Five Young Men Violently Pushed Back from Romania

Around the 20^th of June, five young men aged between 21 and 28 were violently pushed back from Romania to Serbia. The primary respondent to this report was a 21 year old Afghan man. He has been violently pushed back many times from many countries; Romania, he recalled, is the worst, "they don’t care about hurting you or if you die, they just beat you." He and his group had set out at 7:00 pm from Serbia into Romania and progressed on foot until some 2 km from the city of Timisoara (ROM) when four officers – he believes they were border police, but was not able to offer a description – caught them near the city. They were spotted using binoculars and approached the group in a vehicle. The authorities shouted at the group, but they did not dare speak back for fear of retaliation. For the next 40 minutes, the officers held the group-members in this location during which time they beat the men, kicked them and hit them with their batons. The officers also took their phones and money; expensive phones they kept, inexpensive phones they destroyed. During this time, another car was called. When this second vehicle arrived, the men described being driven directly back to the Serbian-Romanian border. They were then let out of the vehicle and told to walk back into Serbia.