Bulgarian authorities have been accused of ignoring emergency calls and obstructing efforts to rescue three Egyptian teenage boys, who later died in sub-zero temperatures close to the Bulgarian-Turkish border in late December.
A file of proof compiled by two humanitarian organisations, seen by the Guardian, accommodates pictures, testimonies and geolocations allegedly exhibiting the authorities’ failure to save lots of the boys, who known as for assist as they struggled chilly and misplaced within the forests of Burgas, in south-eastern Bulgaria.
The organisations, No Identify Kitchen (NNK) and Collettivo Rotte Balcaniche (CRB), say their report, Frozen Lives, reveals a greater image of brutality in opposition to migrants at Europe’s borders.
Bulgaria’s border with Turkey is a frequent crossing level for folks hoping to assert asylum in Europe however there have been well-documented human rights abuses in recent times, together with allegations of unlawful pushbacks of asylum seekers to Turkey. It’s forbidding terrain, rocky and hilly with freezing winter temperatures and bitter winds.
NNK and CRB say they have been first alerted on the morning of 27 December 2024 that calls had been made to an emergency hotline arrange by an umbrella group of charities. The calls referred to 3 youngsters “at immediate risk of death” and despatched GPS places.
The activists then made a number of calls to the official 112 emergency quantity and tried to achieve the boys themselves.
Bulgarian border police allegedly hindered rescue makes an attempt from the organisations regardless of being proven a video of one of many boys within the snow.
The boys, later recognized as Ahmed Samra, 17, Ahmed Elawdan, 16, and 15-year-old Seifalla Elbeltagy, have been all later discovered lifeless with Ahmed Samra found with “dog paw prints and boot prints around his body”, which, the report says, “indicates that the border police had already found him, maybe still alive or dead, but had chosen to leave him there in the cold”.
Activists returning to the scene later say they discovered that every one traces of the prints had been erased. A type of who found the physique within the snow mentioned the picture was eternally “burned” into their reminiscence.
One of many boys’ our bodies was found to have been partly eaten by an animal.
The report particulars systematic harassment of the organisations’ rescue groups in plummeting temperatures in December, in addition to vandalism of one in all their automobiles, which they’d been compelled to desert by border guards and was later discovered with its home windows smashed and screws in its engine to disable it.
One rescue staff had their passports and telephones confiscated by police, and their fingerprints and images taken. A feminine activist was strip-searched on the police station.
“I was separated from my male friends and strip-searched in front of two border police officers and was made to sit there while they went through my bags,” she mentioned.
“I was on my period and it felt deeply uncomfortable and unnecessary to make me stand there naked. It felt like every action the officers made was just to intimidate and scare us and put us off doing something similar again.”
Throughout one other rescue try, one group was compelled to stroll about six miles (10km) to the closest city whereas being adopted by border police of their automobile.
A number of human rights organisations have sounded the alarm in recent times at what they are saying is a pointy rise within the concentrating on of these exhibiting solidarity and dealing with asylum seekers and migrants throughout Europe.
Final September, the highlight was again on the Bulgarian authorities after investigative reporting outlet Balkan Perception uncovered proof suggesting officers of the EU border company Frontex have been being intimidated into silence about rights abuses they’d witnessed on the Bulgarian border.
In mild of the youngsters’ deaths, NNK and CRB have known as for an “independent, formal investigation” into “systemic violence and negligence by Bulgarian authorities”, and “degrading treatment of people on the move”.
One activist mentioned: “It should not be the responsibility of worried activists to reach people in the forest – border police are trained and paid to do so.
“It is utterly shocking that three minors froze to death in the forest even though multiple alerts to 112 had been placed. This is a huge failure for everyone. Not only the Bulgarian police forces, but for the EU overall and all its member states.”
The Bulgarian inside ministry rejected the allegations and mentioned its border forces had reacted in a well timed method to studies of younger folks in misery, sending patrols “immediately”, however that the our bodies have been discovered in numerous places to these initially offered.
It famous investigations have been persevering with in these circumstances, including that the border police didn’t “allow or tolerate any expression of inhuman or disrespectful behaviour of its personnel towards the citizens. And this applies for all citizens and all third-country nationals who irregularly entered on the territory of the country.
“In 2024 there were 515 search-and-rescue operations conducted by general directorate border police of Bulgaria, with the purpose – to provide medical assistance to third-country nationals who managed to enter the country irregularly,” the ministry mentioned. “Our patrols reacted to all of those signals in a timely manner, considering how crucial this is when a person is exposed to extreme weather conditions.”
