Four Italian politicians have accused Croatian police of trying to prevent them from accessing an area on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina over the weekend, amid concern over the treatment of refugees in the region.
The legislators, all Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from Italy’s Democratic Party (PD), had intended to reach the area between Croatia, an EU member state, and Bosnia, to investigate the conditions faced by asylum seekers there.
Piero Bartolo, Brando Benifei, Pierfrancesco Majorino, and Alessandra Moretti say they were refused access to the border point on Saturday.
According to reports citing Benifei, the MEPs were prevented from reaching the border after “dozens” of Croatian police set-up a “human barrier” on the road leading to the checkpoint.
Last modified on Tue 2 Feb 2021 04.19 EST
An Afghan girl pulls her baby sister along in a pram through the mud and snow. Saman is six and baby Darya is 10 months old. They and their family have been pushed back into Bosnia 11 times by the Croatian police, who stripped Darya bare to check if the parents had hidden mobile phones or money in her nappy.
âThey searched her as though she were an adult. I could not believe my eyes,â says Daryaâs mother, Maryam, 40, limping through the mud and clinging to a stick.
The Guardian followed the journey of Darya and that of dozens of other migrant children who, every day, walk, or are carried on their parentsâ backs through the snowy paths that cross the woods around Bosanska Bojna, the last Bosnian village before the Croatian border, in an attempt to reach an increasingly inhospitable central Europe. Few families are successful. Most of them are stopped by Croatian police, searched, allegedly often robbed and, sometimes vio
January 27, 2021
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