The respondent is a 29-year-old man from Pakistan. On the 8th of April, at around 6:00 pm, he crossed the border from Serbia to Romania with 4 other people from Afghanistan. After they had been walking for around three hours the respondent reported that they were detected by Romanian police. They were apprehended in some fields between the towns Cărpiniș and Cenei (Romania). The respondent presumes that the authorities saw them from a drone, but he does not know for sure. As soon as they stepped on a street next to the fields that they had been walking in for the last three hours, they heard that someone was calling them and ordering them to stop.
It was at 9:00 pm, that the two Romanian policemen around 30 meters away from them, told the group to stop. The respondent described their uniforms as black or dark-colored, with black face masks. The authorities went closer and forced all group members to stop and lie down, their faces turned towards the mud. The respondent remembers that moment as a difficult situation because the weather was very cold, and so the muddy ground was as well. Even if the group members could only see the eyes of the officers they shouted more than once: “Don’t look at me, look on the ground”. These two officers kicked all the group members in the back and struck them with batons.
After a while, everybody was told to stand up, and all together they walked around 5 minutes until they reached more police officers. At this point, there were 9 officers, 8 men, and one woman present. They were wearing the same uniforms as the ones at the apprehension moment, but with uncovered faces. First, they took all their phones, money, blankets, sleeping bags, and jackets. Additionally, they spread their food in the mud.
Afterward, all the group members were forced to lie down on the muddy ground once again and were kicked and beaten with wooden sticks, when they were asked where they were from. The respondent explained that one of the officers was beating them one by one for around five minutes each, while the other two officers immobilized the group members holding their legs. Insults like “mother fucker” were also heard by the group members.
“It was a time when I looked him and they told me: don’t look me, face on the ground. And they beat me, they beat me on my chest and my back”.
In the end, all the group members were forced to go into one of the vans and were driven to the Serbian border, near Morativa (Romania). It was 22:00 on the 8th of April, and they had to start walking to Serbia without their belongings, in the cold of the night. At the border side, the authorities made it clear not to go back to Romania, threatening to beat them even more. To what the respondent replied that they would not go back because ‘the Romanian police did not have humanity’.
“They don’t have humanity because you are coming to Europe for humanity, to save your life […]. So, what do we do? So, we have to go back to our country. Our country is better than Europe because they don’t have humanity”.
From the Romanian border near the town Morativa, they walked until the town Zrenjanin (Serbia), which is around 85 Km away. They were lucky there and they found a friend, who bought them a bus ticket to go to Šid (Serbia).
During the interview with the respondent, he was asked if they asked for asylum at some point. He answered that they did not even think about that because the authorities were beating them too much.