High-stakes crisis puts squeeze on Croatia
Balkan nation buses migrants to Hungary and shuts border with Serbia after 17,000 arrive
ZAGREB, CROATIA— Thousands of migrants were trapped Friday in a vicious tug-of-war as bickering European governments shut border crossings, blocked bridges and erected new fences in a bid to stem the wave of humanity fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
Asylum seekers who fled westward after being beaten back by tear gas and water cannons on the Hungarian-Serbian border just days earlier found themselves being returned to Serbia, where their ordeal began, after Croatia declared it could not handle the influx.
The EU’s failure to find a unified response to the crisis left this tiny Balkan nation, one of the poorest in the European Union, squeezed between the blockades thrown up by Hungary and Slovenia and the unending flood of people flowing north from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
With more than 17,089 migrants arriving in just three days, Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic declared that his nation of 4.2 million could no longer cope and the asylum seekers could not stay.
“What else can we do?” Milanovic said at a news conference. “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.”
Across Eastern Europe, barriers to the migrants’ passage were thrown up as nations tried to shift the burden of handling the influx on to their neighbours.
Declaring itself overwhelmed, Croatia began busing migrants to Hungary and closing its border crossings with Serbia. Slovenia halted rail service to Croatia and was sending mi- grants back there, while Hungary began building yet another new razorwire border fence, this time on its border with Croatia.
Caught in the middle of this highstakes game of hot potato were the masses of miserable men, women and children who have found their way to the wealthier European nations they wish to settle in blocked at every turn.
The human misery was evident in Croatian towns such as Beli Manastir. Migrants slept on streets, on train tracks and at a gas station. People scrambled to board buses without knowing where they were going.
Hundreds of others were stranded Friday on a large Danube River bridge in the Serbian town of Bezdan after Croatian authorities closed all but one border crossing. The group stood in a no man’s land in the middle in the scorching heat for hours.
Finally, Serbian authorities began busing migrants 120 kilometres to the south, near the Serbian town of Sid, so they could enter Croatia illegally through unguarded cornfields.
Elsewhere, 19 Croatian buses carried migrants across the border to Beremend, Hungary, where they were put on Hungarian buses for transportation to registration centres. Croatia also put some 800 on trains to Hungary.
At Turkey’s border with Greece and Bulgaria, meanwhile, hundreds of migrants were stopped Friday by Turkish law enforcement on a highway near the city of Edirne, causing a massive traffic jam. Hundreds more were camping out at a mosque in Istanbul, prevented from leaving to go to the border area by police.