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 Slovenia has asked the EU for police to help regulate the flow
coming from Croatia, Interior Minister Vesna Gyorkos Znidar told TV
Slovenia. Some 10,300 of the migrants remain in Slovenia, an
interior ministry spokesman said.
Croatia also decided on Thursday to seek international help, the
news agency Hina reported. The government said it will ask for
blankets, winter tents, beds and containers. Since mid-September,
217,000 refugees have entered Croatia.
Migrants began streaming into Slovenia last Friday, when Hungary
closed its border with Croatia. Before then, they were heading for
Hungary - a member of Europe's Schengen zone of visa-free travel -
and then north and west to Austria and Germany. Sealing the border
diverted them to Slovenia, which is also a member of the Schengen
zone.
With more and more bottlenecks being created across the Balkans,
thousands of migrants are spending cold nights under open skies in
Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. Another 9,000 are expected to enter
Serbia on Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees
office in Serbia.
"It is alarming, because the weather is getting cold," Seda Kuzucu,
UNHCR field coordinator in Presevo told Reuters.
'WE WANT NORMAL, SIMPLE LIFE'
About 2,000 have walked through corn fields, wrapped in blankets, to
reach the small town of Rigance in Slovenia from Croatia. From there
they will be taken to a nearby camp and after being registered
continue their way to Austria and then Germany.
Anas Kaial, a 31-year old Syrian from Hama, where he ran a snooker
bar, spent the night under open skies with his mother, wife and
three children.
"It was so cold," he said. "The only way we could distract our
children from the cold and make them stop crying was by telling them
that they will get all the Barbie dolls they want once we come to
Germany.
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"It's enough. We just want to have a normal, simple life. We can't
afford more bloodshed and shelling."
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban urged European leaders late on
Wednesday to change their immigration policies and involve voters in
a debate about the continent's future, saying they would otherwise
face a political crisis and a threat to the democratic order.
He said he had asked Hungary's Balkan neighbors to help send the
migrants back.
"The right thing to do is not to ensure their passage into Europe
but to take them back to the refugee camps they started out from,"
he said.
European Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs Dimitris
Avramopoulos will visit Slovenia on Thursday to discuss the migrant
crisis. Meanwhile, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called
an extraordinary meeting of several European leaders for Sunday.
Juncker invited the leaders of Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the
former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary,
Romania, Serbia and Slovenia.
(Additional reporting by Fatos Bytyci in Pristina, Aleksandar
Vasovic in Berkasovo and Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo; Writing by
Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Larry King)
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