January 22, 2023

THIS WEEK IN HUMAN RIGHTS NEWS

Investigative report reveals illegal detainment, torture and deportation of migrants across EU borders

Sources: Lighthouse Reports, Mother Jones, European Commission

A recent investigative report from Lighthouse Reports has confirmed the existence of ‘black sites’ where refugees are being held illegally at ‘secret facilities along EU borders’. 

The investigation reaffirms previous reporting on how migration is being met with violence within several European countries. It also indicates that illegal detainment and detention is often done directly under the nose of Frontex, the European Union agency responsible for border management. 

‘Black sites’ were confirmed across borders in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Croatia in particular. The investigation included visual evidence of “refugees [that] have been held in a derelict cage-like structure in Bulgaria…in overcrowded and dangerously hot vans in Croatia, and held in containers and an isolated petrol station in Hungary”.

The detainment and expulsion of refugees entering European countries to seek asylum is illegal under international and EU law. The website on the Common European Asylum System for the European Commission confirms that “asylum is a fundamental right and an international obligation for countries, as recognised in the 1951 Geneva Convention on the protection of refugees.” 

Asylum seekers testified in the report of having been denied food and water, with video evidence obtained of a man stating that his shoes had been taken ‘by the police.’ Photographs taken at some sites found Frontex cars parked near some of the clandestine detention facilities. 

Not only are the ‘black sites’ illegal, they also operate to push refugees back across borders, a process that is called refoulement. “[This is] being done to punish, deter and intimidate,” Liz Bates, lead doctor at Freedom from Torture, told Lighthouse Reports, “Therefore it meets the widely recognised UN definition of torture.”