Bosnian authorities 'forcibly' emptying UN migrant camps in Krajina
Bosnian authorities have started emptying UN-run migrant camps in town centres, moving hundreds of people to a crowded, remote facility that is not equipped for winter conditions — or just leaving them to fend for themselves in the woods.
Some 10,000 transient migrants and refugees are stuck in the small Balkan country, and already face a chronic lack of accommodation. At least one in four live outside organised facilities.
On Wednesday, local authorities in the north-western Krajina region sent police to evict several hundred people from the Bira camp in the town of Bihác. Groups of migrants, mostly young men, were bused to a camp that was already full to its 1,000 capacity.
Peter Van der Auweraert of the United Nations migration agency, IOM, said the crowded tent camp, set up in April, might soon be forced to close. “The camp is only for summer weather conditions,” he said.
Van der Auweraert, IOM’s western Balkans coordinator, tweeted on Wednesday evening that there were “350 people with nowhere to go” and called upon state authorities to provide solution for them and the roughly 2,500 other refugees “forced to sleep outside”.
He earlier tweeted that authorities “forcibly emptied” the Bira accommodation centre and brought 350 people to Lipa, “which is already full. They will spend the night (and coming nights) in the cold without shelter, sadly, inhumanely & unnecessarily.”
In the next few days, Krajina authorities plan to empty a second camp of its 700 residents. It is unclear where they will be sent.
Local authorities in the area have long complained of bearing the brunt of Europe’s lingering migration issues, accusing other parts of their impoverished country of failing to help out.
IOM runs seven official migrant camps in the country, including five in Krajina, that now house nearly 7,000 people. The camps set up in town centres in Krajina, including Bira – which local authorities have long been bent on shutting down – account for over half of the reception capacities for migrants in Bosnia.
Even before the latest crackdown, an estimated 2,500 migrants were sleeping outdoors in squalid, insanitary conditions in Krajina. Over the past two weeks, remote woods, abandoned rundown buildings and roadsides on the edge of cities begun filling with makeshift camps, set up by homeless migrants who had been pushed out from town centres and left in desolate areas to fend for themselves.
Krajina shares a highly porous 1,000km (620-mile) border with European Union member Croatia, making it a major draw for migrants crossing Bosnia and hoping to continue further north and west to the continent’s prosperous heartland.
Bosnia, which has never truly recovered from its brutal 1992-95 war, became a bottleneck for thousands of Europe-bound migrants three years ago when other nations closed their borders and disrupted migration paths through the Balkans.
The EU has provided Bosnia with €60m ($70 million) in emergency funding, most of it for the IOM-run migrant camps.