North Macedonia Curbed Roma Citizens’ Freedom of Movement … – Balkan Insight

The European Court of Human Rights, ECHR found in a judgment published on Tuesday that four citizens of North Macedonia of Roma origin were discriminated against in 2014 when border authorities prevented them from leaving their own country.

The first incident had happened on November 29, 2014 at Skopje airport when the first plaintiff, named as Ms. Memedova, was prevented from departing to Germany, where she said she was going to visit her son.

The second plaintiff, named as Ms. Kurtishova, was prevented from flying from the same airport on June 19 the same year. The other three plaintiffs, a married couple named as Abazov and Abazova and their driver, named as Memedovski, were rebuffed at the Tabanovce border crossing with Serbia on March 4, 2014.

The ECHR found that the first four plaintiffs had been discriminated against and that their rights to freedom of movement and freedom to choose ones own residence within a states territory, as well as freedom to leave any country, including ones own, had been violated.

It also found that North Macedonia violated the European Convention on Human Rights provision prohibiting discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status.

The court however found that the case brought by the fifth plaintiff, the driver of the married couple, was inadmissible.

The judgment, which was reached on October 3 has been already appealed by the government of North Macedonia.

Strasbourg ordered the country to pay for plaintiffs costs and expenses plus compensation of 3,000 euros and 4,100 euros to the first and second plaintiffs respectively, for suffering non-pecuniary damage such as distress and frustration, stemming from the actions of the state authorities.

An additional joint sum of 5,900 euros is to be paid to the third and fourth applicants, the married couple.

The easing of the visa regime for travelling into the Schengen Zone for most of the Western Balkan countries in 2009 resulted in a surge of asylum requests by people from the region to the more developed European countries.

Many people coming from impoverished regions in the Balkans used the novelty to travel and ask for asylum in countries with long asylum procedures like Germany, Belgium and Sweden. Even if eventually turned down and ordered to return, during their prolonged stay they would receive state benefits far surpassing what they would earn or receive in welfare payments in their home countries.

The situation caused these countries to increase the pressure on the Balkan states to do more to prevent these people from reaching their borders, and also to introduce or consider introducing protective mechanisms to suspend visa-free travel.

North Macedonia started boosted checks on departing passengers at its borders in 2011 after a memo from the Interior Ministry that ordered the strengthening of the controls during exit from the territory of Republic of Macedonia of organised groups, potential asylum seekers, citing article 15 of the Border Control Law as a legal basis.

But human rights groups and later the State Ombudsmans office, as well as the Constitutional Court, determined that this article contained no basis for border services to prevent their own citizens from exiting the country, except if they were found to be a threat to national security, public policies, international relations or public health.

In June 2014, the then Interior Ministry spokesperson, Marija Jakovlevska, told BIRN that during 2012 and 2013, the border authorities prevented the exit of 15,590 citizens.

Subsequent unofficial data and research by human rights groups in the country has suggested that the countrys impoverished and marginalised Roma population was the most common target for border turnbacks.

More:

North Macedonia Curbed Roma Citizens' Freedom of Movement ... - Balkan Insight