Europe's ''Shadow Army'': Beating Illegal Migrants Out of the EU!

Powerful men wearing balaclavas, sporting rioting gear and beating innocent and defenceless people mercilessly. That sounds like the behaviour of criminals in the jungle, not the actions of government sanctioned police units from Croatia. The EU is becoming desperate and in a bid to curb the ongoing refugee crisis, some certain southern EU countries have taken the law in their own hands with barbaric actions that are not only inhumane, but illegal.

Masked undercover police officers in Croatia 

Nine leading European media outlets led an eight months long investigation into allegations that migrants are beaten up, pushed out and left at sea in sometimes life-threating conditions. The biggest questions was who is doing this, who is funding them and why are they behaving in such a crude, and illegal manner? The findings of this investigation was shocking!

It found that certain countries like Croatia, Romania, and Greece are pushing back illegal migrants by using force and illegal tactics causing them harm, and putting them in dangerous conditions, in a bid to stop them from coming onto EU territory and ask for asylum. 

In Croatia, Lighthouse Reports filmed mysterious men with face coverings, some wearing sunglasses, but all wearing uniforms that bear no insignias, to make sure that they can't be recognised. They were striking defenceless refugees on the knees, arms and legs. They are using a baton called a Tonfa, that is only issued by the Croatian authorities to the Intervention police. If fact, all of the equipment and uniforms have been identified as the ones that are used by this particular police unit. In the video, they are shown to push these migrants to the Bosnia-Herzegovina border and are heard yelling, ''Go! Go to Bosnia!''. 

The 22 illegal crossers in the video have no weapons to defend themselves, have not done anything to incite such behaviour, and are scared to death of being hit by these mysterious assailants. 

In the Aegean Sea, witnesses have seen masked men pulling refugees out to sea and letting them fend for themselves, often in small, rubber crafts. Coast guard officials, both currently employed and previously employed, have identified these masked men as being part of the elite Coast guard units: the Underwater Operations (MYA) and Special Ops (KEA) and (OEA). 

Refugees put on small boats in the Aegean Sea

In Romania, men bearing the Romanian coat of arms on their jacket have been filmed chasing and threatening groups of illegal migrants with batons. 

These operations are illegal under the EU law and the Geneva Refugee Convention. These types of operations are usually called pushbacks, and if illegal immigrants are deported, then it must not put them in danger. In any case, once the migrants are on European soil, they must be given the chance to apply for asylum and processed. In all cases, beating people savagely is illegal!

Bruises left on the backs of migrants from the beatings

WHO GIVES THE ORDERS?

The investigation of these newspapers revealed that the orders are coming from the higher up officials of these countries' authorities. In Croatia, the Intervention police, that usually deals with street violence and drug dealers for example, are being sent to the borders to force these illegal migrants out with any means necessary. The units often work under cover, and without clear reporting. As they are part of government officials, they funds for these so called special units comes from the taxpayers and EU funding. 

As there is a lot of secrecy around these task forces, there has been no input from the public in regards to what the general populace think of this approach. The government in both Athens and Zagreb have ignored and denied what is going on. They pretend the allegations are false. However, now there is irrefutable evidence piling up against this view point: witness testimonies, video footage, photographs and plenty of stories from the migrants themselves. 

It is said that the Croatian officials have accused the migrants of spreading cherry syrup on themselves to make it look like they were bleeding and that sometimes they are being beaten up by violent gangs on the Bosnian side.

A Croatian police officer is quoted to have said that what these police officers are tasked to do is to just get rid of these migrants to the other side of the border by ''any means necessary.'' And that they are getting extra pay, and sometimes stealing more money from the migrants themselves, to do this kind of work. There are no regulations, and nobody is calling them out for using such violent and outrageous tactics. 

A Romanian police officer chasing migrants away

All this comes amidst rumours that even England is preparing to use such pushback tactics to get rid of illegal migrants back out out to sea, thereby violating the Maritime law and also Human Rights laws. 

EU officials have made it clear that they don't support such actions, and that all of these allegations and incidences should be ''thoroughly investigated with a view to establishing the facts and to properly follow up any wrongdoings.'' 

CONCLUSION 

I think despite the EU Commission voicing publicly that they are against this kind of activities, it will continue to happen, and probably it will get worse. The state of the world is such that people in certain parts of the world (like Africa, Middle East, parts of Asia) are willing to risk life and limb for the promise of a better life, so they will keep coming and trying to smuggle their way into Europe. And with that, countries like Turkey, Russia and Belarus will use these people as a ''weapon'' to threaten Europe and the West, because they know that the West will eventually give in due to social pressures and accept these people. 

This is one reason why these activities remain hidden by the European governments, because the officials understand that once it gets on the news, the public outcry will be such that they will have no choice but to let the flow of illegal migration into Europe and accept all asylum seekers. 

One big problem with this is that Europe does not have the funds anymore to sustain such mass migration. COVID-19 has decimated much of the world's economies, and there just isn't the money to sustain a huge amount of people for a long period of time. Processing asylum applications takes a long time, often a year to several years, and for a lot of these refugees it's difficult to prove who they are, how old they are and if they really are eligible for asylum. It has been established by several sources that a lot of these illegal crossers are not suitable candidates for asylum as they don't fulfil the criteria.

In any case, beating people and causing unnecessary harm is illegal and should not be tolerated. There aren't really many elegant solutions here, to stop the migrant crisis like what happened in 2015, but some other solutions need to be thought of. 

Reference

• https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greece-and-croatia-the-shadow-army-that-beats-up-refugees-at-the-eu-border-a-a4409e54-2986-4f9d-934f-02efcebd89a7
• https://www.lighthousereports.nl/investigation/unmasking-europes-shadow-armies/
• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-migrants-pushback-asylum-illegal-b1933519.html