“Brutality, racism and violence” at the Turkish-Bulgarian border to enter the European Union

In the middle of this year, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) registered a total of 94,549 refugees, 4,167 asylum seekers and 1,010 stateless persons in the Balkan country. The Turkish-Bulgarian border represents one of the most violent steps on the way to the European Union and the beginning of what is known as the Balkan route. In 2023 alone, according to data from the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, there were 9,987 documented hot returns on the Turkish-Bulgarian border affecting 174,588 people.

In this context, Bulgaria has four fields that are classified as “reception centers”; one of them in Harmanli, where around 900 people, mostly of Syrian origin, are waiting. Among them is Ibrahim (name changed to protect anonymity), who denounces the conditions of the center: “There is no cleanliness, no security, and there are people who don’t even have anything to protect themselves from the cold” . In a TikTok video, one of the camp’s residents shows the harshness of the conditions.

Ibrahim fled Syria in 2014, when the Islamic State entered his hometown, Abu Kamal (Deir ez-Zor). He fled to Turkey with his two children, where he worked in construction until he could save enough to try to cross the European Union. Their children are waiting in Turkey with their grandparents. “I want my children to study in Europe and be able to develop their own hobbies; they love to play football”, explains the man as he shows pictures of the children on his phone. Ibrahim arrived in Bulgaria in October and has been waiting for the resolution of the asylum process ever since. In accordance with directive 2013/32/EU of the European Parliament, asylum applications must be processed within a maximum period of six months.

Since December of last year, when the entry of Bulgaria – and Romania – into the Schengen territory became official, the country bordering Turkey further strengthened its borders following the recommendations of the EU, which provided it with 85 million of euros specifically as a Border and Visa Management Instrument. As a result of this investment, and according to data from the Bulgarian border police, in the first months of 2024 there were 3.5 times fewer attempts to cross their borders compared to 2023, and between January and May 2024 15,000 attempts were “prevented”, compared to 55,000 in the same period in 2023.

However, Austria and the Netherlands continued to block the official entry of these countries into Schengen and called on Bucharest and Sofia to do more to stem the flow of migrants to the Central European country’s borders. From December 12, they began to apply measures that focus on “a package of border protection” that includes “the implementation of pilot projects for the speed of the processing of asylum and return processes”.

The consequences of these agreements on the ground are suffered by the people who choose this crossroads to try to reach Europe. In this period, the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) has published ten testimonies of hot returns on the borders that Bulgaria shares with Turkey and Serbia.

Forced to return to Syria

“We fled violence in Syria, but we are surprised to find the same in Bulgaria. The same methods of intelligence, brutality, racism and violence”, writes Khaled (name changed for security reasons), a 37-year-old Syrian, in the mobile translator. It is this man who reports that on the morning of December 13, just 24 hours after the implementation of the agreement with the EU, hundreds of Syrians in the Harmanli camp were brought to the administration office and, according to witnesses of those affected, forced to sign what they called “a paper to return to Syria”.

“We waited for about fifteen minutes and then they took us, one by one, to a private room where there were three men who asked us for our documentation, and who started asking us about Syria,” explains the man. “They started talking about Syria, saying things like: “Syria has been liberated, aren’t you happy? There is no more oppression.”

Witnesses agree that around 200 people were forced to sign a document written in Bulgarian. They were not provided with any kind of translation. No Name Kitchen (NNK), an organization present in the region since 2017, is investigating the facts. Ibrahim says he signed this document “without knowing what it was putting into it”. “They beat some old people who were with us and the commander was laughing while saying ‘Go to Syria’,” he continues.

In view of the facts and after collecting as many witnesses as they could, NNK reports that “it seems that, in addition to using the fall of Al-Assad to coerce people into signing voluntary return documents, the change of regime is also being used as an opportunity to deny and restrict access to the right to asylum”.

These events take place when some EU states have already stopped the processing of asylum applications submitted by Syrian citizens, as is the case of Austria and Denmark. However, the Bulgarian Refugee Agency has stated that it continues to accept requests for protection from Syrians, although it has added that “at the moment, the Agency has no new requests from Syrians to consider”.