The respondent, a 17-year-old guy from Somalia arrived at a house in a Hungarian village in the night from 5th to 6th of July, 2021, from Majdan, Serbia, together with a group of other 8 Somali people, including a 13-year-old boy. When they arrived at the location there were 20 people from Palestine and Syria already and 11 more people from other groups that arrived during the night. They stayed in the house for 3 days until the 9th of July. For the last day, they did not have food or water. So, on the morning of the 9th, one person went out of the house to get water. He was discovered and detained by police who reportedly started looking for more people-on-the-move in the area after that.
“If he didn’t go for water, maybe they wouldn’t find us but you can be with no food but you can’t stay with no water.”
The respondent reported to have seen a drone flying around the house and that the police arrived shortly after, in the afternoon of that day.
“I don’t know how many police. It was a lot, maybe 9 or 10. But there were two Generals”
The respondent identified two officers in military clothes with red patches on the shoulders and the letters MP on them. He referred to them as “the Generals” and said they looked in charge of the operation. There were also 4 more people in military uniforms, 2 of them carrying rifles – “AK47”. There were 3 police officers in blue uniforms too.
The officers separated the group into their different nationalities and made them wait in the house for about 2 hours and 30 minutes. They first took all the Palestinians – 7 people – out of the house and drove them away. After that, the remaining 33 people were cuffed and led to a big white van with a blue line. Among them, there was one 5 months pregnant woman, a 6-year-old, and a 13-year-old child.
“The 6-year-old kid told the police his mom lives in Germany and he wanted to go there and they just laughed”.
The respondent also asked for asylum but the police officers said that it was not possible.
They were driven for 40 minutes sitting in the caged back of the van until they arrived at the official border crossing in Horgos. There, the police took pictures of all of them holding numbers -front and side. They were also recorded while crossing the border back to Serbia at around 2 am. 2 Serbian officers were present on the other side, who asked them about their nationalities and let them go.