, said over 80 per cent of 263 people it studied while documenting pushbacks in Croatia reported assault.
Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard agency, said its patrols face violence from migrants throwing stones, as happened at the Greek border. “This is the violence that should concern every EU citizen,” it said in comments to the FT.
It added that increased deployments could reduce violence. “Officers deployed in Frontex operations are present to support member states and to ensure the rule of law,” Frontex said.
Yet, Ms Arsenijevic argues that growing displays of force do not even act as effective deterrence — an argument borne out in interviews with asylum seekers, who are vowing to keep trying. “We are like ants,” says 25-year-old Abu Laith, who, like all migrant interviewees, asked not to be identified by his real name. “You put a rock in front of us, and we’ll keep moving to get around it.”
On the night of his assault in Romania, Ibrahim marvelled at how accurately the patrol had spotted his group, right down to where they were hiding. He and his fellow interviewees were also tracked by helicopters, patrols with nightvision goggles and camouflaged robotic sensors that detect movement and alert police. Since 2016, Romanian police say they have been increasing “distance-vision equipment at maximum capacity” to prevent crossings.
Ibrahim and two other refugees also described being chased by drones while crossing a Hungarian forest. They say the objects appeared in fours, circling and pursuing them until they left the border. “It’s a strange feeling — like you’re in some kind of awful movie,” says one refugee.
Researchers from the Hungarian Academy of Science have been developing drone swarms, and Hungary was also part of the “Roborder” project supported by the EU research fund Horizon 2020. Roborder tests automated vehicles that could be used from air, land or underwater, including an option to create “swarms” to triangulate a person’s location. Critics warn such research could lead to armed automated weaponry, easing the path toward the broader use of robots that shift lethal decisions away from humans.
“These research projects are used to test aggressive new ideas,” says Mark Akkerman, from the Dutch anti-arms trade campaign Stop Wapenhandel, who researches EU border fortifications for Transnational Institute (TNI), an advocacy group. “[This will] fuel the cycle of militarisation of the borders and the use of ever more draconian methods to do so.”
The European Commission has poured money into Frontex, whose annual budget is now €420m, a more than 34 per cent rise from 2019. Its budget was just €6m in 2005. TNI argues such funding contributes to Europe’s militarisation, increasing the purchase of surveillance equipment and weaponry and, soon, troops. Last May, Frontex announced its first standalone border force, which it says could reach 10,000 by 2027 — it currently has 1,500 officers, who are seconded by member states. At the same time, it launched patrols in Albania, its first outside an EU country.
The commission says Frontex has mechanisms in place to promote and monitor respect for fundamental rights. But a 2018 report from the Frontex Consultative Forum, an independent oversight body, said “the almost negligible number of reports received by the Agency . . . raises serious concerns about the effectiveness” of such measures.
On a recent attempt to enter Hungary, one family says border patrols assaulted a young man in their group, but stopped when two Frontex guards arrived and told the migrants they had the choice to apply for asylum. “We said OK, but when the Hungarians drove us away, they dumped us [back] in Serbia,” says 19-year-old Hani, from Iraq. “We didn’t actually have the choice.”
Andras Lederer, of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a Budapest-based rights group, says Frontex risks being “a silent partner in the crime of breaching EU law.” Its presence can diminish violence, he says, but does nothing to prevent the trend of illegally dumping people back over the border. A Hungarian spokesperson denied border forces use pushbacks.
With migrants now spending longer navigating trickier routes inside Europe, the risk of fatalities grows. Data from the International Organization for Migration shows 148 refugees died on European soil last year, higher than previous years and even the 135-person toll of 2015, when more migrants crossed.
Ibrahim intended to meet his cousin in Serbia and continue their journey into the EU together. But Ibrahim got lost in the mountains for two days, without food or water, and by the time he reached their meeting point in Belgrade, he learnt that his cousin’s body was in a freezer in Tirana, killed in a car accident while being smuggled out of Albania.
His family began a new round of scrounging for money — but this time, to bring a body back. The tragedy only strengthened his resolve, he says. He is plotting with friends to dig a tunnel next. “It’s not just for me, but for my family. After everything they’ve gone through, I won’t fail — I can’t fail.”
Such determination is why rights activists argue brutal border strategies do not work. In 2016, migration into Europe fell after Brussels signed a deal promising Turkey an initial €6bn in two tranches for refugee support in exchange for blocking migrant flows.
So humanitarian officials in Bosnia and Serbia were surprised by the rise in migrant numbers in recent months. But the trend underlined the original problem with the Turkish-EU deal: it left refugees stuck in another unwelcoming place, even as the problems that caused them to flee their own countries remained unresolved.
Ankara, in addition to complaining that Europe has not sent all the promised funds, is also demanding its western allies support Turkish military operations in northern Syria after an offensive launched by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and backed by Russia bombarded Idlib, the country’s last opposition enclave. Since December nearly 1m people have been displaced and are on the move in the northern region, heading ever closer to Turkey’s border — itself now fortified with a wall and EU-funded patrol vehicles.
Meanwhile, attacks and deportations targeting migrants in Turkey, home to the world’s largest refugee population of 3.6m, have been on the rise. Afghan and Syrian migrants interviewed in Serbia say this is what has pushed many to leave. According to Suleyman Soylu, Turkey’s interior minister, a total of 104,000 people were forcibly removed from Turkey last year. But Ankara denies forcing refugees from Syria to return to the country against their will.
Ahmad, a 30-year-old Syrian, fled Turkey after being arrested for working at a hotel without a permit, something extremely difficult for refugees to obtain. For 20 days, he was held in a deportation centre, where he says officials tried to force Syrians to sign paperwork saying they were leaving voluntarily. Blankets, sheets and even shampoo given to detainees, he says, had the stamp of the EU flag and the words “European Union” in Arabic — supplies he assumed were meant for refugees. Once released, Ahmad immediately set off for Europe, fearing next time he’d be deported.
Now he is stuck in Serbia, having tried more than eight times in two weeks to enter the EU. He is not alone. In the dingy lobby, beneath clouds of cigarette smoke, weary men and women from Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria huddle and debate various plots for crossing: from two-week treks to swimming the Danube. Two young men, preparing their 18th attempt, hold up phones with pictures from their last one: their backs and chests covered in red welts.
“Welcome to the land of civilisation,” one jokes.
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