Lydia Gall

The latest report from Human Rights Watch, published on Tuesday evening, says that discrimination and violence against minorities, domestic violence, pressure on media and problems with dealing with the wartime past continued to be major issues for Balkan states and Central Europe last year.

Human Rights Watch, HRW, on Friday said Croatia should not be allowed to joint the passport-free Schengen area because of its "unlawful" and violent pushbacks of refugees and asylum seekers.

BIRN launched its latest project, Reporting Democracy, on Friday in Budapest with a conference that heard about the rise of populism in Central and Eastern Europe, the role of the media and about activism. 

A Human Rights Watch report published on Tuesday alleged that Croatian border police have been threatening, beating, insulting and extorting money and valuables from migrants and refugees, and pushing them back into Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Croatia has denied the allegations against the police, according to the report.

HRW appealed to Hungarian authorities to provide all asylum seekers in custody with sufficient and appropriate food in line with the governments legal obligations.

"The government stooped inhumanely low when it refused to give food to incarcerated people" said Lydia Gall, Eastern EU and Balkans researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch said on Friday that Croatian police have not been respecting the rights of asylum-seekers arriving in the country and have been pushing them back across the border to neighbouring Serbia.

Western Balkan governments and the European Union have over the past year failed to take action to address the issues hindering media freedom in the region, the NGO Human Rights Watch, HRW, said in the 2016 update of its media freedom report.

It added that new, troubling cases of threats and attacks on journalists had meanwhile emerged - but also remained unpunished.

Bulgarian law enforcement officials summarily return asylum seekers and migrants to Turkey, often after beating and robbing them, Human Rights Watch said in a report on 20 January.

The assembly of Bosnia's mainly Serbian entity began discussing disputed changes to the law on public peace and order on Tuesday despite a walkout by opposition parties, which accused the government of trying to create a "totalitarian regime".

Bulgarian border police have forced Syrian asylum seekers back to Turkey and has beaten some of them over the past month, a new report released by Human Rights Watch claims.