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This morning, Tuesday, sources told Deir Ezzor 24 network that Serbian police carried out a campaign of arrests and raids against refugees at Sombor Camp on the Serbian border with Hungary. They arrested about 500 people, including women and children, and took them in ten buses to the Macedonian border.
According to the sources, the police attacked the camp, beat the refugees who were mostly Syrians, most of them from Deir Ezzor, with sticks and clubs, burned their tents and clothes, confiscated their phones, and broke the phones of those who tried to film the attack in order to send it later to humanitarian organizations and bodies concerned with refugee’s rights.
An eyewitness from Deir Ezzor who lives in the camp, told Deir Ezzor 24 network that they suffer very poor living conditions and bad weather now. They are calling on humanitarian organizations to provide them with tents to protect them from rain. The camp administration prevented them from re-setting up tents, amid rumors of an expected raid today or tomorrow.
Another witness from Deir Ezzor who is an inhabitant of the camp also said that they have been living in the camp for months, after they came from Turkey through Greece to Macedonia and then to Serbia. And they were trying to reach Europe, but smugglers ask for $4,000 at least.
The young man wondered about why the humanitarian organizations concerned with refugees neglect refugees who live in poor living conditions, especially as those responsible for the camps take money for sheltering and protecting these refugees. He said that his cousin was severely beaten by the police who raided the camp today. The photos and videos show the destruction of refugees’ tents and properties due to the police attack, while people are sitting in the rain.
A Syrian refugee from the Camp added that the living situation is very bad there, where refugees suffer from the outbreak of diseases under deliberate neglect, as a doctor visit them just once a week. He expressed his surprise that the police treated the refugees as criminals, while they were displaced by war, that forced them to migrate and seek asylum outside their country’s borders.
Refugees are thus one of the most affected by the 10-year-old war in Syria under UN silence against violations committed against refugees in neighbouring countries and the countries they pass through during their journey to European borders, except for some limited condemnations by human rights organizations without any action.
