Abandoned to the elements, thousands of immigrants trapped at Balkan borders
MIGRANTS who had struggled for hundreds of miles to seek a new life in Germany were yesterday stranded in the mud and freezing rain at Balkan border posts.
Thousands of migrants, mostly Syrian, were in no-man’s land as countries across Europe closed their doors. Families with young children huddled in blankets and tarpaulins in fields of knee-deep mud as they became caught in bottlenecks on the Balkans route.
Hungary sealed its border with Croatia at midnight on Friday, diverting people through Slovenia, leading the Slovenian authorities to restrict the number of people they would let through. Croatia then started rationing how many people could cross into its territory from Serbia, leaving Serbia to consider introducing its own limits.
The UN refugee agency yesterday said more than 10,000 migrants were stranded in Serbia because of the backlog caused by the ‘ domino effect’ of restrictions.
About 2,000 were left in a muddy no-man’s land between countries after Croatia refused them entry and Serbia said they could not come back. Temperatures have dipped as low as 3C after almost an inch of rain fell in the previous 24 hours.
Many of the people who were forced to stay there overnight had to sleep in the open with only plastic sheeting to protect them from the elements. Croatian authorities later relented, clearing the log-jam. UNHCR spokesman Melita Sunjic described the migrants’ situation as ‘ awful and hellish’, saying: ‘These people are out in the open, they cannot sleep on the ground because of knee-deep mud. 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.’
Slovenia found itself dragged into the path of the greatest migration of people in Europe since the Second World War after Hungary completed a new stage in its border fence.
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban said the barrier was needed to protect his country’s ‘Christian values’ from the mostly Muslim migrants.
As Slovenia became overwhelmed, it introduced the con- trols, which infuriated Croatia and raised tensions between the two ex-Yugoslav countries.
Slovenian interior ministry state secretary Bostjan Sefic yesterday said: ‘Croatia is ignoring our pleas, our plans.’
But Croatian counterpart Ranko Ostojic told reporters: ‘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.’
Serbia’s minister in charge, Aleksandar Vulin, said it too may try to stem the flow of people coming in from Macedonia at a rate of 5,000 a day. He said: ‘Let’s not blame Serbia when the entire EU is turning its gaze from what’s happening here.’