“They grabbed him and smashed his head against the ground breaking his teeth”

Photo: Laszlo Toroczkai

About one week ago I crossed the Hungarian border near Bački. It was very cold that night but it wasn’t snowing. We went before the snow started. I was in a group of 42–45 people. There were three or four minors amongst us and five to ten elderly people. It was after midnight when the fence got cut and we got through. We were still in the first jungle when we looked back and saw a police car about one kilometer behind us, right in the spot where the fence had been cut. The police saw that. We carried on walking for about one hour, then we saw a main road in front of us. There was a lot of houses alongside it and people living there put their lights on to see who is passing by. Continue reading ““They grabbed him and smashed his head against the ground breaking his teeth””

“They beat him so badly that there was blood coming out of his ears”

Photo: Laszlo Toroczkai

I crossed the Hungarian border near the Kelebija crossing around the 15th of January, we were thirty people. After we got through the fence we walked forward a little bit, maybe half a kilometer. They caught us and they brought us back to the border near Horgoš. We were transported in a green car. Three of them were wearing full army uniforms, the rest were around ten police officers in blue uniforms, not many badges on them. There was some kind of marking on the uniforms but I wasn’t allowed to look up, so I didn’t see them. At the end there were four or five police cars, two or three small ones and the rest was big vans. They were white with some markings on them, like regular police cars. There was one dark van. I’m not sure if it was black or blue, it was very dark. Continue reading ““They beat him so badly that there was blood coming out of his ears””

“They let us keep one shoe each”

Photo of the interviewed victim’s injury. Credit: Mario Badagliacca

I tried to cross the Hungarian border near Palic. We were four people, an Afghan family of three – a man a woman and 14-year old boy – and myself. We didn’t manage to cross, we got caught on the Serbian side. The Hungarian border police saw us from far away – they were already there when we came. We were laying on the ground on the Serbian side of the border when they found us. It was ten at night, about half a kilometer from the border fence. Continue reading ““They let us keep one shoe each””