Europe authorities and border agency detains asylum seekers in cages in black sites, investigation reveals

An investigation has revealed the inhumane conditions of ‘black sites’ used by the European Union’s (EU) border agency to detain asylum seekers before illegally deporting them, representing its latest human rights violations as refugees continue to attempt to settle in the continent.

According to the non-profit organisation Lighthouse Reports, a campaign of illegal pushbacks by Europe’s border agency Frontex have resulted in the use of secret sites in which the organisation and eastern European security services regularly detain asylum seekers.

Based on hundreds of witnesses and personal testimonies which it gathered over the past 11 months, Lighthouse Reports also revealed footage of refugees – particularly those who attempt to cross from Turkiye – being “locked in a small, cage-like structure” next to a Bulgarian border police station in the town of Sredets, around 40 kilometres from the Turkish border.

This week we released footage of Bulgarian border forces shooting a Syrian refugee. They denied it. The EU’s called for an investigation

This wasn’t an isolated incident. Today we place it in a wider system at EU borders reliant on black sites, cages & torture

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— Lighthouse Reports (@LHreports) December 8, 2022

It also shows vehicles stationed metres from the “cage” which display the Frontex logo. In those conditions, the asylum seekers are reportedly held there between several hours to up to three days, all while being denied food or water. According to the report, the cage structure in which they are detained “resembles a disused dog kennel.”

Saying that the system operates in plain sight of Frontex officers, it condemned it as a violation of international law and human rights.

The investigative report comes amid a series of other revelations in recent years that have exposed Frontex’s and EU member states’ pushback of refugees, abandonment at sea, the beating and torture of them at the black sites.

The consortium of journalists who contributed to this latest report were also informed by Medicins Sans Frontieres [Doctors Without Borders] (MSF) of other similar detention sites throughout eastern Europe, such as asylum seekers being detained in shipping containers in Hungary and prison vans in Croatia.

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