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Good luck for the next game

Date & Time 2022-06-11
Location Horgoš, Serbia
Reported by No Name Kitchen
Coordinates 46.1756319, 19.9843403
Pushback from Hungary
Pushback to Serbia
Taken to a police station no
Minors involved yes
WLTI* involved no
Men involved yes
Age 10 - 18
Group size 50
Countries of origin Morocco, Tunisia
Treatment at police station or other place of detention
Overall number of policemen and policewomen involved 7
Violence used beating (with batons/hands/other), kicking, destruction of personal belongings, theft of personal belongings
Police involved 4 Hungarian police officers with navy blue uniforms (3 men and 1 woman); 3 Hungarian officers dressed in camouflage uniforms (1 of them was wearing a ski mask); 1 police white van

On the 6th November, a group of 50 Moroccan and Tunisian people was pushed back from Hungary to Serbia, specifically at the official Horgos 2 border crossing point. Among them, there was a 22 years old woman from Morocco, whom this report will refer as “the respondent“. Within the group, there were also 3 kids and 3 more women.

The respondent left Turkey alone, then passed from Bulgaria and she has been in Serbia for one month now. This is not the first time that she was pushed back. The group of 50 people started walking around 1 am in the night from a squat (informal settlement outside official reception centres) near Horgoš, and in half an hour they arrived at the fence that divides Hungary from Serbia. Here, they waited for more than one hour before crossing, because some cars were passing near the fence (the respondent refers to the vehicles as “police cars“) and trying to cross would have been hard in that moment.

When the whole group managed to climb the fences with ladders, on the other side they started to run because they were spotted by some people, to whom the respondent refers to as 4 Hungarian police officers with navy blue uniforms (among them a woman), and 3 Hungarian officers with camouflage uniforms (one of them was wearing a black ski mask on the face). They had very strong flashlights, guns and batons, they were chasing and catching people who were running, punching, beating them, stealing cigarettes, power banks and money and breaking their phones.

The respondent reports that she was running, and when a police officer reached her, he wanted to beat her but stopped when he understood she was a woman. When everyone got apprehended, the officers ordered people to follow them and they arrived close to 4 big white containers, with no writings on them. The respondent recalls that she stayed inside one of them with the other women for only 5 minutes, and photos of them were taken by the officers.

“They were asking where we were from but they didn’t touch us, I think in this case it’s easier if you are a woman. They said to us “good luck for the next game” and then they ordered us to go and wait outside”. 

The respondent refers that the officers were harder with men, beating them and searching if they had something they could steal. Men weren’t allowed to smoke, talk or look at the officers, otherwise the officers would come to slap and punch them.

After some time, a bus got on the spot and everyone was loaded inside; they were driven for 30 minutes, until they were pushed back from the official gate at Horgoš 2 border crossing point, around 5 am in the morning.

The respondent refers that, after being released, the group walked back for around 3 kilometres to the place where they left from the night before.