Croatia violating EU law by sending asylum seekers back to Bosnia

Croatian police are returning groups of asylum seekers across the EU’s external border with Bosnia, a video obtained by the Guardian suggests, in an apparent breach of EU law.

Footage shared by the watchdog organisation Border Violence Monitoring (BVM) shows a number of alleged collective expulsions or “pushbacks” of migrants in a forest near Lohovo, in Bosnian territory.

The videos, filmed on hidden cameras between 29 September and 10 October, capture 54 incidents of people being pushed back in groups from Croatia into Bosnia with 368 people in total returned, according to the footage.

Bosnia-Herzegovina’s security minister, Dragan Mektić, told the news channel N1 the behaviour of the Croatian police was “a disgrace for an EU country”.

The footage, received by BVM from informants who prefer to remain anonymous, shows people lining up and walking through the forest, escorted by Croatian officers.

Every night, people from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan try to cross into Croatia from Bosnia. The majority of them arrive in Bosnia through Turkey, hoping to reach Slovenia, a member of Europe’s passport-free Schengen area.

BVM said collective expulsions violated the Geneva convention on refugees, the EU charter of fundamental rights and article 14 of the universal declaration of human rights.

“Although Croatia has signed a re-admission agreement with Bosnia, expulsions over the green border [the area in the woods where there are no official crossing points] do not follow any formal return procedures, so they cannot be justified by the agreement,” BVM said.

“It may be legal to return refugees to Bosnia in the event that they do not lodge an asylum application, but these deportations must take place at official border crossings and in the presence of Bosnian border guards, which is not the case.”

The Croatian ministry of the interior denied any wrongdoing. It said officers were not expelling migrants but legally “deterring them from illegally entering Croatia” under article 13 of the Schengen border code.

András Léderer, the information and advocacy officer for the human rights group the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, said returning people across the green border without due procedure was “definitely not in accordance with the Schengen acquis”.

“These practices breach the prohibition of collective expulsion, enshrined in article 4 of protocol 4 of the European convention on human rights, and might even pose security risks to the EU,” Léderer said. “If the migrants entered Croatia before the videos were taken, then in the case of each migrant an individual decision should have been made by the Croatian authorities against which an effective remedy must have been available to the migrant.”

In November, a Guardian investigation documented cases of physical abuse of asylum seekers by Croatian police. Of 50 people, mostly from Pakistan, to whom the Guardian spoke, 35 said they had been attacked by Croatian police then returned over the border to Bosnia.