The Centre for Peace Studies (CMS) NGO on Thursday demanded that violence against migrants stops and also demanded political responsibility "of all those who perform and order the torture and illegal expulsion of refugees" from Croatia.

The demands ensued after the commercial broadcaster RTL television on Wednesday showed video footage of men wearing ski masks pushing back migrants from Croatia across a backwater of the Korana river, hitting them with batons such as those used by Croatian riot police. Some of the men also wore vests like those worn by riot police.

The NGO said in a press release that this was the gravest violation of human rights in Croatia, and insisted on sanctioning anyone who perpetrated such crimes.

It also asks for the implementation of “efficient and independent investigations into the crimes committed on our borders.”

Sanctioning the perpetrators will not suffice, the NGO said, calling for the sanctioning of all those who ordered, enabled or covered up such crimes.

“Senior office holders in the Ministry of the Interior, including Minister Davor Bozinovic, should assume political responsibility,” says the CMS.

Earlier on Thursday Bozinovic said that an investigation was launched to see who was involved in a violent incident against migrants on the border, which was recorded on video. He added that the Croatian police did not tolerate any overstepping of authority, which must be proved.

The government, the Interior Ministry and the Police Directorate do not tolerate any overstepping of authority, he added. “In this case, as before, we will establish what happened, who was involved, where it happened, and then decide on the next steps,” he underscored.

RTL said the footage was from June and that it was taken during an eight-month journalistic investigation in which an RTL crew took part with colleagues from Lighthouse Reports, an investigative journalistic network based in the Netherlands, from the Swiss SRF Rundschau, the German ARD, ARD Monitor, the French Liberation, the Dutch Pointer, the Croatian Novosti, and the German Der Spiegel.

The head of the border administration, Zoran Niceno, said on Wednesday that the Police Directorate had formed a task force that would go into the field after the videos were released showing masked persons hitting migrants and pushing them back from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina.