As part of our every day work in locations behind the external borders of the EU, No Name Kitchen’s staff very often hears testimonies of people who have been illegally pushed back from the EU to neighbouring countries – pushbacks that are usually accompanied by violence.
Today we report on the abuses suffered by a family from Sierra Leone. The victims of the attacks, a 15-year-old girl, a 17-year-old boy and a 21-year-old boy, siblings.
As they themselves told us, they left from the town of Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina, for Croatia. It was their fourth attempt to enter Croatia and the EU. The lack of legal and safe ways to migrate leave people with no other option than to cross borders irregularly and, once in a EU country, ask for asylum. Asylum is a right.
This family decided to make this journey with eight other people. In total, there were six men and five women.
Once in Croatia, about an hour’s walk from Zagreb, the capital, they decided to phone a number that someone had shared with them saying that it was IOM’s (International Organization for Migration), and to whom they should express their intention to apply for asylum in Croatia. Someone answered the call, and once they had communicated their location and personal details over the phone, the person on the other end of the phone asked the group to wait to be picked up.
The group waited for hours in the forest. It got dark and they slept there. It was raining and they had no shelter. They say that after giving up hope that anyone would arrive, they decided to continue their way at daybreak. Shortly afterwards, five policemen in dark blue uniforms appeared in the forest and ordered the people to stop. The description of the police attire given to us by these minors matches that worn by the Croatian intervention police.
Respondents told us that the Croatian police already knew the countries of origin of the people in this group, as they said they had been informed by the person with whom the group of asylum seekers had spoken. They reiterated to the police their intention to ask again for asylum in Croatia, and told the police that they themselves had called what they believed to be IOM for protection.
Despite this, the police frisked the people, thoroughly searched their belongings and forced them to hand over everything of value. The officers took the money and phones from all of them. One of the respondents was caught recording a video of the scene, and his phone was destroyed. From our experience on the ground and the hundreds of testimonies we have collected since 2017, we know that this is a very common practice, which is constantly repeated.
After about an hour, the group of eleven people was forced into a police van. As the capacity of the van was not sufficient for the whole group, some people had to sit on the floor. The interviewees describe the journey in the van as very claustrophobic due to the darkness inside and the lack of space. The younger sister started to feel very dizzy. The people who were locked with her in the back of the van repeatedly asked the officers to stop the vehicle, and after a while, the police slowed down. The two brothers and the girl got out of the van to let the minor get some fresh air and asked for some water. The Croatian police reportedly refused to give them water. At the time, the group was very close to Velika Kladusa, a Bosnian town near the Croatian border.
As the girl was not getting any better, the policemen shouted at them to get back in the van. The two brothers begged them to wait a little longer, as the girl was still not well. They told us that, after this, the policemen got back into the van and took pepper spray. With it, they sprayed the three brothers outside the van. The interviewees describe the feeling of not being able to breathe. After this, the police left them there, very close to the border, with the aim that they returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The same EUROPEAN UNION that is financing with its border policy these police forces that carry out illegal pushbacks, creates refugee camps in neighbouring countries. And these refugee camps, as No Name Kitchen has constantly denounced, are another form of torture for asylum seekers: they eliminate people’s freedom of choice. This means that while the two interviewees now live together in the Borici camp, inside the town of Bihac, as they are both minors, the older brother is forced to live in the Lipa camp because he is 21 years old.
Due to the considerable distance between the two camps, this family is forced to live separately.
No Name Kitchen is a founding member of the Border Violence Monitoring Network and on this website we publish all the testimonies of violence we collect.

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