Maria Chereseva and Luděk Stavinoha Sofia BIRN February 26 Internal documents show Frontex and the European Commission are well aware of Bulgaria’s dire human rights record on its border with Turkey, but the EU’s executive arm had other priorities – expanding Schengen. In August 2022, a report landed on the desk of the Fundamental Rights Office, FRO, the internal…
Children’s rights are being trampled on at the external borders of the European Union Children and young people are forcibly pushed back at the EU’s external borders (“pushbacks”) and detained after arriving in the EU – a systematic practice in several EU external border states. On the occasion of the meeting of the EU interior ministers…
On the 27 November 2023, the BVMN hosted a webinar with speakers from Refugee Support Aegean, Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI) University of Keele and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. We discussed some provisions outlined in the pact – namely, the Screening Regulation, Asylum Procedures Regulation, and the topic of ‘instrumentalisation’ – and how…
The Bulgarian-Turkish border is seeing an upsurge in pushbacks and violence against migrants. InfoMigrants uncovers the reasons why and who are the most at risk. *This article is the first in a four-part series. All research and interviews were conducted between June and August 2023, with field reporting in Bulgaria carried out between June 18…
KAPIKULE, TURKEY, May 24th, 9:00 GMT]- Over 100 members of The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, a persecuted religious minority, who have presented themselves at the Turkish-Bulgarian border claiming asylum this morning have just been refused entry, violently beaten, pushed back and taken to Edirne public safety office. Gunshots were fired at them, they…
We, the undersigned, are writing to urge you to fulfil the fundamental rights obligations Bulgaria are bound by under the Law on Asylum and Refugees, Article 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Directive 2013/32/EU, the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human…
The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) has called on European governments to protect foreign nationals deprived of their liberty under immigration legislation from any ill-treatment and to put an end to pushbacks at land or sea borders, particularly at the borders of the European Union. In its annual report for 2022, the CPT…
Pushbacks and criminalisation of CSOs in Greece – Executive Summary While pushbacks are not a recent phenomenon, the number of cases of reported pushbacks at the land and sea borders of Greece with Turkey has increased since March 2020. At the same time, NGOs and human rights defenders who provide legal aid to victims of…
Bulgaria faces mounting accusations that it is abusing people trying to cross its border with Turkey, with asylum seekers saying they have been pushed back, locked up, stripped and beaten. The EU member serves as a gateway into the bloc and is trying to tighten the border to stop a rising number of people seeking…
SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OF PUSHBACKS AND INTERNAL VIOLENCE DOCUMENTED BY BVMN DURING THE MONTH OF OCTOBER In October, the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) shared 35 testimonies of pushbacks impacting 550 people-on-the-move (POM) across the Balkans and Greece. This report brings together first-hand testimonies from a range of countries in the region to look at…