Fortress Europe: EU policies have turned migrants into a resource to be exploited

A company of men in dark uniforms and balaclavas, all carrying clubs.

- Kenan Malik

They of people, repeatedly clubbing and backs. They push them into a river that marks the boundary of the European Union. “Go," they yell.

It's not an incident on the border between Belarus and Poland, the latest migrant flashpoint on the EU border, and one now dominating the news. It happened more than 1,500km to the south, between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. And it's been happening for months, but with much less publicity or scrutiny than that afforded the events in Belarus.

The uniforms worn by the men on the Croatia-Bosnia border carried no insignias. An investigation by a consortium of European newspapers, broadcasters and NGOs has exposed them as members of special Croatian and Greek police units. Their job? To use violence to force undocumented migrants out of the EU and into non-EU states. The operations are deemed “pushbacks”, a euphemism for illegal, violent expulsion. They happen at sea, too. Men from elite units in the Greek coastguard, dressed in black, wearing balaclavas and with no identity markings, seize migrants, put them on orange life rafts, provided by the EU, push them out to sea towards Turkey and leave them to their fate.