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15,000 Migrants Stranded in Croatia by Border Crackdown 17,000 Migrants Stranded in Croatia by Border Crackdown
(about 2 hours later)
BELI MANASTIR, Croatia — At least 15,000 migrants found themselves all but trapped in Croatia on Friday, having been barred from Hungary, sent packing from Serbia and unable to move on to Slovenia. LONDON — As key nations tighten their borders, thousands of migrants and asylum seekers hoping to enter the European Union are now bottled up in the Balkans, placing precarious new burdens on a region of lingering sectarian divisions that is exceptionally ill prepared to handle the crisis that has been shunted to it.
The human exodus was peaceful but miserable. Along the roads of eastern Croatia, the migrants’ detritus — abandoned blankets, torn clothing, empty cans of tuna — littered the highways. More than 17,000 migrants have entered Croatia since Wednesday, and were essentially trapped there, having been blocked from Hungary, sent packing from Serbia and unable to move on to Slovenia. The migrants have become a sloshing tide of humanity, left to flow wherever the region’s conflicting and constantly changing border controls channel them.
Those who could afford to take a train, bus, van or taxi westward, toward the capital, Zagreb, or the border with Slovenia, did so; many others simply set out on foot. Along the roads of eastern Croatia on Friday, the migrants’ detritus — abandoned blankets, torn clothing, empty cans of tuna — littered the highways. On the side of a road outside the border town of Tovarnik, Croatia, three young Iraqi men said they had been stranded for two excruciating days.
On the side of a road outside the border town of Tovarnik, three young Iraqi men said they had spent two excruciating days there. “It was crowded, there was no food, no transport and nowhere to go,” said one of them, Ibrahim Yusuf, 25, a construction worker from Baghdad, eating chocolate wafers in the shade of a walnut tree. He said he was considering returning to Iraq and asked a reporter for directions back to Belgrade, Serbia. “It was crowded, there was no food, no transport and nowhere to go,” said one of them, Ibrahim Yusuf, 25, a construction worker from Baghdad. He said he was considering returning to Iraq and asked a reporter for directions back to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia.
The migrants have not only been trapped within borders. They were also caught in mass confusion, evidenced by heightening tensions among neighboring nations in a volatile region, incoherent national policies and the continuing failure of greater Europe to resolve the crisis. Even while the surge of migrants was merely transiting the region, starting several weeks ago, it overwhelmed tiny Macedonia, which declared a state of emergency. Now, however, it has become clearer that the migrants face fast-rising barriers to passing through the Balkans en route preferred destinations like Germany or Sweden.
In only the most recent example of contradictory policy, some 1,000 migrants were taken by buses or trains to the Croatian-Hungarian border on Friday afternoon, where the authorities — for reasons that were not immediately clear — allowed them to pass through. Meanwhile, Hungarian troops were laying a new razor-wire fence along Hungary’s border with Croatia, extending the barrier it erected along the border with Serbia. The shifting of the crisis to the Balkans has added a whole new dynamic to the crisis, threatening to reopen old wounds and distrust. The masses of migrants and refugees are struggling through the clutch of countries that once formed Yugoslavia, until the wars of the 1990s bloodily broke the former Communist state apart.
Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said Croatia was overwhelmed by the influx, and he lashed out at Hungary for what he said was a failure to live up to its obligations as a member of the European Union. As hundreds of refugees continued to stream into Croatia on Friday, the government announced that it would close its borders with Serbia. Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said his country was overwhelmed, and Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic had a message for the migrants: “Don’t come here anymore. This is not the road to Europe.”
Mr. Milanovic also implicitly criticized Germany for effectively extending an invitation to the migrants without having a comprehensive plan to get them to Germany. The remarks were revealing of the tensions the migrants are now sowing among nations with weak economies, uncertain futures in Europe, creaking welfare states and deep wounds from the past. Those factors are hobbling the region’s ability to respond to a crisis that even richer nations in Europe have struggled to address.
“Croatia has shown it has a heart,” he said at a news conference. “We also need to show we have a brain.” On the surface, the countries of the former Yugoslavia, whose bloody disintegration shocked the world, would seem naturally sympathetic to the plight of refugees, and indeed the outpouring of sympathy and aid in recent days has been notable.
Mr. Milanovic added: “A solution isn’t to leave these refugees in Croatia. Today we will start changing our methods. We cannot house these people. We won’t block entries, but we also won’t block exits.” The exodus resulting from war and suffering in the former Yugoslavia presented Europe with what was then its biggest refugee crisis since World War II. By 1992, some 2.3 million people had fled from towns and villages, making the sight of refugees fleeing a daily and visceral occurrence.
Addressing migrants, he said: “You are welcome in Croatia, and you can pass through Croatia. But go on. Not because we don’t like you, but because this is not your final destination.” But after gaining independence, countries in the region have struggled to bounce back — the average gross monthly wage in Serbia is 518 euros, about $585, while unemployment hovers at about 18 percent, according to the government statistics office.
The practical implications of his remarks were not clear. The nation closed its border crossings with Serbia at 11 p.m. on Thursday, but thousands more people continued to enter. On the Croatian side of the border, police officers in vans were seeking to take the arrivals to reception centers. Such realities have left the people of the Balkans the “have-nots” of Europe, and now reluctant to accommodate the thousands of refugees who have even less than them.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, said the Croatians had only themselves to blame. “Instead of helping people, Croatia is encouraging masses and masses of people to commit a criminal offense — illegal crossing of the border is a criminal offense,” he said at a news conference in Belgrade. “We have much empathy in the region for migrants but countries across the region are poor, their institutions are not yet developed, and most states can barely deal with the daily problems of government, nevermind a migration crisis,” said Sead Numanovic, a former editor in chief of Avaz, a leading Bosnian newspaper. “These countries just don’t have the capacity.”
Many of the migrants had traveled by bus roughly 300 miles through Serbia, from its southern border with Macedonia to its northern border with Croatia. In Presevo, in southern Serbia, posters in Arabic warned: “The Hungarian border is closed. Croatia is open.” Indeed, the situation in many of the Balkan countries is so difficult that many of those seeking asylum in Germany come from Serbia, Albania and Kosovo. This has pushed Germany to have these countries declared “safe” by the European Union so that Germany can immediately reject any of their citizens applying for asylum.
The influx left Croatia scrambling to create more processing centers, including using a military barracks in the town of Beli Manastir, about 100 miles from the border. The barracks, intended to house 200, was flooded by 8,000, said the town’s mayor, Ivan Dobos. They had arrived suddenly by bus and train, from the border towns of Tovarnik and Batina, he said. In the spring, the German government launched a campaign to discourage the tens of thousands Kosovars from coming. Nearly 34,000 Kosovars applied for asylum between January and August.
The roads leading to Beli Manastir were strewn with the remnants of the migrants’ overnight stay. Cots provided by the Croatian military were propped against fences. In the town, migrants were lining up at banks, apparently looking to exchange money and possibly to pay their way to Slovenia. The response in the Balkans has also been complicated by the fact that several countries such as Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bosnia, buffeted by economic hardship, corruption and weak institutions, have not yet been accepted into the European Union.
A Syrian man who gave his name as Anas, 38, said he hoped to reach the Netherlands, where he planned to send for his family in Damascus — his two young children and his wife, who is due to deliver their third child in 10 days. In Bosnia, which is bracing for as many as 10,000 migrants, the country is so hobbled by strong residual nationalism among its disparate ethnic groups that it can barely govern itself.
“The Balkans is an area that has not recovered fully from the wars in the 1990s and the countries of the region remain in limbo in terms of European integration,” said Danilo Turk, former president of Slovenia and a former United Nations assistant secretary general for political affairs.
Countries are also loath to be lectured about showing solidarity with refugees by the European Union, where Hungary, a member nation, has built a 109-mile razor wire fence to keep migrants out.
President Tomislav Nikolic of Serbia on Friday railed at members of the bloc for their hypocrisy, selfishness and lack of leadership in the face of the migration crisis. He said it was “absurd” that Serbia respected European standards more than those who are members and who are now “almost out of control — without receiving any criticism, advice, or order from Brussels.”
In a region long plagued by bloody conflicts over land, it is hard enough to police borders where regional rivalries still remain. The list of lingering conflicts is lengthy.
Slovenia, the first former Yugoslav nation to join the European Union in 2004 and Croatia, which joined in 2013, cannot even agree where Croatia ends and Slovenia begins — a dispute that dates back to the collapse of Yugoslavia.
Slovenia is part of the Schengen accord that allows freedom of movement among member states; Croatia is not. Macedonia and Greece have battled over who has claims to the name Macedonia.
Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, is struggling to maintain stability and neighborly relations with Serbia, a country it views as its former oppressor. Montenegro has made some progress but the European Union has made it clear there might not be new members admitted in the next five years.
“All of these issues make the status of this region somehow provisional in its relation to the E.U. and that is not in the interest of stability, but quite the opposite,” Mr. Turk said.
Even without all of those challenges, there is also a risk of an anti-Muslim backlash or resentment in a region that has known ethnic violence perpetrated against Muslims and where reconciliation has sometimes proven elusive. In Bosnia, for example, the Serbian republic that is part of the country has denied that the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys during the war in 1995 constitutes genocide.
Slovenia still lacks a mosque although there has been a Muslim minority living there for decades.
As refugees from Syria and other countries in the Middle East seem poised to approach Slovenia over the summer, Damir Crncec, a former director of Slovenia’s Intelligence and Security Agency, warned of “a grand strategy of a slow destruction of Christian-Jewish values and roots. A new, more sophisticated version of Turkish invasions.”
Against such a backdrop, the influx left Croatia scrambling to create more migrant processing centers, including using a military barracks in the town of Beli Manastir, which is near the borders with Hungary and Serbia. The barracks, intended to house 200, was flooded by 8,000, said the town’s mayor, Ivan Dobos. They had arrived suddenly by bus and train, from the border towns of Tovarnik and Batina, he said.
The roads leading to Beli Manastir were strewn with the remnants of the migrants’ overnight stay. Beds provided by the Croatian military were propped against fences. In the town, migrants were lining up at banks, apparently looking to exchange money and possibly to pay their way to Slovenia.
A Syrian man who gave his name as Anas, 38, said he hoped to reach the Netherlands, where he planned to send for his family in Damascus — his two young children and his wife, who was due to deliver their third child in 10 days.
He said that he did not want to squander his money on a smuggler, and that he was waiting for a bus to Zagreb, the Croatian capital.He said that he did not want to squander his money on a smuggler, and that he was waiting for a bus to Zagreb, the Croatian capital.
“If the Slovenian police want to catch me, it’s O.K.,” Anas said, sounding resigned and weary. “I have nothing to lose.” He added that he had found the lack of hospitality puzzling, given that the migrants just wanted to pass through: “Hungary, Slovenia, Austria — they know we don’t want to stay there.”“If the Slovenian police want to catch me, it’s O.K.,” Anas said, sounding resigned and weary. “I have nothing to lose.” He added that he had found the lack of hospitality puzzling, given that the migrants just wanted to pass through: “Hungary, Slovenia, Austria — they know we don’t want to stay there.”
The mixed messages from Croatia, which joined the European Union in 2013, highlighted how the countries of the former Yugoslavia — smaller and economically weaker than their richer and more populous Western counterparts — are ill equipped to deal with the surge of people who have suddenly turned up on their doorsteps.
Slovenia, bracing for the migrants who are streaming through Croatia toward its borders, has set up six reception centers. At one of them, police vans delivered about 15 migrants every few minutes; the official number was 166 by noon Friday, but unofficial estimates placed it higher.
Croatian police officers could be seen on Friday telling migrants who arrived by taxi to turn back. Other migrants tried to cross into Slovenia on foot, walking through meadows, fields and even wading through a river, the Sutla.
Because of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the experience of mass outflows of people is part of the recent memory of people in this region. But most salaries in the countries of this region are relatively low, welfare states are stretched and the prospect of hosting large numbers of migrants threatens to spur a backlash.
The crisis has also dealt a heavy blow to European unity, as the Schengen area of borderless travel, long a cornerstone of European integration, has crumbled.
In Hungary, where riot police officers this week fired water cannons and tear gas to fend off migrants trying to breach a border gate, workers on Friday began laying razor wire along the southern border with Croatia, extending by about 25 miles the 109 miles of razor wire it had already set up along its border with Serbia. The Hungarian government also plans to reinforce the eastern border with Romania.
On Friday, Hungary declared a state of crisis in four southern counties near its borders with Croatia and Slovenia. More than 2,500 soldiers and police officers were to arrive at the border with Croatia by the end of this week.
“There is no dune, no molehill for anyone to hide behind in the hope of entering Hungarian territory illegally,” Prime Minister Viktor Orban said. “We will protect Hungary’s border.”
The United Nations and the European Union have criticized Hungary for erecting barriers to keep out migrants, most of whom are hoping to reach countries like Germany and Sweden. But Hungary has retorted that none of these people have a right to apply for asylum in Hungary, as they are coming from so-called safe countries, like Serbia, and not directly from their homes in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere.
In Slovenia, there were some calls to let the migrants enter. “Slovenia should help the refugees continue their way towards the north as soon as possible,” said one member of Parliament, Matej Tonin.
That did not appear to be the dominant view, however. Austria’s interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, met with her Slovenian counterpart, Vesna Gyorkos Znidar, on Friday and said Austria would help Slovenia secure its borders. The two countries are part of the so-called Schengen zone, in which travel without passports has generally been permitted. (Croatia is not yet a part of the Schengen zone.)
“Europe must focus on controlling its outer borders,” Ms. Mikl-Leitner said. “The decision over whether we will be able to maintain an orderly situation is made at the outer European border.”
Elsewhere in Europe, thousands of migrants crossed into Macedonia from Greece, while in Edirne, Turkey, migrants awaited word from the authorities in the Turkish capital, Ankara, about whether they would be allowed to walk over the border into Greece. Hundreds of migrants continued to make their way by boat across the Aegean Sea to the Greek island of Lesbos, which has become a gateway to an uncertain future in Europe.