Croatian police on Friday fired on a group of migrants trying to irregularly reach neighboring Slovenia, local officials said. One man was critically injured. Thousands of migrants trying to reach western Europe are stuck in the Balkans.
As more and more refugees and migrants try to make it to Western Europe via the western Balkan route, and with winter approaching, the EU and NGOs have warned of a humanitarian crisis in the Vucjak migrant camp and similar facilities in Bosnia and Herzegovina near the border with Croatia. On Friday, hundreds of locals protested against the migrants' presence.
In EU member state Slovenia, paramilitaries say they are facing down a migrant 'threat' on the border with Croatia. Their patrols includes trying to catch migrants climbing over the border fence and signalling their presence to the police. The founder and group commander this year served time in jail for forming the vigilante group and urging the overthrow of state institutions.
The Vucjak migrant camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina is reportedly about to be shut down following sustained criticism of its dangerous living conditions. The European Council’s human rights chief welcomed the closure.
A Croatian migrant rights group has placed a sign saying ''Welcome to Croatia - Country of torture'' at the border between Croatia and Bosnia to protest against reported cases of violence against migrants at the hands of the authorities. The protest is also directed against Croatia joining the Schengen zone.
The Bosnian government claims none of the local communities in the country agreed to the construction of new migrant centers in their territories.
Authorities in Slovenia, Italy, Bosnia and Croatia have dismantled an organization that allegedly smuggled migrants from the Balkans to EU countries like Italy.
A group of NGOs in Italy and the Balkans have denounced that migrants along the Balkan migrant route continue to be illegally expelled from one state to the next. The Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe meanwhile has warned of a "humanitarian emergency" due to squalid conditions at the Vucjak migrant camp in Bosnia.
Danial Alfahel is a 28-year-old Syrian refugee who fled Damascus in 2015. After a long journey, he wound up in Germany, although he was originally aiming to get to the Netherlands. Four years later he is making a new life for himself in Dresden, plays music in a band, works and takes people on tours of Dresden to talk about the city he has grown to love and the reasons that brought him here.
Around 1500 migrants were rounded up in northwestern Bosnia and moved to a camp in the country on Wednesday. The town of Bihac cannot provide adequate shelter for these people in the winter weather, authorities said.
The UN has called on Bosnia and Herzegovina to stop forcing migrants on its territory towards a camp near the Bosnian-Croatian border in Vucjak. They say the camp is “unsafe” and “unfit for housing people.”
Amnesty International reported at the weekend that Ahmed H., a Syrian man who spent four years in Hungarian prisons after being “unjustly convicted” of terrorism charges, has finally been allowed to return to his wife and family in Cyprus.