POM – Story
Triggerwarning: This text contains description of Police Violence
Before I arrived in Kladusa, I tried to cross the Bulgarian border three times. After arriving in Athens in Greece, I attempted to cross the Bulgarian border to get to Serbia. One of the three times, they caught me in Bulgaria. I can’t remember the exact time or day, but it was in November 2020. I had been walking for seven days – five of them in Greece and two in Bulgaria.
POM / anonymous
They beat me and dislocated both my shoulders. They also let a dog loose on me. They allowed him to bite me. For more than twenty minutes he bit me while they just laughed.
I thought I was going to die. Even today, about a year later, my right shoulder hurts when I’m cold.
They brought me to the Bulgarian-Greek border and took everything away from me and then pushed me back to Greece, I was only wearing underpants. I started walking from the Bulgarian border towards Greece. I had no shoes, it was around three o’clock in the night and I walked almost fifteen kilometres back, away from the Bulgarian border. I walked all night, until I reached a small valley. When the Greek police caught me, the streets were red from my bloody feet.
Even in that situation, they took me to jail and locked me up for two days without food or drink.
After the second day, they pushed me back to Turkey. After the Turkish police caught me there, they took me to the police station and locked me up for almost three months, and from there they wanted to deported me to Afghanistan.
But I was damn lucky they didn’t do it. They refrained to do so because I told them I was under eighteen years old. They gave me my papers and told me to leave Turkey in fifteen days.
I will never forget that night. I still have nightmares.
