Status: 02/11/2022 11:02 a.m
Croatian border officials beat up refugees from the EU – that showed ARDResearch. Now an e-mail is putting pressure on the government in Zagreb: the messages read like instructions for illegal pushbacks.
The Croatian police officers received the mail in capital letters: If a group of migrants were taken out of the country, the officers should in future deport them to several different places. The area should be “thoroughly inspected” beforehand to ensure that nobody is filming. If colleagues “unnecessarily harass and physically abuse” migrants, the email goes on to say, the officials in question should be “reprimanded” and their superiors informed. Exactly where the line between unnecessary and necessary harassment is drawn is not specified.
The email came from Zlatko Čačić, the deputy chief of the border guard in Bajakovo, a Croatian town on the border with Serbia. It was intended as an internal instruction for colleagues. But now it has been leaked to the Croatian online medium “Index.hr” – and the Croatian government is again in need of explanations.
Mail mentions ARD research
Eight days before Čačić sent the email, the ARD together with other research partners, including “Der Spiegel”, revealed that Croatian police officers beat up refugees from the EU. A secretly recorded video showed masked intervention police officers beating asylum seekers. It could no longer be denied that refugees at the Croatian EU external border were illegally deported.
Human rights activists call these actions pushbacks. The Croatian government then suspended three police officers. She portrayed the violent pushbacks as the failure of individual officials. Internally, however, as the e-mail shows, it was obviously agreed that the actions should continue – the officials should just not get caught.
In the e-mail, the research of ARD and the “Spiegel” expressly mentioned. The video caused a stir among citizens and police officers, it is said. The new guidelines are the result of a discussion between executives of the Vukovar-Srijem Police Directorate.
Ministry of the Interior confirms authenticity
The document is the first written evidence that the pushbacks were ordered by the authorities, says Sara Kekus from the Zagreb Center for Peace Studies. The attitude expressed in the email is worrying.
As early as October, several police officers told the “Spiegel” that the orders for the systematic pushbacks came directly from the Ministry of the Interior. Members of the Croatian Intervention Police would be sent to the country’s borders, where they would work alongside officers who were familiar with the area. Internally, the actions would be grouped under the title “Operation Corridor”.
The Croatian Interior Ministry confirmed that ARD Studio Vienna and the “mirror” on request the authenticity of the e-mail. However, the guidelines were only drawn up to “prevent the unprofessional treatment of irregular migrants”. The e-mail does mention “distractions from within”. However, this does not mean illegal pushbacks, in which migrants from inside the country are dragged back to the border, but refusals of entry directly at the border line. Incidentally, journalists are happy to film the operations of the police officers. The officials should only be wary of people smugglers who tried to record the actions of the border police.
“I read the mail as permission”
Observers and police insiders consider this to be a protective claim – especially since the instruction was sent immediately after the “Spiegel” research was published. In the email, the Croatian police “bluntly admit that they carry out pushbacks,” says a former Croatian police officer who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “I’m reading the email as an approval for pushbacks. And if it’s approved, so will you.” Another insider reports that bosses have been warning people lately not to be filmed.
In fact, there is much to suggest that Croatian police officers are still illegally pushing refugees out of the EU. From October to December 2021 alone, the aid organization Danish Refugee Council registered around 2,000 pushbacks from Croatia to Bosnia, the number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher. According to human rights activists, refugees are also being dragged back almost every day in the area of responsibility of the Bajakovo border guard on the border with Serbia – without giving them the chance to apply for asylum.
The matter is uncomfortable not only for the Ministry of the Interior in Zagreb, but also for the responsible EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson. She initially praised the Croatian government for promising to investigate the pushback allegations. By now Johansson should also be clear that the will to clarify things is limited. Even the three officers whom the Croatian interior minister identified as thugs are now back on duty.