Laila fled Afghanistan with her parents and two brothers in 2016, when she was 11 or 12 years old. They travelled westward, eventually reaching Bosnia and Herzegovina in early 2021. They then tried to enter Croatia, requesting asylum.

Croatian police ignored their request and forced them back over the border.

The police ordered them to wade across a frontier river at night, far from any town or populated area. Police smashed their phones, so they had no easy way of navigating to safety.

The family stumbled along till they found a road and walked 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) to the nearest town in Bosnia.

Others have faced even worse treatment. Croatian pushbacks often include serious violence and humiliation. Their methods are so awful, they violate international prohibitions on torture.

Let’s get one thing straight: Laila and her family are doing nothing wrong.

Everyone seeking international protection has the right to apply for asylum abroad and have their case heard before the appropriate authorities. So says the international Refugee Convention, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and a pile of other laws and agreements.

True, Croatia’s abuses are not the beginning of this story. Laila’s family first sought international protection in Iran, then Turkey, and then Croatia’s fellow EU member Greece. They left each country after authorities there also failed to respond to their requests for international protection.

Croatia’s treatment of asylum seekers is another link in a chain of state lawlessness and inhumanity that stretches thousands of kilometers, from areas of extreme instability to the gates of the EU and beyond.

The EU and its member state governments are deeply embedded in this illegality, as we’ve highlighted many times in this newsletter. Recall the EU’s “let them die policy” in the Mediterranean, several member states criminalizing saving lives at sea, and the EU’s complicity in torture in Libya.

It continues in Croatia, where substantial EU funds for border management are doled out despite Croatia’s repeated abuses and failures to comply with EU law.

Founded on respect for democracy and human rights, the European Union is supposed to be better than this. Sadly, it is not.

May 3 is World Press Freedom Day, and we are pleased to announce the 2023 Human Rights Press Awards.

These awards recognize outstanding reporting on human rights issues across Asia. They are administered by Human Rights Watch and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

There were 16 categories of awards, and the judges examined more than 400 submissions across 33 countries.

Reuters took the top prize for investigative reporting in English for its work on Myanmar’s military abuses against the Rohingya and democracy activists.

The award for investigative reporting in Chinese went to The Reporter, a nonprofit outlet in Taiwan, for its reportage on human trafficking of African students at Taiwanese universities.

The Guardian took top prize for documentary in English for “The Great Abandonment: the extraordinary exodus of India’s migrant labourers.” It showed how hundreds of thousands of daily wage migrant workers in India had to walk for days to return home after the government announced an abrupt pandemic lockdown.

The top prize for breaking news in Chinese went to Ming Pao, a Hong Kong-based newspaper, for a series (article 1, article 2, article 3, article 4) on how Covid’s fifth wave engulfed Hong Kong last spring.

See the full list of winners.

(written by Aiza Rodrigues Akhtar)

It’s often a challenge for people with two or more nationalities to adjust to multiple national cultures.  

But legal moves in DR Congo could be about to make things worse.  

The parliament has drafted a bill that, if it becomes law, would enable authorities to exclude Congolese citizens from running for political office based on their parents’ national origin. 

The legislation is known as the Tshiani or “Congolity” bill. It is largely seen as an attempt to prevent Moïse Katumbi, an opposition party leader considered to be one of President Felix Tshisekedi’s potential opponents, to run for the presidency. Katumbi has a Greek father.

Several foreign diplomats, UN officials, Congolese organizations, and prominent individuals have spoken out against the proposed law. All say the same thing: by institutionalizing discrimination, the law would violate human rights.

(compiled by Lisa Maier)

• Nairobi: African workers for ChatGPT, TikTok and Facebook vote to unionize (TIME) 
• Bangladesh: End crackdown against journalists and critics (HRW) 
• Tunisia doubles down on democratic rollback (Foreign Policy) 
• Libyan: Six people face death penalty for converting to Christianity (The Guardian)