CCPR/C/125/D/2901/2016 Committee, acting through the Special Rapporteur, decided to grant the State party’s request to examine the issue of admissibility separately from the merits. The facts as submitted by the author 2.1 At the time the communication was submitted, the author was an unaccompanied child seeking asylum while residing with a Hungarian family. In 2016, he had fled Pakistan due to a fear of persecution on account of his Baloch ethnicity since ethnic Baloch are systematically persecuted by the authorities in Pakistan. The author’s father, brother and cousin were persecuted in Pakistan on account of their ethnicity by State agents. The author’s father was forcibly disappeared in 2008. When a conflict between the armed forces and the Baloch people resumed in 2014, the author’s cousin and brother were both shot by State agents. Fearing a similar fate, the author fled Pakistan with his cousin S., also a child. 2.2 On 20 May 2016, the author entered Bulgaria on foot. The Bulgarian authorities apprehended him and took him to a police station, where he was fingerprinted. He did not apply for asylum at that time. For two days, the police detained the author at the station, where he was subjected to severe ill-treatment. The police agents only gave him one expired tin of fish to eat, and brutally grabbed him by the face and shouted at him. 2.3 On 30 May 2016, the author was transferred to the Busmantsi immigration detention camp, where members of the camp staff subjected him to severe ill-treatment and degrading treatment. He was only given soup without vegetables or meat to eat, and was repeatedly shouted at for not eating fast enough. When the author left his table with a piece of bread in his hand, one of the guards hit him in the stomach with excessive force, leaving the author staggering for hours. 2.4 On 8 June 2016, the author was transferred to the Voenna Rampa refugee camp. The reception conditions were extremely dire: there was no hot running water, and each bed had to be shared by two people due to overcrowding. As a result of the unhygienic conditions, the author suffered extensive bedbug bites. He was again fingerprinted, and applied for asylum. During the application process, the author claimed that he was an adult, because he had been told by the Bulgarian authorities that this was the only way he could remain together with his cousin. 2.5 On 11 June 2016, the dire conditions in the camp prompted the author to leave Bulgaria. He crossed the border into Serbia, where he spent five days. On the night of 16 June 2016, he crossed the border from Serbia into Hungary on foot, and on 17 June 2016, he immediately applied for asylum upon apprehension by the Hungarian police. 2.6 During processing, despite the author’s protests, the Hungarian border police misspelled the author’s first name when registering him, and also registered an erroneous date of birth (1 January 1998 instead of 14 July 2000). The author was then taken to the asylum authority of the Office of Immigration and Nationality, which immediately placed him in the Kiskunhalas asylum detention facility. Although the Office of Immigration and Nationality had promised the author that he would only be detained for a few days, the District Court of Kiskunhalas twice prolonged his detention. As a result, he was detained from 17 June 2016 to 7 October 2016. 2.7 In several submissions to the Office of Immigration and Nationality, the author stated that he was underage. However, in its responses dated 24 June, 7 July, 16 August and 6 September 2016, the Office stated that it had no doubts concerning his age because the author had confirmed his date of birth with his signature. The Office also informed the author that should he wish to have his age assessed, he would need to cover the costs of the examination. In its response dated 16 August 2016, the Office rejected the documents that the author had submitted as proof of his identity and age. 2.8 On 15 July 2016, the Office of Immigration and Nationality issued a decision stating that on the basis of Regulation No. 604/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of the European Union of 26 June 2013 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an application for international protection lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national or a stateless person (the Dublin III Regulation), and the record in the Eurodac database stating that the 2