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| LINK: Refugees rioting at the Hungarian- Serbian border. (Photo: MTI/Tamás Sóki) |
Scenes of confusion and desperation unfolded on the Croatian-Serbian border as Hungary’s move to close its southern border turned Croatia into a new front line in Europe’s migration crisis.
By late Thursday, more than 9,200 refugees and other migrants had crossed from Serbia into Croatia since the night before. Riot police in Tovarnik, a Croatian town near the border, struggled to control the crowd and get them aboard buses and trains headed to Zagreb and other towns for registration. Paramedics rushed to resuscitate a man who had collapsed after a suspected heart attack in the stampede that formed when people tired of waiting for hours in the scorching sun tried to storm a bus.
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“Is this what the EU thinks is humane, civilized? Is this freedom? We ran away from death and war in Syria, we aren’t coming to live in Serbia or Hungary or Croatia; we are coming to Germany,” said Mohammad Kher Alawi, a 47-year-old shopkeeper who was leading a 50-strong group of refugees from Aleppo, Syria.
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The political shocks of the spiraling crisis are growing increasingly evident this week as countries on the migrants’ so-called West Balkan route from Turkey to Germany have traded recriminations, scrambled to secure their borders, and struggled to control the unabating flow of people.
In a policy reversal, Croatian Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic, said Thursday that migrants seeking to circumvent Hungary’s closed borders wouldn’t be allowed to pass through Croatia to Slovenia, Austria and Germany. That contradicted his government’s announcement the day before, when it declared that it would help migrants in their journey onward to more affluent European countries.
Instead, arriving migrants would have to be registered in Croatia, he said. The country would take in those likely to be deemed refugees, while others would be placed in detention centers as officials determined whether to repatriate them or sent them back to the EU country they first entered.
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The number of migrants crossing into Croatia has risen
sharply after Hungary closed its border with Serbia.
Getty Images
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“Are we overwhelmed? Absolutely, yes. We have capacity for a third of the migrants who arrived,” Mr. Ostojic said, calling on Greece, Macedonia and Serbia—all countries along the migrants’ route—to “stop and close the pipe.”Read the rest of the story HERE. Follow a link to a related story and view related videos below:
Hungarian Police Fire Tear Gas at Migrants, as More Opt for Route via Croatia
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