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 Slovenia imposed a daily limit of 2,500, forcing fellow European
Union-member Croatia to also ration entry from Serbia, which the
United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said was hosting more than
10,000 migrants on Monday, with more on the way.
"It’s like a big river of people, and if you stop the flow, you will
have floods somewhere. That's what's happening now,” UNHCR spokesman
Melita Sunjic said from the Serbia-Croatia border, where about 2,000
people were stranded in desperate and deteriorating conditions.
Groups of migrants fought with each other in the morning, aid
workers said, after a night spent under open skies lashed by autumn
wind and rain. "Open the gate, open the gate!" they chanted, their
passage barred by lines of Croatian police who on Monday erected an
improvised fence to control access.
Slovenia found itself dragged into the path of the greatest
migration of people in Europe since World War Two after Hungary
sealed its border with Croatia to migrants on Friday.
A country of two million people bordering Hungary, Italy, Austria
and Croatia, Slovenia said it would only allow in as many as it
could register, accommodate and send on to Austria. It said Austria
had limited its own intake, something Vienna denied. Most refugees
want to reach Germany, which for the moment is letting them enter.
What initially looked like a smooth and well-coordinated response by
fellow ex-Yugoslav republics Slovenia and Croatia quickly broke down
into the kind of discord and disarray that has characterized
Europe’s response to the hundreds of thousands reaching its shores
by boat across the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, many of them
Syrians fleeing war.
COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
Hungary’s right-wing government says the mainly Muslim migrants pose
a threat to Europe’s prosperity, security and "Christian values",
and has sealed its borders with Serbia and Croatia with a steel
fence and new laws that rights groups say deny refugees their right
to seek protection.
The European Union has agreed a plan, resisted by Hungary and
several other ex-Communist members of the bloc, to share out 120,000
refugees among its members, a small proportion of the 700,000
migrants the International Organization for Migration (IOM) projects
will reach Europe’s borders from the Middle East, Africa and Asia
this year.
It is also courting Turkey with the promise of money, easier EU
travel for Turks and "re-energized" accession talks if Ankara tries
to stem the flow of migrants across its territory.
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In Croatia, about 1,800 people were halted on a train short of the
Slovenian border, where Slovenian police barred access with an
improvised fence. They disembarked and walked along the tracks,
wrapped in raincoats or plastic sheeting against the rain.
Around 150, mainly families with children, were allowed to cross the
frontier, the rest spent the night in the open, warming themselves
around open fires. Slovenia accused Croatia of sending more,
unannounced, on Monday morning.
"Yesterday the Croatian side stopped answering our phone calls so we
do not know how many migrants to expect, which is making our work
very difficult," Slovenian Interior Minister Vesna Gyorkos Znidar
told a news conference on Monday.
Her Croatian counterpart, Ranko Ostojic, told reporters in Croatia:
"Slovenia first said it could receive up to 8,000 migrants (daily),
then 5,000, then 2,500 and now it has been reduced to zero. It would
mean that the whole burden is being left to Croatia."
Upwards of 5,000 people are flowing daily across Balkan borders
further south, from Greece into Macedonia and Serbia, both former
Yugoslav republics with barely the money or resources to cope.
"Overnight everything here collapsed, people were fighting with
clubs, arguing; there are no shelters," said Jan Pinos, the head of
a group of Czech aid volunteers on the Serbian-Croatian border. “The
Serbian authorities have failed to secure and take care of this
place,” he told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Ivana Sekularac in BELGRADE, Igor Ilic in
ZAGREB and Francois Murphy in VIENNA; Writing by Matt Robinson;
Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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