RFE/RL: Afghan refugees receive verdict against Serbia - "We have welcomed justice"

"I am left with very painful and bad memories, which I still cannot erase from my heart and mind."

This is how one Afghan woman remembers the night when Serbian police forcibly expelled her across the border into neighboring Bulgaria, in the winter and through the forest.

It was nine years ago, on the night between February 3 and 4. A group of about twenty Afghan men and women who had set out for Europe at the height of the refugee crisis were expelled from Serbia. Among them were small children.

And exactly nine years later, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the state of Serbia had violated their rights.

The behavior of the Serbian authorities was described in that international verdict as "inhumane and degrading."

The Afghan woman, who spoke to Radio Free Europe (RFE) on condition of anonymity, received her sentence in France, where she currently lives.

The identity of the victims is also protected in the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights.

"The court protected my rights and established justice. I am happy and grateful for that. But I pray that such abuse by the Serbian police will not be repeated against other refugees and migrants," concludes the RFE/RL interviewee.

Until the publication of the text, the authorities in Serbia had not reacted to the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, which confirmed the inhumane treatment of the Serbian police.

How were refugees expelled from Afghanistan?

Around midnight on February 3, 2017, the police, together with the army and the Gendarmerie, patrolled the border with Bulgaria in southeastern Serbia. On the main road near the town of Dimitrovgrad, they arrested a group of people from Afghanistan - suspected of illegally crossing the border.

This is confirmed by RFE/RL's interlocutor in the story.

She embarked on the journey to the European Union, which lasted for kilometers and days, out of fear for her own life, she points out.

"My life was in danger in Afghanistan," he emphasizes.

He says he has little memory of the trip to Serbia.

"I don't know exactly where we all went. I don't remember exactly how many of us there were, there were families and children there. It was hard, especially for girls who were on the refugee route alone, like me," she adds.

The day after the arrest, the police brought the group of Afghan men and women before a magistrate in the nearby town of Pirot.

They applied for asylum in court, and the misdemeanor proceedings against them were suspended. The court ordered the police to issue them certificates of intent to seek asylum, so that they could be sent to a reception center.

Despite this, police officers expelled them back to Bulgaria during the night.

They were forced to walk in sub-zero temperatures, and before that, all their documents were taken away, including those issued in Serbia.

Some in the group, as the verdict states, claimed they were physically abused.

"The police's behavior was very bad, violent and against human principles. They took all our papers and left us in the forest in the middle of the night. I always cry when I remember that, even now," describes the RFE/RL interviewee.

Another victim of the expulsion shared her memories with RFE/RL.

The Afghan, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, is in Germany today.

"We experienced very bad treatment. We suffered a lot and went through great hardships. We awaited the European Court's ruling, which calmed and made me happy. I hope we will never face this kind of treatment again, because we all leave our countries due to difficult conditions, misfortune and the struggle for a bare life," he emphasizes.

The Strasbourg Court found in this case that the Serbian authorities had violated the European Convention on Human Rights on multiple occasions.

Thus, in addition to violating the prohibition of collective expulsion of foreigners and unlawful detention, the court also found that Serbia failed to examine whether asylum seekers from Afghanistan would receive proper treatment in Bulgaria.

'Historic' ruling by the European Court

The victims' legal representative, attorney Nikola Kovačević, describes the European Court's ruling as "historic."

As he points out, the ruling against Serbia will further develop court practice in similar cases.

"The very act of transporting these people, throwing them out into the forest, leaving them at a disadvantage, has been characterized as inhumane and degrading treatment. This has not existed in the practice of the European Court of Human Rights so far, where the individual circumstances of 'pušbek', or expulsion across the border, are also examined," he points out.

He adds that the court has for the first time qualified the transport of refugees from the misdemeanor court in Pirot to the green border with Bulgaria as "arbitrary, arbitrary deprivation of liberty," describing it as being carried out in a deceptive manner.

"The court actually said that people were perfidiously told that they would be transported to a camp, put in a van and taken to another location to be deported further," he adds.

Strasbourg went 'a step further' than Belgrade

Earlier, in 2020, the Constitutional Court of Serbia confirmed that the human rights of a group of Afghan men and women were violated when they were forcibly expelled to Bulgaria.

It was the first such decision in domestic judicial practice.

They waited for her for three years.

The court then partially accepted the appeal and awarded them damages of one thousand euros each.

Although it found multiple human rights violations and indicated that they were not provided with adequate legal assistance, the court, among other things, did not rule on allegations of abuse of refugees by the police.

But legal representatives believed that the Constitutional Court's decision was not sufficient, so the appeal was sent to a higher, international instance – the European Court of Human Rights.

Strasbourg went "a step further".

"We alleged seven human rights violations in both the constitutional appeal and the petition to the European Court. The Constitutional Court found three, the European Court of Human Rights found five," explains Nikola Kovačević.

'Authorities are silent, expulsions continue'

Neither the Serbian government nor the ministries of justice and interior had responded to RFE/RL's questions about the reaction to the European Court of Human Rights ruling, which established inhumane treatment at the border, by the time the article was published.

Lawyer Nikola Kovačević does not expect a reaction.

"The ruling of the European Court of Human Rights did not show that this practice (the behavior of the Serbian authorities) happened before, but that it is wrong. And it is still happening today. Both Serbia and other countries in the Western Balkans and the European Union in the region are protecting their borders in an illegal manner," he warns.

Back in July 2016, the Serbian government decided that the army and police would jointly patrol the borders with North Macedonia and Bulgaria.

Local and international activists warned at the time that this practice was conducive to the illegal collective expulsion of foreigners to neighboring countries - without implementing adequate procedures and access to asylum in Serbia.

A similar warning to Serbia was issued at the time by the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

Meanwhile, along the borders, according to an agreement with Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency), police officers from Serbia and certain European Union countries have begun patrolling together.

Border control has been tightened, and in 2020, Serbia began construction of a razor wire fence on the border with North Macedonia.

The number of accusations from non-governmental activists and testimonies from people in the movement - about police violence in Serbia and expulsions across the border - has been growing.

The authorities have repeatedly denied these allegations.

The forced relocation of hundreds of migrants and refugees to state camps was called "actions against migrant smuggling."

Why didn't everyone get compensation?

The European Court of Human Rights found in its ruling that Serbian police acted inhumanely and inhumanely towards a group of 17 Afghan men and women in 2017.

However, only two of them will receive compensation from the state of Serbia, in the amount of five thousand euros – a man and a woman, who shared their experiences with RFE/RL.

The reason is that the rest of the group stopped contacting legal representatives.

"When the court asked us to state whether we were in contact with everyone, we could only do so for two of the applicants. It was impossible to maintain contact with all of them to the extent that the court required for the continuation of the proceedings," explains Nikola Kovačević.

The group, he points out, "scattered all over Europe" after 2017.

Serbia, he reminds, is not the final destination for migrants and refugees, but a transit country, and proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights have been going on for several years.

"A large number of them, when they move on, at some point stop contacting us. When they find their peace, they no longer want to remember it," Kovačević emphasizes.

More than 1,5 million migrants and refugees from 120 countries around the world have passed through Serbia since 2015, according to data from the Serbian State Commissariat for Refugees and Migration.

In the last ten years, migrants and refugees from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa have passed through Serbia in an attempt to reach European Union countries.

The so-called Balkan migrant route to western Europe went through Turkey, Greece, North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, or alternatively through Bulgaria and Serbia.

In recent years, stronger controls at the European Union's borders and the erection of walls have largely stopped the passage of migrants and refugees in large groups.

Migration continues, on a smaller scale, with organized smuggling.