Detainees in the State Agency of Refugees (SAR) section in Busmantsi/Sofia protested today against the new visiting and supply regulations. The new rule limits visitors to eight in a section of more than twenty-six people. This prevents many prisoners from seeing their friends and relatives. The administration of the Busmantsi detention center has also banned the daily bringing of packages and has limited the packages allowed during visiting times. The detainees refused for a while to enter their rooms as a protest. In former times there were reports by NGOs published denouncing verbal abuse, violence and poor health conditions in the detention center.
The human rights activist Abdulrahman al-Khalidi from Saudi Arabia has been imprisoned in Bulgaria for almost three years. Because he fears being deported, he has gone on hunger strike.
Abdulrahman al-Khalidi was only allowed to leave the Busmantsi deportation center near Sofia airport on 5th of July for a hearing before the administrative court. A group of supporters had gathered in front of the court; the police tried to prevent contact between them and al-Khalidi. On the same day, he announced on social media that he was going on hunger strike in protest against his impending deportation and the poor conditions of detention.
On July 25th we were once again in front of the Administrative Court in Sofia, with Abdulrahman Al-Khalidi on a hunger strike since July 5th, for the end of his detention, freedom and asylum, and against all deportations! #noborders#freesaudivoices#freedom#свободаpic.twitter.com/wt9mrffFb6
Protests in front of the administration court in Sofia
Al-Khalidi is a human rights activist from Saudi Arabia who has campaigned for the rights of prisoners there and supported the Saudi Association for Civil and Political Rights (ACPRA). He also took part in several demonstrations in support of Saudi prisoners in the capital Riyadh. In March 2013, al-Khalidi fled first to Egypt, then to Qatar and Turkey. In exile, he continued his political activities and worked as a journalist. He was active in the online movement Geish al-Nahl (Bee Army, internationally known as Bees Army), which aimed to counter the Saudi government’s propaganda campaigns on social media.
After the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, who had explicitly referred to the Bees Army on Twitter a few days earlier, al-Khalidi feared for his safety because, according to him, he himself was in contact with Khashoggi. He did not renew his identity documents as he might have had to appear at the same consulate. Al-Khalidi left his two children and his wife behind in Turkey and fled to Bulgaria in October 2021 to apply for asylum. Since then, he has been held in custody pending deportation in Busmantsi. Aid organizations such as the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHK) repeatedly denounce the lack of translators and legal assistance as well as poor hygienic conditions, among other things.
„There are serious human rights violations in Saudi Arabia that are being covered up. There are people who suffer from torture or violations of civil and political rights in my country. We need to reform the status quo,“ says al-Khalidi. The activist and journalist cannot understand why he has been imprisoned in Busmantsi since October 2021. In 2022, the State Agency for Refugees (SAF) rejected his asylum application. Al-Khalidi summarizes the decision-making process: „The refugee agency claimed that the authorities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had ‚democratized‘ society. Human rights violations were denied. The decision stated: ‚The asylum seeker could safely return as it was considered a safe country. The refugee agency also claimed that I had left my country for Bulgaria for ‚economic reasons‘. The court did not provide me with a translator during the hearings and the judge only confirmed the refugee agency’s decision.“
Day 20th of the hunger strike, and today we also presented our defense to the court against the arbitrary detention order.
We said our word in court, and the demonstrators said theirs.
According to Amnesty, the Saudi Arabian authorities continued to persecute people „who peacefully exercised their rights to freedom of expression and association“ in 2023. Some of them were sentenced to long prison terms or death. In July last year, for example, a Saudi special court for terrorist offenses sentenced the 54-year-old retired teacher Mohammed bin Nasser al-Ghamdi to death for his online activities on X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube. According to Statista, 172 people were executed in Saudi Arabia in 2023. This put the country in third place worldwide after China and Iran.
I will be watching very closely a Bulgarian court hearing tomorrow on the deportation order of Saudi HRD Abdulrahman Al-Khalidi. #SaudiArabia is a dangerous place for HRDs & his deportation would violate #Bulgaria’s commitment to the principle of non-refoulement @MFABulgariapic.twitter.com/Xp1lbmQ2aU
— Mary Lawlor UN Special Rapporteur HRDs (@MaryLawlorhrds) July 4, 2024
The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders at the UN Human Rights Council, Mary Lawlor, wrote on X that she was monitoring the case closely. Al-Khalidi’s deportation would violate Bulgaria’s commitment to the principle of non-refoulement. Bulgaria is repeatedly accused of deporting people who are subject to political persecution in their country of origin. In 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) criticized the deportations of refugees and migrants from Bulgaria to Turkey. These were carried out without any examination of the individual risk of imminent human rights violations and therefore violate the European Convention on Human Rights. In one ruling, the ECtHR awarded 15,000 euros in compensation to a deported journalist who had worked for the daily newspaper Zaman and the press agency Cihan; both had been closed down by a government decree on the 27th of July, 2016 following the failed coup attempt in Turkey. After his deportation, he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in Turkey, primarily because the instant messaging app Bylock, which the Turkish government associates with terrorist activities, was allegedly on his smartphone. Time and again, Turks have been deported to their country of origin despite fearing political persecution there.
18,554 people were in immigration detention in Bulgaria in 2023. Al-Khalidi attributes the shortcomings in Bulgaria’s asylum policy to political instability, weak economic performance, widespread corruption and poor administration. By attracting public attention, al-Khalidi hopes to gain the necessary support in a country that is repeatedly shaken by political crises. „It would help me if people spoke publicly about my case, exposed the procedural errors that the authorities are trying to cover up, and put pressure on the European and Bulgarian authorities to achieve justice and legal protection.“ He is now waiting for a new decision on his asylum application, which is due to take place in around a month. A decision on the previously postponed deportation order will then be made on the 20th of September. Al-Khalidi wants to continue his hunger strike until his asylum application has been accepted and he is free.
Bulgaria has been a focal point for migration movements for years, as its geographical location on the border with Turkey makes the country on the Black Sea an important transit country for refugees seeking to enter the EU. As the Mediterranean is considered the most dangerous escape route in the world, many people choose the overland route, often to Bulgaria. Although there are no official statistics on this, the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior published corresponding data in January. According to this, the Bulgarian border police prevented around 180,000 “illegal“ entry attempts by migrants in 2023. There were already 5,000 this year. The Bulgarian authorities are being supported by the largest land operation of the border protection agency Frontex, „Operation Terra“, with a new border surveillance system and the number of staff involved is to be increased by 500 to 600 from March, as Hans Leijtens, the head of Frontex, recently announced.
Time and again, people fleeing are forcibly returned to Turkey without checking whether they want to apply for asylum. This process is actually illegal, as it violates the principle of non-refoulement, which is enshrined in international law. Leijtens, who was elected Executive Director in December 2022, had promised before taking office on March 1 2023, that there would be no more pushbacks in the EU. His predecessor Fabrice Leggeri, who resigned in April 2022, was accused of covering up such violations. At the time, the European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) found that indications of human rights violations were ignored within Frontex. During pushbacks in the Aegean Sea, there had been instructions to look the other way, and illegal behavior by national border protection authorities had been covered up. Leggeri, who has resigned, is now running for the far-right Rassemblement National Party in France in the upcoming European Parliament elections.
However, it is questionable whether anything has changed in Frontex’s usual practice under him. According to research by Bulgarian journalist Maria Cheresheva and researcher Luděk Stavinoha from the British University of East Anglia for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), pushbacks that Frontex and the EU Commission were actually aware of were consistently ignored, particularly in relation to Bulgaria. Obviously, Bulgaria’s chances of joining the Schengen area were not to be jeopardized. This is evidenced by internal documents containing vivid details of alleged brutalities committed by Bulgarian border officials during Frontex operations. There were also violent incidents in Bulgaria after Leijtens took over Frontex. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, which advises national EU governments and EU institutions on human rights issues, and the EU Commission were obviously aware of the human rights violations. According to the report, Frontex Fundamental Rights Officer Jonas Grimheden had regularly voiced his concerns to the Frontex Management Board, in which the Commission is also involved.
Instead of scandalizing human rights violations before Bulgaria’s Schengen accession, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on the EU countries in September 2023 to admit Bulgaria and Romania to the Schengen area without delay. Both countries have been striving to join for more than a decade. At the beginning of last year, they offered to implement a pilot project to prevent „irregular arrivals“ and to strengthen border and migration management as well as accelerated asylum procedures and the swift deportation of those rejected. Bulgaria received 69.5 Million Euros to implement the project. The EU Commission has since announced that further funds will be allocated to Bulgaria and Romania for the reinforcement and modernization of existing border surveillance systems at the EU’s external borders as well as the purchase of means of transport or operating equipment.
There is also criticism of the pilot project in the European Parliament. Dutch MEP Tineke Strik from the Groenlinks party recently raised the issue of human rights violations at the EU’s external borders. Strik is a member of a group in the European Parliament tasked with reviewing the work of Frontex. A few days ago, she visited a facility as part of the EU pilot project in the small Bulgarian village of Pastrogor on the border with Turkey, where asylum seekers have been undergoing a fast-track procedure since March 2023. The high walls with cameras and barbed wire make the complex, which was built with EU funds back in 2012, look like a prison. Strik fears that the facility could be used as a closed camp, like e.g. the closed center of Lyubimets which is located in the near. The one-sided focus on border controls was to the detriment of the protection of human rights and a humane reception system, as she stated on her Linkedin profile. She had therefore requested a discussion in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) to challenge the European Commission on this matter.
Such concerns are not unjustified. According to the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) adopted last year, a decision will in future be made within seven days as to whether a person will be directly returned or transferred to the regular asylum procedure after being apprehended in the EU border area. During this time, “identification“ of the person, “health and security checks“ and “the collection of biometric data and registration in the Eurodac database“ are to take place. The European Dactyloscopy fingerprint identification system (EURODAC), including data comparison, is used to prevent refugees from applying for asylum in several EU member states. It is also intended to check in this short time whether the person is particularly vulnerable or has been the victim of torture. In fact, the examination takes place under the legal fiction that the person has not yet entered the country, even though they are already on EU soil. This provides the best conditions for the current practice of looking the other way at the EU’s external borders to continue as before.
According to a research by the ARD studio in Vienna in cooperation with Lighthouse Reports, Der Spiegel, RFE/RL, Solomon and inews– which was published in the beginning of December 2023 – at least 93 people died on their way through Bulgaria in the last two years alone.
The research team spoke with forensic pathologists in Bulgaria and people whose family members had gone missing or died on the route. The people on the run are usually dying because of exhaustion and cold on their route, which leads through mountains, bushes and the countryside. The last case was reported on the 27th of November 2023 by the Bulgarian authorities. Additionally there is a fence at the Bulgarian-Turkish border which was constructed already in 2013 and replaced and modified in the following years with a bigger one. Additionally to this numerous car accidents are happening regularly. Some of them are fatal.
With regard to Bulgaria, the fundamental rights officer of the EU border protection authority Frontex became active in a total of seven internally reported cases regarding possible violations of fundamental rights, the authority said in response to a request from ORF. In the beginning of December 2023. All cases concern pushback allegations from Bulgaria to Turkey, a Frontex spokeswoman said. At least 232 Frontex officers were deployed in Bulgaria in 2023.
Members of the detained 104, who are part of the religious minority of the religious minority group Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, claim that they were tortured and beaten. The group, including elderly and children, asked for asylum in Bulgaria on the 24th of May 2023. After presenting themselves at the Turkish-Bulgarian border-crossing, Turkish authorities attacked them and detained the whole group. Days later the website of the religious minority published videos and voice records, which documented the violence of the Turkish authorities, that were also taking place during and after the incident at the border in the detention center in Edirne, which is located near the border.
Photo Sources: The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light
With the group were also two British journalists arrested. In a statement, which was published by the Scottish Sun, one of the journalists, Sermad Al-Khafaji, said, that he was wearing a press vest and that had a press badge with him, when he was detained while holding a camera. He additionally stated that the Turkish police had also tried him to stop from filming and isolated him from the group. The two journalists are also accused as “British agents“. This phenomenon is not new. Since years Turkish authorities are trying to regulate the flow of information, using oppressive and discreditable tactics.
Pulling and pushing back asylum seekers from the Turkish-Bulgarian border is not a new occurance. By the end of 2022, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, published a letter, addressed to Bulgarian politicians in which she expressed concern about reports regarding pushbacks at Bulgaria’s land borders. The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee reported about push-backs which affected more than 87,000 people, only in the year 2022. Recently the European Commission provided 45 Million Euro as a new financial support to Bulgaria, which will be added to the national program „under the Border Management and Visa Policy (BMVI) home affairs funding“.
Today on the the 24th of May 2023, more than 100 members of the religious minority, the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, gathered at the Turkish-Bulgarian border. The group, including women, children and old people, asked there to cross the border to apply for asylum on the Bulgarian side. Turkish authorities did not led them pass and brutally pulled them back with batons, also gun shots were fired.
In a letter, which was signed by Bulgarian and other international humanitarian organizations, and sent to FRONTEX as well as the Bulgarian Border police one day before, the situation of the group and the planned border crossing attempt was described and announced. In the letter the group mentioned, that even before it wrote to “UNHCR in Bulgaria, the State Agency for Refugees (SAR), and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs „to request a visa on humanitarian grounds“. However, the Bulgarian Border Police or other Bulgarian authorities were not seen at the whole scenery on the Turkish side of the Turkish-Bulgarian border today.
Iliana Savova, the Director of the Refugee and Migrant Legal Programme at the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC), wrote in her new report, which was published together with the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), that in the same year 5,268 pushbacks were affecting 87,647 people. Still many refugees don’t want to stay in Bulgaria. 46% of the asylum applications were not discontinued, because the appliers were fleeing to another country afterwards.
There is already a fence covering most parts of the Turkish-Bulgarian land border, which is almost 270 km long. Refugees have no possibilities to ask for asylum at Bulgarian border checkpoints, because they cannot legally enter the Bulgarian territory from Turkey. In the last years several people perished on the illegal routes to and through Bulgaria. Furthermore, Afghan nationals are a “subject to unfair and discriminatory treatment“ in Bulgaria, with very low asylum recognition rates, namely 10%.
