In the last four years, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has returned at least ten Uyghurs, members of an endangered group of Muslims, from the border, while two, including a former prisoner of Chinese, forced labor camps, left the country after waiting for asylum status.
In August 2019, Nur was in a panic. Six months pregnant and with her minor daughter, she was threatened with deportation to China after she was returned from BiH.
When she landed at the Sarajevo airport, she was full of hope that she would find protection. But that didn’t happen.
She was returned to Turkey after the BiH authorities banned her from entering the country due to problems with her passport. Until then, Nur had lived in Turkey, where she did not feel sufficiently protected, and she did not want to return to her native China for fear that she might end up in one of the many ”re-education” camps. That’s why she decided to move on to Europe, where the Uyghurs are more protected.
Using the official records of the Border Police of BiH, the Service for Foreigners, statistics of the Ministry of Security, information from the organization ”Vasa prava” and the Uyghur community in Istanbul, from 2018 to today at least 17 Uyghurs tried to pass through BiH or stay in it.
Giving up after a long wait
In 2021, BiH signed a joint statement at the United Nations (UN) expressing concern about the violated rights of the Uyghurs, a majority Muslim ethnic group living in several countries, with the largest number of about 11 million in the Chinese autonomous province of Xinjiang in the northwest of the country. Milorad Dodik, a member of the BiH Presidency at the time, later requested the withdrawal of that signature.
While some countries of the European Union (EU) call the treatment of the Uyghurs genocide and provide them with refuge, BiH in practice failed to act more decisively in several cases to protect them.
Emir Prcanovic from the organization ”Vasa prava”, which represents asylum seekers, says that there are a number of omissions in BiH’s relationship with the Uyghurs.
He explains that with the help of organizations from Turkey, during 2019 and 2020, they recorded seven cases of Uyghurs being returned from the border of BiH. In addition, he particularly points out the case in which they helped an Uyghur to enter the asylum procedure.
“That didn’t happen. The person waited three months. Considering that there were no contacts, that is, no steps were taken, that person left the camp,” says Prcanovic.
Due to the human rights violations that they experience in China, Uyghurs can in most cases be considered refugees, explains Hugues Bissot, senior protection officer at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in BiH.
But he adds that during the year 2022 in BiH, not a single person received official refugee status, which limits the rights provided to people like the Uyghurs, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
