In the evening on Saturday 21th of March 2018 14 men (7 from Pakistan, 7 from Afghanistan, 3-4 underaged, others 18-24 years old) tried to transit from Sombor, Serbia trough Hungary. The ones from Pakistan had walked to Sombor from Subotica for three nights before their departing. The whole group walked across the Serbian-Hungarian border, and continued in a “taxi” in Hungarian territory. They had passed one big city and only a short duration after that, about 11 pm on 21th, they got stopped by three Hungarian border police officers (big men, border police uniforms), who called for city police officers (about 35-40, male and female, city police uniforms, one big man with a camera) to join them with their three dogs, arriving in about 6-7 police cars. The men expressed an intention to seek for asylum, but the officers didn’t respond appropriately and shouted:
“Go back to Serbia!”
The officers ordered the men to sit down and checked their bodies and bags with the dogs and asked for property. They took mobile phones of some of the men (about 4 phones in total), threw water over some of them, breaking them totally, and then gave them back to the men. They also took 50-100 euros from each of the men, cut the banknotes with scissors in pieces and throw them away in water. Some of the officers committed violence, beating with sticks and hands and kicked with legs all over the body, also to the face, all of the men. They questioned the names of the men and took photos of them. They didn’t take any fingerprints, the men were not asked to sign any papers and no documents were given to them. After that, about 1 am on Sunday 22nd the officers started to deport the men to Serbia in smaller groups. The group of the interviewed man (4 men) was transported somewhere in the midst of a dark forest in the Serbian-Hungarian border, but the group couldn’t see where they were driven to. There the officers again shouted at the men:
“Go back to Serbia!”
The men obeyed, and they needed to walk in cold and snowing weather without proper warm clothes for the rest of the night and the following day and night before they reached a town (after a similar journey before the catchment and a hard deportation), where they found a bus to Subotica (about 30 minute drive). From Subotica they continued by foot to surroundings of Subotica to a place where they had stayed earlier and found their residence destroyed.