BRUSSELS, Belgium – For asylum seekers fleeing war in the Middle East, their harrowing journeys to Europe have been plagued with what they were hoping to leave behind: torture, robbery and beatings.
In an asylum camp in Brussels, 22-year-old Iraqi Kurd Zeid Muhammad Ziki Bokan recounts how police officers in Hungary mistreated him and his companions.
"They electrocuted us to force us to give our fingerprints. We were scared because we did not want to give our fingerprints,” he told Rudaw. “They also threatened us with dogs."
"I was beaten and electrocuted on my head and chest," said Bokan, who is from the Iraqi city of Mosul, summing up his experience at a police jail near the Hungarian capital of Budapest at the end of August.
After five days of beatings and torture all the group agreed to be fingerprinted, after one of them was threatened with electrocution in the genitals, he said.
Bokan told Rudaw that a friendly policeman told him the police receive European Union funds for every migrant they fingerprint.
The Kurd from Mosul arrived in Hungary after his overcrowded boat from Turkey sank off the Aegean city of Mytilene and the Greek coast guard rescued him and the 41 other passengers, including 12 children.
He continued with 14 other companions towards Macedonia and Serbia, where Serbian police took 1,500 euros from the group to allow them to cross into Hungary, he claimed.
Then, the group was arrested by police as they were boarding three rented taxis, for which they had to pay a stiff 200 euros each for the drive to Budapest.
As they tried to flee, Bokan said Hungarian police officers started firing electroshock Taser guns at them. The group fought back, but was eventually overpowered by police and jailed.
Bokan said he experienced cruelty and inhumanity on nearly every step of his journey. It is a story similar to many told by the deluge of refugees washing into Europe. Many have drowned and died en route.
Bokan recalled that when he and his companions were in custody in Hungary, the police ran the air conditioning, despite the cold weather outside, and fed them bread with a small quantity of foul-smelling meat.
"We wondered if it was dog meat because it smelled so bad," Bokan recalled.
He said that one of his friends who is now in Austria took mobile phone video footage of the police while they hurled abuse at them, and he plans to upload it on YouTube.
Seven policemen ganged up and beat Bokan again, on the day he was released from jail, because he asked why they were returning only 600 euros from the 1,000 euros he had when he was taken into custody.
"They started beating me up because they said I was accusing them of theft," he said.
Bokan and his group finally reached safety after crossing into Austria, where UN staff gave them winter clothes, medicines and the possibility to contact their families by phone.
From there, Bokan managed to travel to Brussels, where he is now sleeping in a tent at the Maximilienparc camp, with hundreds of other asylum seekers like himself.
Back home, Bokan had two brothers tortured by militants of the Islamic State group (ISIS), which controls large parts of Iraq and Syria. Bokan himself was shot and wounded in the leg last year when Mosul fell to the extremists.
Before trying to reach Europe for safety, in the Kurdistan city of Duhok he had placed his name on a list to join the Peshmerga forces. But after waiting for three months and not being called up to join the fight against ISIS, he set off for Istanbul in Turkey, where he lived off the money he earned from construction in Mosul.
Even though Bokan eventually made it to Germany, a top destination for migrants because of its strong economy and warm welcome, he chose not to stay because he learned it takes up to two years to be able to be joined by family.
Instead, he came to Belgium, where he has been told it takes five months for permission to bring in family. His hope is for his fiancee to join him from the Kurdish city of Erbil.
Bokan said he had left his homeland as a last resort: “If I had joined the Peshmerga, I would not have left Iraq."
