A group of Afghan refugees have filed a complaint at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the basis of the reported abuse they suffered at the hands of Croatian border officials in 2020. The group took the step on the sixth anniversary of their alleged abuse after failed attempts at taking their case to Croatian courts.
Three young Afghan men have decided to file a case against the Croatian government at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, alleging they were tortured and forcibly pushed back across the country's border to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2020.
The men claim they were forced to spend two days locked away at a Croatian police station without being given any food.
After this, they say they were taken to the Bosnian border in a Croatian police car where officials allegedly handed them over to a group of masked and armed men in black uniforms.
According to their accounts, they were then tortured, humiliated, and sexually abused by the masked men before ultimately being pushed back, almost naked, across the border into Bosnia — and therefore out of the EU.
The three men have since been given protection in Germany.
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Several organizations support abuse and pushback claims
The reported event took place during a time in 2020 and 2021, when the Balkan migrant route witnessed significant increases in irregular border crossing attempts into Croatia.
The Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) — an organization that describes itself an independent self-organised network of NGOs, associations, and collectives — said in 2021 that at least 300 people had been pushed back across the Croatian border since 2017, while stressing that the real number of instances may be much higher. The Croatian authorities continue to deny these allegations.
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The European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) has supported those findings, saying in a 2021 document that "[p]hysical abuse, destruction or confiscation of belongings, and sexual humiliation are systematically used as deterrence measures by border guards and police in the Balkans."
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Multiple charges brought against Croatian government
Attempts by migrant charities to have this particular case tried in Croatia have failed at every level, including a criminal complaint filed with the Croatian Constitutional Court.
According to the German migrant charity Pro Asyl, Croatian authorities are yet to conduct any investigation into the reported incident, which is why the alleged victims have now decided to take their case to the ECHR.
The plaintiffs say that the reported events constitute a violation of the prohibition against torture under Article 3 of the ECHR and the prohibition against collective expulsion under Article 4 of the Fourth Protocol to the ECHR, among other charges.
Pro Asyl said in a statement that what the men had reportedly "gone through cannot be undone. But the victims want to ensure that those responsible are held accountable and that such crimes are not repeated."
The court case is supported by several charities which support migrants, including the Center for Peace Studies, the Dutch Council for Refugees, and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights — as well as Pro Asyl.
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ECHR familiar with abuse cases involving Croatia
There is no official timeline on when the case might be processed; however, there are a number of previous instances against Croatia of a similar nature, which may be used as case law references in this latest lawsuit.
The case is supported by documentation gathered by members of the Danish Refugee Council, who met the men soon after the alleged incident. They call in a doctor who observed that numerous injuries on the group of men matched the accounts they had given; the medical professional said that one of the men had wounds all over his back, and that there were also clear signs of sexual violence.
The ECHR meanwhile has already issued multiple rulings against Croatia in several instances involving similar reports of serious human rights violations related to migrants.
The Strasbourg court has also repeatedly stressed that official investigations conducted into these events in the Balkan state were inadequate.
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