On 1 January 2023, Croatia will officially join the Schengen area (as well as the eurozone). On that day, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will be in Zagreb to celebrate, together with Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, a historic day for the youngest member state of the European Union, which will thus become a full member of the most exclusive of European clubs, that of the 15 countries that have joined the EU, NATO, Schengen and the euro.

In recent weeks, Plenković has repeatedly reiterated how important this achievement is for his government and how much “hard work” it took to get there. Croatian humanitarian organizations dealing with migration, on the other hand, have greeted the news of Schengen with disapproval. Zagreb has received “an award” for “six years of human rights violations,” writes the Peace Studies Center  (CMS), referring to the behavior of the Croatian police at the country's external borders.

Croatia's entry into Schengen will make the southern and eastern border of the young republic the new limes of the free movement area. In the mountains of Lika, Croatian police are preparing to zealously guard the border, installing cameras and clearing long stretches of forest, while humanitarian organizations fear a new surge in violence against migrants. From a historical point of view, it almost seems as if the Military Frontier that separated the Ottoman and Habsburg empires has come back to life.

40 kilometers of forest to cut down

The jeep climbs the slopes of Plješevica, bumping over potholes. The mountain that marks the border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina between Korenica and Bihać is shrouded in fog. “This is the section of the external Croatian border that is most difficult to control and has been subjected to the greatest migratory pressure in recent years,” explains Mladen Matovinović, the head of the Croatian border police in Lika-Senj County. He is responsible for about 100 km of the more than 1.300 km that Croatia shares with Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. While to the east the border corresponds to the Danube, the Sava and the Una rivers, here there are only forests as far as the eye can see.

To control this territory and prevent its crossing, Zagreb has invested heavily. In the police station in Korenica, where 300 officers work, Mladen Matovinović shows us the control room, where information is captured by dozens of thermal cameras hidden in the trees and four large cameras installed on telephone repeaters and capable of filming up to 20 km away. The modern equipment available to the Croatian police has often been financed by the European Union, and to make it even more effective in the field, the practice – not exactly modern – of large-scale deforestation has been used.

“We have cut down a 15 km long and 100 m wide strip of forest, and the plan is to clear another 25 km,” says Mladen Matovinović. The work becomes visible as you get closer to the top of Plješevica, at 1.650 m above sea level. Those 100 m of missing forest allow cameras (and therefore officers) to immediately spot those who attempt to cross the border illegally. What happens in that case? “People are sent back before they enter Croatia,” explains Mladen Matovinović, who believes that “in 99% of cases, the sight of a person in uniform is enough to convince people to turn back.”

«Systematic violation of human rights»

At the headquarters of the Zagreb-based association Centre for Peace Studies (CMS), Antonia Pindulić does not agree. “Over the past six years, several associations, institutions, even the Croatian Ombudswoman and the Anti-Torture Committee of the Council of Europe have denounced the systematic violation of human rights at Croatia’s external borders,” says the CMS legal expert. Not only the sight of the uniform, but also “illegal pushbacks (pushbacks), physical violence, theft of mobile phones and money, use of electric shocks, gunshots fired near the ears or legs…” and much more emerges from the migrants’ testimonies. These are episodes reported repeatedly (on OBCT We summarized them here in 2020), but always denied by the Croatian authorities. At the end of 2021, however, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Croatia in the case of Madina Hussiny, while Lighthouse Reports published a video clearly showing police violence. In short, over time, the accusations have become increasingly solid. And as the political deadline for joining Schengen approached, Zagreb's behavior gradually changed.

“In 2022, humanitarian associations based in Bosnia and Herzegovina have recorded fewer illegal pushbacks and a lower level of violence,” continues Antonia Pindulić, while Croatian police have increasingly started distributing expulsion orders, which give migrants and refugees seven days to leave Croatian territory. For the first time since 2015, these people can use public transport to reach Zagreb and Rijeka, before continuing on to Slovenia and then the rest of the European Union. Humanitarian organizations fear that with the entry into Schengen on January 1, violence and pushbacks will return.

New, old frontier

In the Lonjsko Polje park, on the border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, some conservatories stand out in the fog a few meters from the Sava that flows slowly between the two states. "They are typical watchtowers of the Military Frontier, used especially from the 17th century onwards to create a sanitary cordon against the plague", comments Alexander Buczynski, researcher at the Croatian Institute for History. Between the beginning of the 16th century and the end of the 19th century, the Military forces separated the Habsburg Empire from the Ottoman Empire. border guards were the “peasant soldiers” who inhabited this strip of land under military administration. In the event of war with the Ottomans, all men between the ages of 16 and 60 were required to fight for the Habsburgs. In return, “they enjoyed greater autonomy, religious freedom and were given land to cultivate.” The idea of ​​clearing the forest to better monitor the border is not new either. “In the 1700s, General Wenzel Joseph von Colloredo proposed, after an inspection of the military border, to clear a part of Lika in order to better monitor the border. But his proposal was rejected,” Buczynski says. One hundred and fifty years later, the idea has been accepted.

The differences between the Habsburg Military Border and the new Schengen border are of course many. Bosnia and Herzegovina is (for a few days now) an official candidate country for entry into the European Union, as are Serbia and Montenegro (the other states bordering Croatia) and the people who try to enter Croatian territory are not Ottoman troops, but people fleeing war and persecution and seeking asylum within the European Union. The border supervision, however, has not changed, the watchtowers have been replaced by cameras, the border guards police officers, deforestation has remained the same. “Border control and respect for human rights can be ensured,” assures Terezija Gras, State Secretary for the Interior in Zagreb and one of the architects of the border control strategy since 2017. Gras is one of three candidates to lead Frontex, the agency for the control of the EU's external borders. If she were to be nominated, at the end of December 2022, “the Croatian model”, to use Gras's words, would be further rewarded and on the Balkan route – the most used route according to Frontex  to reach Europe (with almost 140 thousand crossings in the first 11 months of 2022, compared to 93 thousand for the central Mediterranean) – there is a risk of a new restrictive turn starting from January 1st.

John Vale
Source: Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso – 23/12/2022