Many other countries engaged in summary, unlawful, forcible transfers of refugees and migrants without consideration of their individual circumstances, then denied doing so, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, and North Macedonia. Ethnic Kazakhs fleeing Xinjiang in China faced prosecution for crossing the Kazakhstani border illegally. Some courts recognized the illegality of such actions. The constitutional courts of Serbia and Croatia ruled that police had violated the rights of people in pushbacks. The ECtHR ruled that Croatia violated the rights of an Afghan girl who was killed by a train after being pushed back to Serbia in 2017. Courts in Italy and Austria found that chain expulsions of asylum seekers to Slovenia and Croatia were in breach of international law. Despite these rulings, however, accountability for pushbacks or ill-treatment was rare. The EU and Italy remained complicit in funding “pullbacks” by the Libyan coastguard to Libya, where migrants faced serious rights violations. By October more than 27,000 refugees and migrants had been captured in the Central Mediterranean and returned to Libya by Libyan coastguards. DISCRIMINATION Racism and discrimination against Black people, Muslims, Roma and Jewish people became more overt in many contexts. In the UK, a government report dismissed concerns about institutional racism, while a new police bill augured more discrimination against Black, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. The Danish authorities removed references to “ghettos” from legislation, but continued to enforce social housing limits on residents of “non-Western background.” In moves justified to counter radicalization and terrorism, Austria and France stepped up surveillance of Muslim communities, raided mosques and/or shut down organizations monitoring Islamophobia. In Germany, there were 1,850 antisemitism and other hate crimes against Jewish people officially reported up to 5 November 2021 – the highest number since 2018 – while steep spikes in reported similar incidents were also recorded in, Austria, France, Italy and the UK. ROMA Roma continued to experience harassment and discrimination, including segregation in education, housing and employment. Roma communities remained over-policed and under- schooled. Two high profile fatalities of Roma at the hands of police in the Czech Republic and Greece echoed the death of George Floyd in the USA. After years of campaigning by activists, the Czech senate voted for a bill to compensate thousands of Roma women who were unlawfully sterilized by the authorities between 1966 and 2012. The government of Slovakia officially apologized for the forced sterilization of thousands of Roma women, but had yet to put in place an effective compensation mechanism. LGBTI PEOPLE’S RIGHTS LGBTI people continued to suffer discrimination and violence across the region. A number of countries discussed or adopted legislation stigmatizing or discriminating against LGBTI persons, including Poland and Hungary. In Serbia, the president declined to sign a law on civil partnerships. Some politicians engaged in homophobic speech or actions, including in Bulgaria and Turkey. Consensual sex between men was a criminal offence in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Russia’s “gay propaganda” law fuelled discrimination against LGBTI people, and in Georgia a journalist died when a mob attacked Tbilisi Pride offices. Amnesty International Report 2021/22 48