Amendments to the Croatian Foreigners Act: Will Croatia criminalize solidarity?
Croatian Foreigners Act is currently being amended. Centre for Peace Studies (CPS) made comments to the Draft Amendments to the Foreigners act (Draft Amendments). CPS main concerns focus around several legal institutes, the most relevant and alarming being the “criminalization of solidarity”.
The measures providing for the criminalization of solidarity run through the entire text of the Draft Amendments. Not only do they represent political and legal position of the state towards foreigners and refugees, these measures also represent the desired position of the society towards these groups. The Draft Amendments provide for practically invariable threat of punishment of each person assisting a foreigner to illicitly enter, transit across or reside in Croatia.
Furthermore, the Draft Amendments envisage criminalization of attempt and various other repercussions of financial nature for particular persons or legal entities and expulsion of foreigners. Until recently, we were witnesses to proactive assistance of not only individuals in entry, transit and stay of foreigners, but also of our state, other Member States and, the other day, of Vatican. Today, Croatia seeks that institutions and societies make a U-turn in the directions of their position, which is not only immoral, but also illegal.
Therefore, we demand qualifying assistance in a way that humanitarian assistance is decriminalized. This primarily concerns situations of assistance with illegal entry of foreigners whereby their lives or health is at risk (such as the risk of drowning or freezing). Humanitarian grounds safeguard the system of international protection and other international human rights.
Furthermore it is necessary to exempt people from criminal or other liability should they assist people who are in irregular status in Croatia for various objective or subjective reasons (physical state or mental capacity; technical reasons, such as lack of transport capacity, lack of travel or other documents) and for whom there are no official means of support or accommodation, apart from detaining these people for a period of time provided by law. With regards to criminalization of attempt it is important that it relates only to criminal activity as prescribed by the Directive 2002/90/EC and as detailed by the Framework decision 2002/946/JHA and without prejudice to the protection afforded refugees and asylum seekers in accordance with international law on refugees or other international instruments relating to human rights.
