BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) – Hamid Ahmadi can still feel the cold of February night when Serbian police left him and two dozen other refugees in a forest.
Arrested in a police van, refugees from Afghanistan believed they were heading to an asylum seeker camp in eastern Serbia. Instead, they were ordered to leave near the country’s border with Bulgaria in the middle of that night, four years ago. At freezing temperatures and in desperate need of help, they had no choice but to head to Bulgaria – the country they had left just a day earlier.
“I will not forget her as long as I live,” said Ahmadi, who was 17 at the time and now lives in Germany. “Even after a good period of life and stability, you can’t forget the hard times.”
The Serbian border police had engaged in a collective push or expulsion, one of many such actions along the travel routes used by migrants and refugees trying to reach Western Europe. But unlike most of these illegal deportations, the actions of officers in February 2017 led to Afghan refugees gaining an unprecedented legal victory in Serbia’s highest court.
The Balkan Constitutional Court ruled in December that border control officers had illegally deported refugees and violated their rights. The court also ordered the Serbian authorities to pay the 17 members of the group who brought the lawsuit 1,000 euros ($ 1,180) each in damages.
“The importance of this verdict is huge for Serbia,” said Belgrade lawyer Nikola Kovacevic, who represented the refugees in the case. It sends a “clear message to state authorities to harmonize their border practices with domestic and international law”.
The ruling is a rare official recognition that European countries are violating EU and international law that prohibits the forced return of people to other countries without analyzing their individual circumstances or allowing them to seek asylum.
Although refugees and economic migrants passing through the Balkans regularly report on this practice, the authorities routinely deny that their agencies are making setbacks, which are difficult to prove and remain largely unpunished.
Back and forth on various frontiers, people fleeing war and poverty spend months, if not years, on the road, exposed to harsh conditions and danger at the hands of human traffickers and human traffickers.. Sometimes refugees and migrants are sent back across two or three borders that it took months to cross.
Human rights groups have repeatedly called on governments to take responsibility for refugee rights and accused the European Union of turning a blind eye to illegal activity on its doorstep.
The UN mission in Bosnia called for urgent action this month to stop pushing along Croatia’s border with EU member Bosnia after a UN team met 50 wounded men on their bodies, who reported that the authorities pushed them back and took their goods when they tried to enter Croatia.
According to the office of the UN refugee agency in Serbia and its partners, 25,180 people were pushed back into Serbia from Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary and Romania last year.
Serbian lawyer Kovacevic says mass deportations have become more common after the EU and Turkey concluded a 2016 agreement to reduce migration to Europe. More than a million people in the Middle East, Africa and Asia had crossed the continent in the previous year. The agreement provided for Turkey to control the flow of people leaving its territory in exchange for aid. for the large number of Syrian refugees in Turkey, as well as other incentives.
“All borders have introduced the practice of systematic violations of the ban on collective expulsion,” Kovacevic said. “But at least now, in Serbia, this has been officially confirmed, not by a non-governmental organization, local or foreign, but by the highest authority for the protection of human rights.”
To conceal any evidence of wrongdoing, border control officers routinely strip refugees of mobile phones or documents. In the case of Ahmadi and the others, a clear trace of evidence was left behind because of what Kovacevic said was the “blatant arrogance” of Serbian police who “thought they could do whatever they wanted.”
It started on February 2, 2017, when 25 migrants, including nine children, were caught at the border with Bulgaria and brought to a police station in Serbia. They were held for hours in a basement room, then taken to a judge to face charges of illegally crossing the border. However, the judge ruled that the group should be treated as refugees and taken to an asylum center.
Ahmadi, who spoke to the German PA through an interpreter, said he clearly remembers when the judge asked them if they wanted to stay in Serbia. He said he was happy to finally have a place in the camp after traveling through Turkey and Bulgaria.
A few hours later, in the border police truck that was to take them to the camp, Ahmadi realized that something was wrong. When the police abandoned them in the woods, “I felt broken,” he recalled. “I thought about my family at home.”
During the darkness and freezing temperatures, the refugees walked to Bulgaria – and directly into the hands of the border police in that country. They managed to call an interpreter in Serbia, who alerted refugee rights activists in both Serbia and Bulgaria.
The refugees remained in camps in Bulgaria, some days and more before returning to Serbia and later moving to Western Europe. Rights lawyers later collected the documentation left behind by the Serbian court and the Bulgarian authorities, establishing a clear trace of the events that helped build the case in court.
Four years later, Kovacevic tries to establish contact with all the people in Afghanistan he represents; are scattered in countries that include France and Bosnia. Blocking the coronavirus made it more difficult to make contact and arrange money transfers for the damage they earned, he said.
“It won’t take long, but we’ll get there,” Kovacevic smiled.
Ahmadi, who was granted asylum in Germany five months ago, said he intended to use the damage to help him and his wife start a new life in Europe. He now takes German lessons before looking for a job.
“This compensation means a lot to me,” he said. “I will be able to buy a bed and something for our apartment after I rent it.”
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