MUP: All allegations of violence against migrants unfounded

“The Interior Ministry, as UNHCR’s partner, receives a certain amount of complaints by migrants without confirmation of identity, exact location or time the alleged events took place. MUP has responded to all complaints, however, the majority of them cannot be verified due to a lack of specific information, and none of the complaints were proven to be founded so far,” MUP said.

The latest Desperate Journeys report by the UNHCR on the movements of refugees and migrants through Europe which covers the period from January to August 2018, said that some 2,500 refugees were turned back from Croatia since the beginning of the year, 1,500 of whom were denied asylum, and some 700 reported experiencing violence and theft at the hands of Croatian border police.

MUP said that the report uses the word “allegedly” when describing the events, which indicates that the claims were not confirmed.

“The report lists as its source an article published in Guardian, which we have denied numerous times, as well as unverifiable information from unidentified migrants who are, by their own admission, moving illegally across borders of a number of countries,” MUP said.

An article published by the British Guardian on August 15, 2018 reported about a series of testimonies by NGOs and migrants situated in camps in the Bosnian border towns of Bihac and Velika Kladusa, who said they were subjected to violence by the Croatian police. They said the police had stolen their possessions, destroyed their phones, and beaten them before taking them back to the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Considering that in 2017 we received 1,887 applications for international protection, and registered 646 by August 2018, we cannot accept the claim that the Ministry is systematically denying migrants the right to submit their application for international protection, MUP said.

MUP and UNHCR cooperate well on the issue of the treatment of migrants and report to each other on the matter. UNHCR is participating in the Border Monitoring project with its partner, the Croatian Law Centre, and the project enables them to have an insight in the treatment of migrants on the border and we have not had any specific complaints on the treatment as part of the project, MUP said.

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