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We are just humans, we want to go, please let us go. I'm a lawyer, I studied in Damascus University

Date & Time 2023-04-14
Location Horgoš, Serbia
Reported by No Name Kitchen
Coordinates 46, 19.980719
Pushback from Hungary
Pushback to Serbia
Taken to a police station no
Minors involved yes
WLTI* involved yes
Men involved yes
Age 4 - 40
Group size 34
Countries of origin Syria
Treatment at police station or other place of detention
Overall number of policemen and policewomen involved 8
Violence used no violence used
Police involved 6 Hungarian police officers ,2 officers identified by the respondent as Czech police officers; 1 white van with cells inside.

The respondent is a 40-year-old Syrian man, father of 2 4-year-old twins. On April 14th, he, his family and another Syrian man left from the informal settlement where they were temporarily living between the towns of Bazdan and Somobor, heading towards the Serbian-Hungarian border in the area of Kalebia. The group walked for about 12 kilometres from the Serbian-Hungarian border from 9 am until 4 am. The respondent recalls that, at some point, it began to rain, and the group had to stop to shelter from the rain.

Reportedly, at 11am they were spotted by 4 people wearing uniforms, that approached them and started making questions. The respondent does not remember the exact point where the people in uniforms addressed the group shouting ‘stop, Police. Stop, Police‘. According to him, there were 2 men wearing a navy-blue uniform with a red patch on the forearm and a man and a woman wearing a different uniform. The respondent identifies the second group as Czech police officers, but he is not able to describe the uniforms they were wearing. Nevertheless, the respondent recalls that the two groups of people wearing uniforms did not communicate with each other as, according to the respondent, they did not speak the same language. The only woman officer spoke good English, so the respondent asked her: “We are just humans, we want to go, please let us go. I’m a lawyer, I studied in Damascus University”.

Despite everything, the woman officer started to shout at them “stay, stay” “sit down, sit down”. One of the 3 Hungarian police officers, at that point, made a phone call, and the respondent remembers thinking that it was aimed at call for reinforcements. They were then forced to sit down with their hands on their heads and to wait in this position for 15 minutes. Another vehicle then arrived, which the respondent describes as a large white van with metal bars on the windows. The bars were so thick that “no light could get through”.

Reportedly, 4 people got out of the vehicle. They were wearing a navy-blue uniform with a red patch on the forearm, as the officers they already met before, and were identified as well as Hungarian police officers.  The respondent reports that, when they arrived on the spot, the group was loaded into the vehicle, where there were already about 30 people. All of them, according to the respondent, were young Syrians. At that point, they waited for almost an hour inside the vehicle. No one asked the anything to the officers, even though they were thirsty and hungry, because they were afraid of their reaction.

If you don’t try to have a connection with them, they don’t get angry.

Eventually, they were taken to Horgoš, on the Serbian-Hungarian border, between 4 and 5pm. Before releasing the group, the Hungarian police officers took pictures of every member of the transit group.