Presentation of the “Black Book of Pushbacks” in Vienna

On Friday 18th June 2021 at 10:00am the “Black Book of Pushbacks”, a 1500 page dosier recounting the direct experience of people at borders across the Balkans, was presented in Minoritenplatz, Vienna, infront of the Austrian Interior Ministry.

The two volumes published in December 2020 (GUE/NGL)

The book was published in collaboration with The Left in the European Parliament and contains 900 testimonies of border violence, and thus fundamental rights violations, experienced by 13,000 people-on-the-move. It is being presented for the first time in Austria, having been launched last December in the Brussels and various other national parliaments such as the German Bundestag.

The handover to representatives of all parties represented in the Austrian National Council took place this morning. Those attending included Stephanie Krisper, (Human Rights Spokeswoman for NEOS), Ewa Ernst-Dziedzic (Human Rights Spokeswoman for the Greens), and Nurten Yilmaz (Integration Spokeswoman for the SPÖ). Among others invited were also Karl Nehammer, Federal Minister of the Interior; Gudrun Kugler, Human Rights Spokeswoman for the ÖVP, and Susanne Fürst (Human Rights Spokeswoman for the FPÖ).

The handover itself was carried out by Natalie Gruber, President of the Austrian association Josoor, which is a member of the Border Violence Monitoring Network, alongside Petar Rosandić, chairman of the SOS Balkanroute. Two Bosnian activists from SOS Balkanroute, Amina and Merdijja Kobilica, also spoke at the press conference.

The presentation included statistics and excerpts from the two-volume “Black Book of Pushbacks”, which evidences systematic human rights violations against people-on-the-move all along the EU’s external border, from Austria and Italy, all the way to Turkey. As stated in its first release, the handover today in Vienna furthered calls for an end to impunity for perpetrators. The presentation is a timely intervention, based on the recent expansion of chain pushbacks from Austria. Friends of the network Pushback Alarm Austria, recently supported the case of an applicant subject to one of these pushbacks, and two further case (one to Bosnia-Herzegovina and one to Serbia) were presented today as part of the “Black Book of Pushbacks”.

Download the Black Book of Pushbacks here:

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