EU countries fail to probe beatings, sexual assaults on migrants by police, report says
Source: POLITICO
It cited several incidents in which migrants were subjected to mistreatment without consequences for the perpetrators, including a case in Croatia in 2020 in which the police detained four Afghan migrants for two days, allegedly beating them and sexually assaulting one of them, and another in Greece in 2022 in which two Palestinian refugees were purportedly beaten, sexually assaulted and abandoned on a life raft at sea.
“The low number of investigations of such cases, despite the high number of credible allegations, casts a negative light on border management authorities’ operation,” the FRA report said.
None of the three countries appears to have publicly commented on the report. Border authorities from the trio did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
The agency offered a number of recommendations for the authorities in EU member countries, including making use of surveillance footage and law enforcement GPS data to gather evidence, issuing guidance on border-related cases for prosecutors and publishing regular statistics on such cases.
The FRA’s findings follow a similarly scathing report by the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) last November which found “clear patterns of physical ill-treatment” of migrants.
“There are too many allegations of human rights violations at the EU’s borders,” FRA Director Sirpa Rautio said in a press release. “Europe has a duty to treat everyone at the borders fairly, respectfully and in full compliance with human rights law.”
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