'Culture of impunity' across EU over violence against migrants, NGO warns
Migrants attempting to reach Europe are now almost always subjected to some form of violence at the hands of authorities, according to a new NGO report.
The second edition of the "Black Book of Pushbacks" compiled by the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) documents more than 1,635 testimonies of human rights violations affecting almost 25,000 people over the past six years.
Nearly half of these testimonies — 44% — were collected since the first edition was released in December 2020 but they account for over 16,100 of the people affected or nearly two-thirds.
They recount being beaten, kicked, humiliated through forced undressing, threatened with a firearm, arbitrarily detained and subjected to inhuman treatment inside a police station before being illegally pushed back both at the EU's external borders and from deep within the territory of the bloc's member states.
Only 5.6% of the people surveyed by the various NGOs who participated in the report said they did not recall excessive force being used.
The testimonies were collected in 15 countries: the EU's Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Spain, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania and Slovenia; Western Balkan nations Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia; as well as in Belarus and Turkey.
"In 2020 we published the first Black Book, with over 900 testimonies, and called for an end to the culture of impunity that surrounds human rights violations in Europe. Two years later and illegal pushbacks continue unabated in spite of an increased evidence base, videos of perpetrators committing these crimes, and hundreds more testimonies," Hope Barker, co-author of the report and BVMN senior policy analyst, said in a statement.
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