That the humanitarian and legal situation for refugees in Eastern European countries is extremely bad is not a secret. In opposition: the violations of human rights and their national laws are well known by national and EU authorities. Analyzing the EU‘s current policy according to the regulation of asylum and the bilateral contracts especially with African countries it can be seen what the aim of the self-called “place of peace, stability and prosperity” is: retain economic power by preventing the immigration of refugees who are seen as economic and cultural burden in the eyes of the racist capitalistic logic. We want to destruct this suppressive system starting with spreading information about the situation of people who are affected by Fortress Europe and giving them the possibility of their stories being heard.
Being in contact with people who experience the inhuman living conditions in camps of Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, police violence, racist attacks and mistreatment by local people we want to tell what happened to J. (name hidden for safety reasons), an 18 year old boy from Kabul, Afghanistan, while he was in Romania and Bulgaria. Right now he is still in Sofia. This text is a collaboration of activists and refugees.
After leaving Serbia in the end of march J. came to Romania trying to cross the Hungarian border, which is officially closed since last year and said to be really hard to cross and violent, to come to a Western European country. During this try he was caught by the police and brought to the police station for one night. The next morning he was taken to the migration office and it was decided to bring him to a closed camp without any explanation. Two policemen brought him to the camp and they took his 60€.
The closed camp, called Arad Horia, close to the city Arad in Romania was in really bad conditions. Often people stay there four to six months and have to stand verbal and physical violence by police and warders. There are no lawyers and even the UNHCR is said not to be there because it is like a hidden closed camp. J was spent five days. In the beginning he had a questioning and then one policemen hit him with a stick on his hands and his feet so that he couldn’t walk for 2 days. “They are like dogs.” he wrote to a friend.
Later on he was sent to a closed camp in Bucharest for 10 days. In this camp people are usually sent who tried to cross the border to Hungary or Serbia and they are forced to stay for six to seven months. Regularly, at night they are deported to a country they might come from without any papers or legal proceedings. This way the Romanian state does not just only disregard the bills of the European Union but also the Refugee Convention of 1951 and its own Law on Asylum and Refugees by executing illegal deportations.
Together with four other boys J. was taken to Bulgaria and set free at the bus station in a small village without anything. One of the boys was indiscriminately sent to a Jail, the others had to go to Sofia on their own just having the address they had to appear at, cowed with closed camp.
After getting to this address – the migration office – J was taken to the open camp Voina Rampa in
Sofia. He got an ID-card which is valid for 15 days without any information about what will happen later. The camp is an old broken building with broken windows and walls (see picture), without heating or good water supply. There are no functioning sanitary facilities and the food, as long as you want to call it this way, is really bad (see picture). There are about 200 families including a lot of women and children who neither get special rooms nor care. It is said that the UNHCR has visited the camp but they didn’t check any rooms or the conditions. Also, illegal deportations take place and the police comes at night to send people to closed camps randomly.
The only possibility to escape this treatment is to try to leave Bulgaria towards Romania or Serbia where the conditions are not better but the hope to reach western Europe is closer. Because those countries don’t give any asylum to refugees. But being caught at the border, and being criminalized because of illegal entry means to be beaten a lot, to be threatened and hurt by dogs, non-lethal weapons and police sticks. The use of guns and systematic torture is well known trough other reports as well. After that can be sent to a Jail, for example “Metroo Jail” for three to six months followed by deportation to the “country of origin”. People who experienced that tell they were locked in a dark room the whole time. But many people face these consequences hoping the place they get might not be as horrible as the current one.
The refugees not only have to fear illegal deportation or sending to closed camps everyday but also the hate and violence of the police, some Bulgarian people and the so called “Mafia”.
On the 9th of August 2017 a boy was attacked by a group of Bulgarians on his way to the supermarket. They beat him up and stole his money, phone and food. When he went to the police station to ask for help they didn’t show interest at all. The Gendamerie, a force structure intermediate between army and police which has military status, often takes people to their cars to rob money, phones and even clothes. They beat people and release them by saying “Go to camp.” On 11th of August 2017 the police found a dead boy close to the camp. The circumstances of his death are not clear and probably will never be investigated.
Furthermore, the refugees are defenseless facing the camp´s security guards who don‘t protect them from police brutality and their illegal handling but control in all their actions. The people living there are fully dependent on the mood of the warders without any support of NGOs, independent volunteer groups or regulation control of the European Union.
Those incidents take place daily in Bulgaria, one of the poorest countries of the EU which also has the highest rate of corruption. The verbal and physical violence against the refugees is growing in the state-run structures as well as in the civil population. And this development can be recognized all over Europe.
The maltreatment and attacks by the officials and the local people are violating human rights and they have to stop immediately, everywhere. So we demand especially from the responsible persons of the state of Bulgaria and Romania, from the European Union and the UNHCR to act against the brutality, the inhuman conditions and illegal deportations.
But this is not enough! The finding of a safe place is not only prevented by democratic legitimized violence, closed and militarized borders. Even if refugees reach their destination after a long and dangerous journey they have to face a legal system of admissibility prerequisites, deadlines and procedures which make it not only physically impossible to get asylum in the EU but also legally. This will even be intensified by the new bills of the Common European Asylum System including Dublin IV.
Death and violence against refugees are accepted to preserve the capitalist system, which is a racist one. Criticizing the inhuman conditions of camps and urging the responsible persons is not the limit of our critique but one part. We fight the entire system understanding it as a global mechanism of dominion of capital which exploits and represses.
So burn all borders, Fortress Europe and capitalism!
In solidarity with all refugees.
To read more:
Last year the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, an independent non-governmental organization for the protection of human rights, published an article about violence and mistreatment in Bulgarian prisons. http://bghelsinki.org/en/news/bg/single/violence-vermin-and-overcrowding-persist-bulgarian-prisons/