Stop pushbacks!

Jumaa and Omer are refugees from Syria who arrived in Slovenia after several years traveling the Balkan Route. The Balkan Route starts in Turkey when people have to cross the dangerous border with Greece. The road to cross national borders on the Balkans is not safe for people as countries continually deny people's right to asylum and conduct so-called pushbacks. A pushback is a practice of police in which they expel people across the border to the neighboring country from which the person or the group entered. These pushbacks can happen across several countries, as currently happening in Austria, Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. Numerous testimonies show that states are cooperating in the practice of chain-pushbacks, this means that a person or a group can be deported across several countries before his is violently expelled to Bosnia and Herzegovina by Croatia. Jumma and Omer experienced pushbacks across several countries on the Balkan Route, among which is also Slovenia. In Slovenia the practice of pushbacks is being done throught the procedure of readmission. Mass deportations by readmission t from Slovenia to Croatia have started in 2018 and since then more than 25.000 people have been retuned to Croatia despite the evident risk of torture and expulison to BiH. Tune in to listen to the interview!

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