The European Commission requested on 12 June that the Greek and Croatian authorities investigate allegations of refoulement of asylum-seekers at their borders made against them by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the NGO Amnesty International, respectively.
UNHCR has accused Greece of turning back migrants to Turkey, both at land and sea borders. UNHCR has already regularly asked Athens to conduct an investigation.
Commission spokesman Adalbert Jahnz said the institution was waiting for Greece to “get to the bottom” of these accusations and “conduct an investigation”.
Regarding Croatia, the Commission is very “concerned” about these allegations, he added, assuring that violence against asylum seekers “must be condemned”. “We are in contact with the Croatian authorities”, the spokesman said.
Croatian police officers were accused by Amnesty of tying and beating 16 Pakistani and Afghan migrants who had “illegally crossed the border into Bosnia”. The NGO accused the EU of regularly “deliberately ignoring” the “violence” of Croatian police officers towards migrants, as similar accusations had already been made in 2019. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)