ZAGREB, 22 June - Croatia has applied for reception and accommodation of another 60 irregular migrants who can be relocated and is one of the few EU member-states that have expressed willingness for welcoming an additional number of migrants.

Irregular migrants should be relocated from Italy, Greece, and Cyprus to other EU member-states, the Večernji List daily recalls.

Apart from Croatia, the other four countries where more migrants can move in are France, Germany, Portugal, and Ireland.

Voluntary applications for welcoming irregular migrants who should be resettled can still be lodgedCroatia also supports France in its broad initiative to reform the asylum-seeking system, says the daily.

During its recent meeting, the EU Homes Affairs Council, under the French presidency, "very broadly supported the first step of the gradual approach to migration and asylum proposed by the presidency, including the screening regulation, the Eurodac regulation, and the solidarity mechanism," according to the information on the French presidency's web site.

A declaration on assisting the countries that bear the brunt of the arrivals of EU-bound irregular migrants and asylum seekers was adopted at the last meeting of EU interior ministers in Luxembourg, says the daily.

During that meeting, the EU countries were offered two options: to take in additional migrants or to provide them with financial assistance.

According to the state of affairs in applications, an estimated 8,000 applications have so far been lodged for taking in migrants. Germany and France are on the top of the ranking with the highest number of applications.

A provisional plan is to ensure the relocation and resettlement of about 10,000 migrants annually.

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ZAGREB, 20 June 2022 - Croatia's ombudsman for children, Helenca Pirnat Dragičević and the UNHCR said on Monday that there had been headway in the protection of children asylum seekers lately in the country, however there were more and more unaccompanied minors arriving in Croatia.

During a round table discussion, held on World Refugee Day, Pirnat Dragičević ad UNHCR representatives highlighted the adoption of the protocol on the treatment of unaccompanied children migrants in 2018 and the recent amendments to the Foster Parenthood Law as positive things.

They also praised Croatian hosts for their heartfelt reception of Ukrainian refugees, including unaccompanied minors.

However, they said in a joint press release that there is still room for improvement, which requires the attention of all stakeholders, and they are pushing for the full adjustment of Croatia's child protection system with international principles and standards.

They also called for boosting translation resources for Ukrainian school-age children.

In 2020, Croatia registered 942 children asylum seekers, and in 2021, this number increased by 25% to 1,181. The number of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum has increased by 5%.

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18 April 2022 - The Karlovac police reported on Monday that they had found two corpses, one at Svojići and other at Donje Dubrave, in the River Mrežnica, while they had been searching for a missing migrant from a group of Gambians and Senegalese who had reported that one of them had gone missing.

According to a press release issued by the police today, the local police received a telephone call on Saturday evening requesting assistance in the search for a missing man who was believed to have drowned.

Before the call, the local police had discovered at the village of Svojići eight foreigners, who are originally from Gambia and Senegal and who entered Croatia illegally. One man in that group was in a very poor health condition and was therefore transported to a local healthcare institution to be given medical assistance.

During the conversation with the remaining migrants, it was established that another man in that group had fallen in the River Mrežnica and that he was presumed drowned.

During the onsite investigation, a body was found in the River Mrežnica at Svojići, and also another drowned victim was found at Donje Dubrave.

The two victims are presumed to be migrants.

ZAGREB, 4 March (2022) - The GONG nongovernmental organisation on Friday opened a three-day online conference "Open data against infodemic" on the occasion of the 9th Open Data Day, to promote the importance of publicly available, open data which the NGO describes as a valuable social resource.

GONG executive director Oriana Ivković Novokmet said the conference would include three panel discussions, one of which would focus on the coronavirus infection and disinformation during the pandemic.

Experts from the universities of Rijeka, Osijek and Dubrovnik will be discussing how false coronavirus information is spread and who the most influential disinformers are.

The second panel, entitled "Data only for the rich," deals with the availability of spatial data, environmental data and data on public companies.

Ivković Novokmet said the latest amendments to the Right to Access Information Act, seeking to align the law with the EU Open Data Directive, was a step backward in terms of access to information standards because data on public spending would require the proportionality and public interest tests in a whole set of cases. GONG also considers as disputable the fact that public companies that make their income on the market, like FINA or Zagreb Holding, would be able to charge for the use of their data.

The third panel, entitled "Who is paying you," deals with the financing of civil sector organisations, Ivković Novokmet said, recalling a "defamation campaign" against civil society organisations during the 2021 local elections.

The event will also include workshops, as well as a discussion on Croatian, Hungarian and Russian officials' real estate in Croatia and the financing of media by the state and local budgets.

Lana Podgoršek of the Code for Croatia civic hackers' group said the conference would provide an opportunity for citizens to ask about anything regarding open data, public procurement transparency, civic hacking and the group's community projects.

Code for Croatia is an initiative that brings together activists and programmers and everyone else interested in open data and socially useful community projects.

Podgoršek also presented the group's new project, called "Fix it," a portal where citizens can report any damage to public infrastructure.

The "Open data against infodemic" conference can be followed on GONG and Code for Croatia's YouTube channels and on GONG's Facebook account.

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ZAGREB, 23 Jan 2022 - On Sunday, the Croatian Trade Union of Migrant Workers, whose Croatian acronym is HSRM, accused local tax offices of malpractice and miscalculations in tax returns, claiming that such cases of negligence amount to violations of double tax avoidance agreements.

The HSRM says that it has come to this conclusion based on the findings made by its legal experts who analyzed cases of migrant workers whose tax returns were miscalculated.

The union issued a press release signed by union leader Franjo Lazar, stating that the state-level tax administration seems to be ignorant of cases of malpractice.

The union calls on its members to wait for some time before submitting their tax returns to the relevant authorities as negotiations are being conducted with the Finance Ministry, regarding the nine requests presented by the union with the purpose to improve the status of migrant workers.

According to the HSRM, an estimated 20,000 migrant workers come back to Croatia weekly or monthly and bring up to a half-billion euros annually.

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ZAGREB, 15 Dec 2021 - Croatia's High Misdemeanor Court has dismissed the appeal lodged by Dragan Umičević, an activist of the  Are You Syrious, against a fine of HRK 60,000  imposed on him after he had helped a group of migrants in March 2018 to illegally cross the Croatian border, the Jutarnji List reported on Wednesday.

The ruling of the High Misdemeanor Court was sent to Vinkovci's Municipal Court that fined Umičević in 2018 when it found Umičević guilty of helping a 14-member Afghan family to illegally cross the border from Serbia into Croatia near the town of Strošinci, by sending them light signals from his car about where to cross the border.

Umičević helped them to seek asylum in Croatia, the daily newspaper reported today, adding that the final verdict amounts to the campaign of intimidating activists and NGOs who help irregular and undocumented migrants.

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ZAGREB, 7 Dec, 2021 - Currently there are over 4,000 Afghan refugees and migrants along the border between Serbia and Croatia, often encountering the brutality of the Croatian police after crossing the border, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation told a press conference in Belgrade on Monday. 

Vladan Jeremić, the Foundation's representative for Southeast Europe, said that collective expulsions, abuse and arbitrary arrests had been going on at the Serbian-Croatian border since 2016 despite the efforts by civil society organisation to prevent such things from happening.

Croatia denies accusations of inhumane treatment of migrants.

Jeremić said that the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, which is close to the German leftwing party Die Linke, supported the report by Nikola Kovačević documenting human rights abuses on the Serbian-Croatian border. Its aim is to provide civil society organisations with guidance on how to document and legally oppose unlawful practices along the border between Serbia and Croatia.

Violent behaviour is not happening in cooperation with the Serbian police, but away from border crossing points, with migrants being beaten up, humiliated, dispossessed of their valuables, and threatened at gun point, said Milica Švabić of the Belgrade-based KlikAtiv Centre for Development of Social Policies.

She said that about 1,700 people are currently staying in three official migrant camps at the western town of Šid, while an estimated 4,000, including families and unaccompanied minors, are staying in abandoned buildings and in tents in the woods in the surrounding area. They are trying to cross the border almost every day, running the risk of violent push-backs.

The practice of illegal and violent push-backs of refugees from Croatia is still ongoing on a daily basis, Švabić said.

Although they are also being expelled from Hungary and Romania, refugees claim that the Croatian police is the most brutal in push-backs, Švabić said, adding that the refugees who have been expelled by the Croatian police regularly report having been beaten with truncheons and rifle-butts and many have suffered serious injuries, including fractures and head injuries.

Ana Ćuća from the Zagreb-based Centre for Peace Studies said that Croatia has used systematic violence against migrants since 2016, seizing their personal belongings and mobile phones, beating them, confining them in basements, and allowing police dogs to attack them.

Victims are not just adults, but children too. These are not individual cases, but orders from the political leadership, which often cannot be avoided, Ćuća said.

She said that civil society activists in Croatia are victims of police intimidation because they draw attention to human rights violations on the EU border, which, she added, makes the EU responsible too.

Ćuća said that the change in the EU migrant policy has resulted in violence, adding that more and more Croatian police officers are anonymously providing information on the structure of the system of violent and illegal expulsions of refugees.

This policy comes from Brussels and it can be ended only if EU member states and countries suffering the consequences of such a policy demand it.

Kovačević said that victims should get certain compensation for violence they are subjected to, and that those responsible for abuse should be identified and the government should also be held to account.

Kovačević is the recipient of the UNHCR Nansen Award 2021 for helping refugees.

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ZAGREB, 3 Dec 2021 - The Council of Europe's European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) issued a report on Friday accusing Croatia of the severe ill-treatment of migrants by the police and the obstruction of cooperation.

The CPT  published a report on its ad hoc visit to Croatia from 10 to 14 August 2020, in particular to the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), "to examine treatment and safeguards afforded to migrants deprived of their liberty by the Croatian police."

The Ministry of the Interior said on Friday that the CPT report was published without its consent and that it was based on unverifiable information from Bosnia and Herzegovina, adding that the CPR clearly overstepped its authority.

The CPT said that its delegation also "looked into procedures applied to migrants in the context of their removal from Croatia as well as the effectiveness of oversight and accountability mechanisms in cases of alleged police misconduct during such operations. A visit to the Ježevo Reception Centre for Foreigners was carried out as well."

The CPT interviewed migrants and "received numerous credible and concordant allegations of physical ill-treatment of migrants by Croatian police officers (notably members of the intervention police)."

"The alleged ill-treatment consisted of slaps, kicks, blows with truncheons and other hard objects (for example, butts/barrels of firearms, wooden sticks or tree branches) to various parts of the body. The alleged ill-treatment had been purportedly inflicted either at the time of the migrants’ 'interception' and de facto deprivation of liberty inside Croatian territory (ranging from several to fifty kilometres or more from the border), and/or at the moment of their push-back across the border with BiH," the report said.

The persons interviewed "displayed recent injuries on their bodies, which were assessed by the delegation’s forensic medical doctors as being compatible with their allegations of having been ill-treated by Croatian police officers (by way of example, reference is made to the characteristic “tram-line” haematomas to the back of the body, highly consistent with infliction of blows from a truncheon or stick)."

The report also documents several accounts of migrants being subjected to other forms of severe ill-treatment by Croatian police officers, such as "migrants being forced to march through the forest to the border barefoot and being thrown with their hands still zip-locked into the Korana river, which separates Croatia from BiH."

"Some migrants alleged being pushed back into BiH wearing only their underwear and, in some cases, naked. A number of persons stated that when they had been apprehended and were lying face down on the ground, certain Croatian police officers had discharged their weapons into the ground close to them."

The CPT urged the Croatian authorities "to take determined action to stop migrants from being ill-treated by police officers and to ensure that cases of alleged ill-treatment are investigated effectively."

The report noted that for the first time since the CPT started visiting Croatia in 1998, "there were manifest difficulties of cooperation."

"The CPT’s delegation was provided with incomplete information about places where migrants may be deprived of their liberty, and it was obstructed by police officers in accessing documentation necessary for the delegation to carry out the Committee’s mandate," the report said.

"In acknowledging the significant challenges faced by the Croatian authorities to deal with large numbers of migrants entering the country, the CPT stresses the need for a concerted European approach. Nevertheless, despite these challenges, Croatia must meet its human rights obligations and treat migrants who enter the country through the border in a humane and dignified manner," it added.

The CPT claims that there are no effective accountability mechanisms in place to identify the perpetrators of alleged acts of ill-treatment. 

As regards the establishment of an "independent border monitoring mechanism" by the Croatian authorities, the CPT sets out its minimum criteria for such a mechanism to be effective and independent.

In conclusion, the CPT said that it "wishes to pursue a constructive dialogue and meaningful cooperation with the Croatian authorities, grounded on a mature acknowledgment, including at the highest political levels, of the gravity of the practice of ill-treatment of migrants by Croatian police officers and a commitment for such ill-treatment to cease."

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ZAGREB, 11 Oct 2021 - Interior Minister Davor Božinović on Monday said that he did not have any new information related to videos of police violence against migrants and that it is necessary to wait for the results of the investigation.

"We'll wait and see what the results of the investigation show. Everything that will happen as part of the relevant procedures will be in line with what the police chief said on Friday," Božinović told reporters.

Protecting the borders in line with the law

Asked about responsibility in the chain of command, Božinović underscored that the orders are to protect the state borders in line with the law.

"There cannot be any order that is not in line with the law. As soon as I receive the report from the police directorate, I will forward it to the prime minister, even though we have already discussed all this," said Božinović.

He said that police officers, particularly those assigned to border control, doing one of the most difficult jobs.

He added that there were cases when the police themselves identified cases of police officers overstepping their powers or unlawful conduct.

He said that disciplinary procedures had been underway from before against eight police officers and that 22 cases had been documented and submitted to the State Attorney's Office (DORH).

"When someone individually breaches or oversteps their authority anywhere, there are services in the police directorate and internal controls to conduct investigations and decide on the penalties," he said.

Commenting on an anonymous letter by a police officer who claimed two years ago that an order existed for violent pushbacks, Božinović reiterated that anything that was reported was always investigated. DORH rejected 13 of the 22 cases for lack of evidence, he said.

The anonymous police officer's letter refers to a specific case, with a specific location and date, which previously was not the case, said Božinović and added that a prompt reaction followed the anonymous letter and that the matter was still being investigated.

Božinović also commented on a recent drug incident in the Croatian Army, underscoring that police offices were exceptionally active regarding the fight against drug smuggling.

"The cocaine market is expanding into the general population, which is concerning. We will meet with the anti-drug commission in the next few days. In 2020, 60 kilograms of cocaine were confiscated whereas in the first eight months of this year more than 667 kilograms were seized," he said.

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October 9, 2021 - On Friday, the Chief of Police Nikola Milina held a press conference at the Police Directorate, where he spoke about the published recordings of the treatment and abuse of migrants and the findings of the Expert Team so far.

"According to the first information after the publication of the recording, we immediately formed an expert team, and colleagues from the Police Directorate were sent to the field in order to shed light on what it is about. Immediately during the first actions, we came to know that the persons were police officers of the intervention police. "Since at this moment there is a basic suspicion of a serious violation of official duty, which is very damaging to the reputation of the police, the procedure of handing over the decision to the officers on the removal of duty is underway and further disciplinary proceedings are underway," Milina said.

As reported by Net.hr, the chief of the police said that they were in cooperation with the DORH, with which they would conduct further investigations. He also pointed out that they want to shed light on the event to the end. “Our interest is certainly to shed light on this event to the end, in no way do we want the individual event to affect the praise the police receive for their daily dedicated work,” he said.

Footage of masked police beating migrants at the border. (Telegram.hr)

''Corridor is not some secret operation''

He then denied certain information that emerged from the publication of the video.

"We have to deny that the Corridor is a secret operation aimed at intimidating or promotes abuse of migrants. It is a long-term action to prevent human trafficking, we have arrested 4,000 smugglers in the last two years. Members of the Croatian police have rescued migrants from streams, rivers, indoors where they have been placed by smuggling groups in often dangerous situations. In these few years, the Croatian police have been at the forefront of preventing the smuggling of migrants. 

Another misinformation is that there are police cover-ups, and that police officers in turn carry out some illegal orders. ''It doesn't stand out at all. I constantly send instructions to behave cautiously, especially towards vulnerable groups, such as women, children, but also in other situations", he said.

He said state prosecutors have initiated a total of 22 proceedings since 2018 regarding police treatment of migrants; in 13 cases the proceedings were suspended, the rest are ongoing.

"For those who break the law, the Croatian system is the most rigorous in treating its members and they must be aware that they will be held accountable. Also, regarding situations concerning alleged police officers who say they have been ordered to work illegally. There is a very clear situation, a police officer is obliged to report illegal actions ex officio. We also conducted 8 disciplinary proceedings against officials who violated the rules of treatment and abuse of migrants. I can say that in at least 13 cases the proceedings were suspended, and we always check everything we have to and wherever there are grounds for suspecting that there are disciplinary errors'', said Milina.

Chief of Police, Nikola Milina, at a press conference on Friday. (Photo: Goran Stanzl/PIXSELL)

Milina confirmed that there were three intervention police officers in this case and many have been identified so far. "Surveys will continue to be conducted in cooperation with the competent state attorney's office. These are facts that I can communicate. I am responsible for the first day of work in the police," said Milina, emphasizing that there are no special orders for abuse of migrants.

"It is especially warned that no use of force is allowed, especially against vulnerable groups, women, and children. It is about acting during working hours. This is certainly not a procedure that is appropriate and dignified, regardless of whether it is done at the border or any kind of treatment", he said.

The director general of police also said that "it will be seen for what reason (police officers) did not wear the prescribed uniform". "This is not about any treatment outside working hours. As far as uniforms are concerned, police officers are obliged to wear the prescribed uniforms, and it will be determined why they had certain parts differently and did not wear the prescribed uniform. This is about treatment, suppression of illegal migration, but this is certainly not a procedure that is appropriate and dignified. It is an intervention unit of the police that was on the rescue, it seems to me from the Istrian Police", he said.

Milina did not want to specify what the officers removed from duty are charged with, saying only that it was a serious violation of official duty and damage to the reputation of the Croatian police due to what was on the recording. "We will strengthen the control mechanisms. They have written instructions, they will also receive oral instructions. The focus is not only on the intervention police but on all branches of the police, we will strengthen education," he said.

He also said that, according to available data, there have been no disciplinary proceedings against police officers removed from duty so far.

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