After suddenly finding itself in the
path of Europe’s biggest tide of migrants for decades, Croatia said on
Friday it could no longer offer them refuge and would wave them on,
challenging the EU to find a policy to receive them.
The migrants, mostly from poor or war-torn countries in
the Middle East, Africa and Asia, have streamed into Croatia since
Wednesday, after Hungary blocked what had been the main route with a
metal fence and riot police at its border with Serbia.
“We cannot register and accommodate these people any
longer,” Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic told a news conference
in the capital Zagreb.
“They will get food, water and medical help, and then
they can move on. The European Union must know that Croatia will not
become a migrant ‘hotspot’. We have hearts, but we also have heads.”
The arrival of 17,000 since Wednesday morning, many
crossing fields and some dodging police, has proved too much for one of
the EU’s less prosperous states in a crisis that has divided the
28-nation bloc and left it scrambling to respond.
A record 473,887 refugees and migrants have crossed the
Mediterranean to Europe so far this year, the International
Organization for Migration said, most of them from countries at war such
as Syria who are seeking a better, safer life.
Hundreds of thousands have been trekking across the
Balkan peninsula to reach the richer European countries to the north and
west, especially Germany, which is preparing to accept 800,000 migrants
this year.
But that has wrongfooted the European Union, which has
come up with no common policy to deal with the biggest wave of migration
to Western Europe since World War Two.
Hungary acted on its own to shut the main route this
week by closing its border with Serbia, leaving thousands of migrants
scattered across the Balkans searching for alternative paths.
Croatia, offering an overland route to Germany
bypassing Hungary, found itself suddenly overwhelmed, and began sending
migrants in trains and buses to Hungary.
Gyorgy Bakondi, head of Hungary’s national disaster
unit, said more than 4,000 migrants had arrived from Croatia on Friday
without any prior consultation, and up to 1,200 more could come before
the end of the day.
With tempers clearly fraying, he said authorities had
seized a Croatian train carrying migrants to the town of Magyarboly,
disarmed the police who were escorting it and arrested the driver.
Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said the incident “raised the suspicion of a border violation”.
However, Croatian police spokeswoman Jelena Bikic said
no one had been disarmed or arrested, the escort had been agreed in
advance, and the police had returned to Croatia.
Hungary did, however, agree earlier in the day to register at least 1,000 migrants delivered from Croatia.
“TIME TO DEAL DIFFERENTLY”
While Zagreb made welcoming statements earlier this
week, Milanovic said he had called a session of Croatia’s National
Security Council and that it was time to deal with the problem
differently. The president has told the military to be ready if called
on to help stop the flow of people.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke
to Milanovic by phone to offer Croatia technical and logistical help in
coping with the flood of migrants.
Croatia, the EU’s newest member state, has already
closed almost all roads from the border. Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic
said if the crisis continued “it is a matter of time” before the border
was shut completely, though Milanovic, in his remarks, questioned
whether even that would keep migrants out.
Police have rounded up many migrants at the Tovarnik
railway station on the Croatian side of the border with Serbia, where
several thousand spent the night under open skies.
“We are so exhausted,” said Hikmat, a bare-footed
32-year-old Syrian woman from Damascus, after a journey, like many
others, by sea and then through the Balkans to the border between the
two former Yugoslav republics.
She said she had been traveling for two months with her
son, and added: “Look at me. I just want to get anywhere where we will
be safe.”
Some kept traveling and reached tiny EU member Slovenia
overnight. Many did so by evading the police and trekking through
fields or traveling by train, exasperated by Europe’s confused response
to the crisis.
“I didn’t expect such a reaction from Europe … They
first open the doors then they close them. They punish the people,”
Syrian migrant Dara Jaffar said at Tovarnik’s railway station.
Worried by the situation, Slovenia stopped all rail
traffic on the main line from Croatia. Late on Friday, Prime Minister
Miro Cerar – reversing his earlier stance – said Slovenia might consider
forming a “corridor” for migrants to pass via its territory to western
Europe “if the pressure is too great”.
A Reuters reporter saw Slovenian riot police using what
appeared to be pepper spray on a crowd of migrants trying to cross the
border from the Croatian village of Harmica.
Unlike Croatia, Slovenia is a member of Europe’s
Schengen zone of border-free travel, an important goal for refugees.
With around 1,000 migrants expected to enter Slovenia in the next 24
hours, it has said it plans to abide by EU rules by receiving asylum
requests but returning illegal migrants.
EMERGENCY EU SUMMIT
After failing to agree on a plan to distribute 160,000
refugees across the EU — just a fraction of the numbers arriving this
year — the bloc has called a summit for Wednesday to work on a united
response.
Donald Tusk, who chairs EU summits, called on Friday
for a credible EU migration policy and said member states must stop
shifting responsibility onto their neighbors.
In a letter addressed to the 28 leaders ahead of the
summit, Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, also urged them to provide
donations to the World Food Program to help feed some 11 million
refugees in Syria and the region.
Tempers are fraying among some migrants trekking across Europe.
In the Croatian town of Beli Manastir, just over the
border from Hungary, angry groups of Afghan and Syrian migrants, waiting
for trains to Zagreb, fought with rocks and sticks at a ticket office.
Rocks, smashed bottles and broken sticks littered the
ground. A handful of police in ordinary uniforms tried to restore
control.
Relations between EU states have also been damaged,
with several suspending the Schengen rules to restore emergency border
controls to slow the flow.
Despite criticism by rights groups and some EU
officials, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orban, said his
country was extending the fence along its southern border with Serbia to
the Croatian section.
Serbia warned its neighbors against shutting down the
main arteries between them, saying it “will seek to protect our economic
and every other interest before international courts”.
Germany, which is planning to host by far the largest
number of refugees, says other EU countries must do their part.
Some other EU states, especially former Communist
countries in the east, reject quotas to accept refugees. They accuse
Berlin of exacerbating the problem and encouraging the overland surge by
suspending EU rules to announce in August it would take in Syrian
refugees wherever they enter the EU.
German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel renewed a threat
that countries that do not help in the migrant crisis will be deprived
of EU funds.
Interior ministers will try to overcome the differences on Tuesday, a day before the summit of EU leaders.
“These occasions may be the last opportunity for a
positive, united and coherent European response to this crisis. Time is
running out,” Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency,
said in Geneva.
