Austria ( Muhammad Amir Saddique) In one of the cases of pushbacks by refugees on the southern Styrian border in the previous year, the Styrian Regional Administrative Court ruled on Monday that the rejection to Slovenia was wrong. This was preceded by a complaint against the police. Pushbacks are the rejection of migrants at the border without an individual check of the protection requirements. The case of a 21-year-old Moroccan and six other people who were picked up by local police officers at the Sicheldorf border control post in Styria on September 28, 2020, was documented and made public by the Alarm Phone Austria initiative and the Asylum Coordination Austria, among others. The group of migrants was exposed to a “real manhunt”. The total of seven people had clearly asked for asylum and were thus temporarily entitled to stay, it said. A pushed back 21-year-old was violated both in his right to respect for human dignity and the right to adequate documentation, wrote the judge in charge in the judgment.”Requests for asylum should have been heard”. Lawyer Clemens Lahner, who represents the group, filed a complaint against the police, which has now been granted. The security organs present at the Sicheldorf border control point “should at least have perceived the audible demand for asylum,” said the judge. The privacy of the 21-year-old man had also been encroached upon by the way in which the person was searched.”Serious intervention in the personality sphere”. Although he had behaved calmly and cooperatively during the entire official act, the 21-year-old not only had to kneel down, but also had to completely undress in a visible room in front of the authorities. That was “in any case disproportionate” and represents a “serious interference with the individual personality sphere according to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR),” it said in the judge’s reasoning. From the procedure described – that the police did not ask the refugees what they wanted in Austria, the negation of the word “asylum” and the rejection because no identification papers were available, the court also came to the conclusion “that ‘push- Backs’ are sometimes used methodically in Austria. “Police cannot decide on asylum procedures”.”The fact that the Slovenian police apparently takes over the rejected persons without further questioning can be explained by the subsequent chain deportation to Croatia and ultimately to Bosnia and Herzegovina.” This finding of the court hits “like a bomb”, said the asylum coordination in one first reaction. Lawyer Lahner described the judgment as a “clear warning to the Ministry of the Interior to put an end to the systematic disregard for the rule of law as quickly as possible”. If the police presume to decide who gets an asylum procedure and who doesn’t, then it is illegal. Asylum coordination with sharp criticism.“The fish stinks from the head,” says Lukas Gahleitner-Gertz from the asylum coordination. “We are talking about systematic human rights violations, inhumane treatment and ignoring the rule of law by the police in Austria. It is completely unbelievable that this takes place without the knowledge and will of the interior minister and his civil servants. “Refusals at the border without an individual assessment of the need for protection are illegal according to the Geneva Refugee Convention (GRC), the European Convention on Human Rights and EU law. Nonetheless, there have been more and more reports of such deportations for a few months, especially from the Mediterranean region from Greece to Turkey, but also of chain deportations along the Balkan route.
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