ZAGREB, November 21, 2020 – The Welcome! Initiative on Saturday demanded justice for Madine Hussiny, a six-year-old Afghan migrant girl who died near the Croatian border three years ago, claiming that “nobody has been held to account yet.”
The initiative said that on the day of her death, three years ago today, Madine’s mother crossed the Croatian border with her six children and walked for an hour before spotting Croatian police, telling them they intended to apply for asylum.
The family says they were told to go back to Serbia and return to Croatia the next month, and that police ignored their plea to spend the night in Croatia because the children were exhausted. Police drove them close to the border and told them to follow a railway track towards Serbia, but shortly after that, Madine was killed by a train.
Welcome! said those responsible for her death had not been punished and that “violence and deaths on Croatian borders are normalised.”
“That’s why we are requesting justice for Madine and everyone who lost their lives in the search for security, those who are persecuted and those who have died on borders and in the name of borders,” said the initiative.
Madine’s death will forever be a symbol of the “cruelty of the contemporary border control regime and the European apartheid of which it is part,” it added.
Croatian institutions have not taken responsibility and Madine’s family has applied the European Court of Human Rights, the initiative said.
This was the third #JusticeForMadine campaign.
