Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said on Friday that the death of six-year-old migrant Madina Hussiny, who was killed by a train in 2017 on the Croatia-Serbia border, was a tragedy, but added he will not step down over a European Court of Human Rights' (ECHR) ruling which said Croatia had violated a series of articles in the European Convention on Human Rights in dealing with the case.
Judges in the court’s Council on Thursday determined that the Croatian authorities failed to investigate the case efficiently. Croatia was also ordered pay €40,000 to the family, as well as €16,700 in court fees.
Six-year-old Madina Hussiny lost her life on the train tracks near the Serbian border in November 2017, after the Croatian police had denied her and her family the right to apply for asylum and ordered them to follow the tracks back to Serbia in the middle of the night.
Earlier on Friday, the Centre for Peace Studies and the Are You Syrious? NGO called for the resignations of Bozinovic, the police director, and the border police commissioner over the ECHR ruling.
READ MORE
Speaking to the press, Bozinovic said “there are other legal remedies” and that “what and if something will be done” would be decided by Croatia’s representative before the ECHR. He refused to say which stand Croatia would take if the ruling became final.
Croatia is in a situation, “through no fault of its own,” in which many groups of people want to come to Europe, Bozinovic said, adding that “every loss of life is tragic, especially a child’s.”
For them to come, the EU should want to receive them, just as in the 2015 and 2016 migrant waves, but “European states are no longer willing to receive so many migrants from other countries, as that is a security, economic, social and political problem for them.”
Croatia is in a situation in which it must prevent illegal entry or become a hotspot, Bozinovic said.
“We, and the EU, took the position that it’s necessary to prevent illegal entry into Croatia and the EU and that those who believe that, under international law, they have the option to exercise asylum rights should apply for it. This means coming before institutions, in the specific case to a border crossing.”
He insisted that if “those people” came to an official border crossings, someone would certainly receive them.
Migration issue should be solved systematically
“Receiving and talking with those people, that’s international law. Instead, we are faced with illegal crossings by people who don’t carry or don’t even have identity documents. Why? Because if they apply for international aid and protection in Croatia, and if they leave Croatia and move on, they can at any moment, and most often should be, returned to Croatia, but Croatia is not their intended destination.”
Bozinovic said “those people avoid a procedure which would be both clear and transparent. They want to go further than Croatia and, in order to succeed, they must avoid Croatian border controls, and we are constantly having to deal with this problem.”
He added that the migration issue should be solved systematically. “On the one hand, Croatia should prevent illegal entry into its territory, and on the other, prevent… migration to other states.”
“Some people don’t even wait for their asylum application to be processed in Croatia but use smugglers to continue on to Europe. We are a state on the EU’s external border. We are one of the smaller EU member states, yet we have the longest external land border in the EU,” Bozinovic said.
Asked who would be held accountable for the death of the Afghan toddler, he insisted that every action taken in Croatia had been in line with the law. “We’ll know more once (our lawyers) have read the whole ruling,” he added, stressing that Croatian police act “in a humane and humanitarian way.”
READ MORE
Bozinovic went on to say that during his term, over 400 smugglers of illegal migrants had been arrested, adding that Croatian police deal with it round the clock.
He said the police independently conducted 22 investigations into officers suspected of misconduct, and that the police reacted and penalised those responsible whenever there was proof.
He added that the police director sent instructions every week on how to treat vulnerable groups. “We know how many times Croatian police officers have rescued migrants from rivers, carried pregnant women to hospital. In situations when you have about 400 to 500 people who want to enter Croatia every day and the Croatian police, under the law, should stop them by acting in line with the law, we cannot and are not ruling out the possibility of incidents.”
‘Every aspect of migrant girl’s death will be investigated’
Bozinovic said Madina’s death would be thoroughly investigated, as would a series of accusations, some documented, of border police beating migrants.
He said some questions from the press implied “that someone would order that or want something like that to happen. Everyone in the whole system is doing their best in the conditions we are faced with for the law to be respected and for the police to do their obligation under the law, to prevent illegal entry.”
Bozinovic said such cases were not pleasant and that the police had managed to reduce migrant pressure on borders by 40%.
“Some other routes through Europe have opened up, because Croatia is being increasingly avoided and because it’s clear that Croatia protects its borders,” he said, adding that the officers suspected of beating migrants have been fired and that disciplinary and other action has been taken against them.
Kakvo je tvoje mišljenje o ovome?
Budi prvi koji će ostaviti komentar!