“They made [us] take our shoes off and stand in the snow”

I crossed the Hungarian border near Horgoš in a group of forty people. Some of us ran through the border and ran away. Fourteen people including me stayed behind and got caught. Six or seven police cars came with two or four police officers in each of them. They had two dogs with them.

The first thing they did was spray our eyes with gas. Then they made me and three other people take our shoes off and stand in the snow. They were hitting us with police batons and kicking.

The policemen were wearing dark blue uniforms. Two of them were dressed differently, they had some kind of military trousers on. I can’t tell you how they looked like. They don’t let us look at their faces; if you look at them they hit you and say: Put your head down! One of them was tall, skinny and had a beard about an inch long and a moustache. He was the one hitting us the most. The other one was older and fat, he had a dog.

They told us to put our hands up. When you put your hands down they hit you. We were standing in the snow, and they took our hats.

They took us to a police van. There were 6 or 7 cars in total, but they put us in one van. When we drove to the border two other cars went with us. At the border they took us out of the van and made us form a line again. Then they released dogs on us. They took pictures and videos of us. They were filming our shoes and faces. They made us read aloud a paper saying that we need to come through legal ways. I couldn’t read myself but my friend did.