To all whom it might concern
It has come to our attention that there is systematic violence and unlawful process carried out by Croatian police officers at the Slavonski Brod Transit Camp for Migrants and Refugees. We have collected witness statements by refugees labelled as ’non-SIA‘ (i.e. their country of origin is neither Syria, Iraq nor Afghanistan) describing these acts of violence, in humane treatment and human right violations (non-refoulement). A consistent racial profiling has caused brutal responses by Croatian police staff.
This method of segregation begins when migrants are forced to line up in a one-by-one queue as the official translators as well as police forces are arbitrarily picking out random individuals and consequently interrogating them about their country of origin. For example, one victim of Croatian police brutality who we met, revealed that a policeman, instead of a translator, picked him out of the crowd as a ’non-SIA‘. This man and several others were then taken into an ICRC (Red Cross) container and locked in there by the police for several hours.
