Authorities from around Europe, especially in Italy and countries in the Balkan Peninsula, have received backlash from several legal advocacy groups for their action on returning migrants. The series of returns have occurred on Italy’s land border with Slovenia and have gone on to trigger a chain of generally violent pushbacks of these asylum seekers and refugees into regions outside of the European Union.

Asylum seekers in the area have spoken with numerous human rights groups and news outlets, many reporting that upon being returned to Slovenia they were then pushed back to Croatia, still remaining in the European Union. After arriving in Croatia, authorities in the country, allegedly using systematic violence and abuse against migrants, then proceeded to further expel these groups to Bosnia, effectively forcing them to leave the EU. These “returns” are illegal seeing as they block refugees from requesting asylum in Italy and expel them from the EU without the necessary process.

The UN’s International Organization for Migration, IOM, has said that the Balkans play a crucial role in the migration routes from countries like Turkey and Greece to other parts of Europe, usually the West and North. According to data from this same agency, there are currently around 22,000 asylum seekers and refugees that are stranded in the area without proper documentation or legal help.

These claims of migrant pushback from Italy are coming at a time of criticism by advocacy groups in the European Union, also creating an increasing amount of concern from the European Commission, the executive body of the EU. Reports of violent pushback aren’t necessarily new, however this seems to indicate that the problem is expanding beyond Greece and Croatia, the two countries who generally had the most reports in the past. Currently, migrants report Croatian police violence more than ever, recalling stories of being stripped naked, beaten with sticks, and abandoned.

According to the Interior Ministry of Italy in July, these returns are occurring under an agreement made between Italy and Slovenia and is perfectly within the law seeing as both parties are EU states. However, the Italian Interior Minister, Luciana Lamorgese, contradicted this stance, saying that it was only irregular migrants who were being returned, denying claims that asylum seekers and refugees were also suffering the same fate.

Friuli Venezia-Giulia is the area in Italy that borders Slovenia, where reportedly over 1,320 people have been returned to the Balkan country, up from the 250 people of 2019. Activists across the world are saying that the speed at which these returns are being carried out shows that it is impossible for Italian authorities to actually be following a complete legal process at the border.

The returns initially began happening once there was a spike in arrivals in Friuli Venezia-Giulia from Slovenia earlier this year in the spring when COVID-19 lockdown measures in the area were starting to ease. With these arrivals, Italy entered in somewhat of a political turmoil, leading the military presence on the Slovenian border to increase in order to “fight illegal migration.”

Something that makes this situation more complex is the fact that international organizations don’t tend to publish consistent and comprehensive data regarding land arrivals in Italy. It is for this reason that the amount of people entering from Slovenia is generally a close estimate and not an exact number. It has been reported that those that are crossing the border generally try to stick away from authorities in order to avoid being sent back or obligated to apply for asylum in the first EU country they enter.

Since May, a key point in migrational transit has been the city of Trieste, laying around four kilometers away from the Slovenian border. Asylum seekers have regarded the point as a sort of “rest stop” after the exhausting and usually dangerous journey through the Balkan mountains. Because of the nature of this journey, the majority of those who reach Trieste without being expelled are usually in a weak physical condition and find scarce support from officials.

The returns are becoming so frequent that migrants have gone as far as to nickname the trek across the Balkans “the game”, seeing as if they want to reach Italy, they have to try multiple times and go through repetitive violent pushbacks on the way. If “the game” turns out to be successful, the final destination is under the roof of an abandoned building in Trieste, close to a train station.

According to reports, the majority of people in this building were young men in their teens or early twenties originating from Pakistan and Afghanistan. There are usually around 30 people at a time in this makeshift shelter, surrounded by children’s shoes, piles of old and discarded clothes, rotting mattresses, and broken luggage. Almost everyone here hopes to rest a few days before continuing on to Milan, France, or other regions of Europe.

After they are successful in crossing from Turkey to Greece, migrants reach a bottleneck in Bihać, a Bosnian town close to the Croatian border where they usually get stuck in their repeated attempts to reach the EU. If they are able to cross the border, it usually takes around 20 days to trek through Croatia and Slovenia’s mountains to finally reach Italy. Many of those on the journey paid smugglers up to thousands of dollars to have some sort of assistance along the way, yet still ended up without food and only rainwater to drink.

The pushbacks are seemingly indiscriminate, with authorities pushing back just about anyone, regardless of their nationality. Afghans, Syrians, people from Iraq, and many more, are being pushed back. They are people in clear need of protection. Gianfranco Schiavone, a legal expert at the Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration, or ASGI, has said that the removal procedures are apparently informal and people aren’t given an opportunity to apply for asylum before being expelled back to Slovenia.

According to a spokesperson for border police in Gorizia, a small Italian border town in Friuli Venezia-Giulia, the department is completing orders stated in Ministry of Interior directives. They said that people that fell under so-called “protected categories”, including unaccompanied children, pregnant women, or anyone in need of medical assistance, were not being returned. The spokesperson added that in order to consider each migrant’s particular circumstances, interpreters help interviews take place, and multilingual brochures are given to those arriving.

If someone is intercepted and not pushed back, they are quarantined for a certain period of time at a refugee camp in the countryside before they can be transported to a reception center. Some are even able to avoid authorities as a whole. When this happens, the job of helping asylum seekers and migrants who are “not in the system” and providing them with basic services falls almost entirely onto volunteer groups in the area.

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