Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic dismissed on Wednesday the latest Amnesty International report on human rights violations against migrants.
Amnesty International accused the European Union of being complicit in the “systematic and frequently violent pushbacks and collective expulsion of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers from Croatia” in their latest report published on Wednesday.
Bozinovic published an open letter to Massimo Moratti, Director of Research for Amnesty International’s Europe Office, in which he rejected accusations.
Bozinovic said that migrants who were returned to the country from which they illegally entered Croatia, most often falsely accuse police officers of violence because they are expecting that such accusations would help them with a new attempt to enter the country.
Since 2016, there were 202 complaints from civil society organizations that have contained allegations of police violence against migrants, Bozinovic said in the letter.
“All reports of alleged police violence against refugees have been thoroughly inspected and none of them has been confirmed. Also, none allegation of criminal acts has been confirmed,” the minister wrote.
In 2018, Croatian police registered 8,207 attempts of illegal border-crossing, which is 70 percent more than in 2017. The number of people asking for international protection in Croatia is on the rise. In 2014, 454 people pursued such protection, while four years later over 1,000 people did so.
The minister claims that Croatian police act within the bounds of the national and EU law and that it will continue to protect its borders and won’t let illegal entries to the country’s territory, Xinhua reports.
