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, 8 Oct 2021 - Interior Minister Davor Božinović said on Friday that police officers were involved in violence against migrants on the Bosnian border, which was reported by Croatian and European media earlier this week.

"The police director, as soon as he saw the footage, sent an expert team which worked very intensively and as far as I know at the moment, they established that those were police officers," he told Croatian reporters in Luxembourg, where he is attending a meeting of EU interior ministers.

Božinović said he assumed it was "some individual offence by several police officers," adding that the police director was expected to provide more details today.

On Wednesday evening, a number of European media outlets showed disturbing footage of a migrant pushback on Croatian territory. The footage shows men, wearing balaclavas and clothes similar to those of Croatian police, pushing migrants across a backwater of the Korana river towards Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In doing so, the men were hitting the migrants with batons such as those used by Croatian riot police and some wore vests like those worn by that unit.

According to the media, the footage was taken in June as part of an investigation by a number of European media outlets.

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ZAGREB, 7 April, 2021 - A woman from Afghanistan claims that she was sexually abused by Croatian border police, and even held at knifepoint, after crossing the border, the Guardian said on Wednesday.

According to a dossier from the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), the incident occurred on 15 February, in Croatian territory, a few kilometres from the Bosnian city of Velika Kladuša, the British newspaper said.

In the report the woman said she tried to cross the border with a group of four others, including two children, but they were stopped by an officer who allegedly pointed a rifle at them.

The Afghans asked for asylum, at which one of the officers laughed, after which the woman was singled out for a search, the Guardian said, quoting her as saying that she insisted that he should not touch her because she was a woman and a Muslim, after which the officer slapped her.

The officer allegedly touched her breasts and behind, and ordered her to remove all her T-shirts, which she refused. The five migrants were then taken away in a police vehicle, after which the police again hit the Afghan woman, ordering her to strip naked and starting to sexually abuse her, at one point putting a knife to her throat.

The police physically assaulted other migrants from the group as well, and ordered them to walk back to Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Guardian said.

It added that the European Commission condemned this alleged act and called on the Croatian authorities to investigate all allegations and punish those responsible.

DRC secretary general Charlotte Slente was quoted as saying that despite the Commission’s engagement on the migrant issue on the Croatian border, there had been no progress in recent months either in investigations of reports of brutal treatment by police or in the development of independent border monitoring mechanisms.

According to the Guardian, the Croatian Interior Ministry said there were no recorded dealings with "females from the population of illegal migrants" on the day in question and that Croatian police, by saving the lives of hundreds of migrants from minefields, rivers and snow, showed not only an organised and professional approach in the protection of the state border but humanity as well.

The Interior Ministry says the Croatian police are persistently portrayed as brutal without a single piece of evidence and that illegal migrants, when they fail to cross the border, are ready to falsely accuse those same police of abuse, the Guardian said.

According to the DRC, since May 2019 almost 24,000 migrants have been illegally pushed back to Bosnia, including 547 between January and February 2021.

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ZAGREB, June 12, 2020 - The police have launched an investigation into the appearance of a banner with vulgar and abusive messages against Serb children and women at a football match in a Zagreb suburb, Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said on Friday.

Minister Bozinovic also reassured the public that the police would solve this case just as any case of incitement to violence and ethnic intolerance.

The banner with a vulgar invective against Serb women and children was raised by spectators on the stands during a football match in Zagreb's Kustosija neighborhood on Thursday.

Asked by the press whether law enforcement authorities had identified the perpetrators, Bozinovic said today that the police were one of the institutions that "very promptly" informed the general public of their activities and that they would share the information when they could do that.

The minister again refused media outlets' allegations about reports of police brutality against illegal migrants along the border.

I have recently pointed out very resolutely that the Croatian police do not treat anyone brutally. "The Croatian police protect the Croatian border and prevent illegal arrivals," he underscored during his visit to the northern town of Prelog.

"In any case, our message is that we will abide by the law, including national and European laws, and nobody can stop us from protecting the Croatian border against illegal entries, regardless of where those pressures come from," the minister said.

He said that those who disseminate allegations about red crosses being sprayed by Croatian police officers on the heads of migrants during the month of Ramadan were ill-intentioned both towards migrants and Croatia.

NGOs report that police violence against refugees temporarily ceased following another report on alleged misconduct.