Migrations, Eastern borders of the European Union: the abuses committed by Hungary, Austria, Poland and Belarus on the skin of people fleeing

ROME – Hungary rejected 157,879 people at the border in 2022, complaint Amnesty International, which also turns the spotlight on Austria’s mistreatment of refugees, seeking collaboration with Sweden and Denmark against illegal immigration. Meanwhile, Lithuania approved a series of measures to hold Belarus responsible for facilitating illegal immigration to the EU.

The violence on the Hungarian border. Hungary is the first country to push back on the eastern border of the European Union and is the one that uses different forms of violence against migrant people. The Hungarian authorities in 2016 devised a legal framework that explicitly allows the police to return people to Serbia without any individual assessment, against the norms of international law. In 2020, Orbán also issued a law that prevents asylum seekers from distant countries that are not at war from entering the country. While Budapest documents the pushbacks at the border with pride, a government spokesman dismissed the reports of violence by the police as attempts to discredit. Indeed, according to the government, the Hungarian police are carrying out their duties in a lawful, professional and proportionate manner and are treating people in a humanely dignified manner.

The witness. Yet the stories collected by civil society activists and international organizations tell of systematic and brutal violence against people on the move by the police. A man told Border Violence he suffered three hours of beatings, punches and kicks when he and other people were first captured between Subotica and Szeged, adding that Hungarian police, while beating him on the face and groin, said “Welcome to Hungary”. The same person also said that the police threatened him and another group of asylum seekers with guns and poured alcoholic drinks and water on their bodies before taking them back to Serbia.

The decision of the European Court of Human Rights. The court ruled in early February that Hungarian authorities were responsible for the death of a young Syrian boy who drowned in the waters of the Tisza River on the Hungarian-Serbian border after police assaulted and pushed him away in 2016.

The abuses of Austria. Amnesty in his latest report he criticized Vienna for hosting asylum seekers in tents, ongoing illegal pushbacks and the disappearance of 5,140 unaccompanied minors. Meanwhile, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer visited Copenhagen and Stockholm in search of cooperation aimed at “transforming the European Union’s migration regime”. Nehammer aims to make Austria less attractive to people on the move by cutting subsidies. Denmark and Sweden also have similar policies against illegal immigration.

On the border between Poland and Belarus. On March 24, volunteers found the fortieth victim of the Polish-Belarusian border crisis since the beginning of the year during a check near the Hwo?na River in the Polish Bia?owie?a National Park. On March 21, the 39th dead, a 27-year-old Afghan man, was found in the same area after a month-long search. Two hundred people are still missing from the roll call. Activists and locals provide humanitarian aid to refugees and search for the missing, while the police carry out push-backs to Belarus, a state that offers no guarantees in terms of respect for people’s rights, denounces the Grupa Grancia Collective. MEP Janina Ochoysk believes there are many more victims along this border and has described the border area as a ‘mass grave’.

In Lithuania. On 3 April, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gabrielius Landsbergis, met Hans Leijtens, the new executive director of Frontex, to discuss the agency’s possible involvement in the management of irregular migration flows at the EU-Belarus border. A few days later, on April 6, the Lithuanian government adopted a series of measures to hold Belarus responsible for facilitating illegal immigration into the country and into the European Union through its behaviour.