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Pepper-sprayed and hit by foreign military: 20 people are pushed back to Serbia

Date & Time 2022-02-06
Location Horgos, Serbia
Reported by Collective Aid
Coordinates 46.17579244, 19.97140217
Pushback from Hungary
Pushback to Serbia
Taken to a police station no
Minors involved no
WLTI* involved no
Men involved yes
Age unknown
Group size 20
Countries of origin Morocco, Tunisia
Treatment at police station or other place of detention
Overall number of policemen and policewomen involved unknown
Violence used beating (with batons/hands/other), pepper spray
Police involved 3 hungarian policemen, 4 military (not hungarian, foreign flags on their shoulders + something that, according to the respondent, looks like a NATO emblem), one police car, two army cars, one big police van

In the early morning of the 2nd of June, a group of 20 people-on-the-move was pushed back from Hungary to Serbia around the area of Horgos.

The respondent describes the group was crossing the border fence when one Hungarian police car (3 policemen) and 2 army cars (2 soldiers in each) arrived.

Several members of the group including the respondent were hit with batons by  and pepper-sprayed in the face. “Often they use gaz but this time I took a shower of gaz. It´s been two days now but I still have pain”.

The respondent reported that the officers were not Hungarian. “I couldn´t see so much because of the gaz but it´s different, it´s not Hungarian. They didn´t speak good English, they say ´go home´ but not much more”. He stated they had flags on their shoulders but not Hungarian flags, and were also wearing something that, according to him, looked like a NATO emblem.

“They caught us at the fence, took us to another ´caserna´, checked if we had knives or anything like this but we had nothing”.

“They didn´t tie our hands, just hit us and made us walk to the ´caserna´. It´s not really a police station it´s different they just keep immigrants there until a bus comes to send them back. Its like a box, they put you inside until the bus arrives, then you go on the bus and they send you next to the border.”

“For me this time they didn´t lock me there, they put us on the bus and sent us back to Serbia. Other times they kept me there for long but this time was different”. “ Sometimes they put you in the box for 4 or 5 hours until the box is full”.

The respondent explains this container is very close to the fence (46°10’34.3″N 19°56’32.5″E), between two fences he says, and only the left one in satellite view seems to be used to keep “immigrants”.

The respondent also says that this time everything went quite quick, it took approximately an hour between the moment they were caught and their pushback. They were driven to a gate in the fence, close to Horgos border crossing, slightly west from it. All the group members were photographed one by one before being sent through the gate back to Serbia around 1 or 2am on the 2nd of June.