The Croatian government has said that the country cannot take in any more migrants, as riot police clashed with people entering the EU country from Serbia.
Croatia’s interior minister, Ranko Ostojić, said Croatia would provide migrants and refugees with safe passage to reception centres around the capital, Zagreb, but that those not seeking asylum would be considered illegal immigrants.
With their path north from Serbia into Hungary – and the EU – blocked since Tuesday, many migrants and refugees have turned west to the Croatian frontier. Ostojić said 6,500 had entered in the last 24 hours.
“Croatia will not be able to receive more people,” Ostojić told reporters in the town of Tovarnik on Croatia’s eastern border with Serbia, where thousands of people gathered on Thursday in and around the train station in blazing sunshine, waiting to board trains and buses.
More than 100 riot police were deployed to control the growing crowds and keep them back from railway tracks. Clashes broke out as some people broke through police lines.
“When we said corridors are prepared, we meant a corridor from Tovarnik to Zagreb,” Ostojić added, suggesting Croatia would not be allowing migrants simply to proceed north to Slovenia.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, added his voice to criticism of Hungary on Thursday, describing its treatment of refugees as callous and including “clear violations of international law”.
“High commissioner Zeid deplored the xenophobic and anti-Muslim views that appear to lie at the heart of current Hungarian government policy,” a statement issued on his behalf said. On Wednesday, Hungarian police used tear gas and water cannon during scuffles with refugees on the Serbian border.
Hundreds of people were also entering Croatia from Serbia via a bridge over the Danube in the northern town of Batina, after being bussed by Serbs from the Hungarian border. Croatian police seemed to be unprepared for the sudden arrivals. People were fainting and children crying as buses and vans took them to Croatian reception centres.
On the diplomatic side, the president of the European council, Donald Tusk, has summoned EU leaders to an extraordinary summit next Wednesday to discuss migration and a proposed scheme to redistribute 120,000 asylum seekers across the bloc.
On Monday, EU interior ministers failed to agree on a quota system designed to spread the burden of this year’s refugee crisis. The Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis, reiterated on Thursday that his country did not consider mandatory quotas a solution.
The Danish government, meanwhile, said it had voluntarily agreed to accept 1,000 of the 120,000 refugees the EU plans to relocate.
— Jonathan Miller (@millerC4) September 17, 2015
A man collapses as he's shoved thru crush. Refugees and migrants have now broken through police lines @Channel4News pic.twitter.com/OuIYTRTPdw
In a sign that pressure was growing on the EU’s other borders, Bulgaria began deploying 1,000 troops to the Turkish frontier, where several hundred people spent a third day stuck in Edirne, a border city.
Austria introduced tighter controls on its eastern border, through which tens of thousands of people have passed on their way from Hungary to Germany. It soon said it would be extending the checks to its southern border with Slovenia, in anticipation of a new wave of arrivals.
The scene at Horgoš, on the Serbo-Hungarian border, has almost returned to normal, less than a day after frustrated refugees clashed with Hungarian police.
Serbian officials were in the final stages of bussing people west to the Croatian border – raising questions about why they did not do so sooner, instead of letting people stew at the gates of Hungary.
A group of young Kurdish students were among the remaining few waiting for a bus at Horgoš. They said they were taking a punt on Croatia. “We just have to have faith,” said Nowar Daoud, a 23-year-old archaeology student from Hasakah in Syria. “We’ll go and find out what’s happening. Maybe we can cross, maybe we can’t. We live in hope.”
Daoud and his friends said that nothing will stop people fleeing from war. Hamas Shekhmous, an 18-year-old high school student travelling with her two brothers, said: “We’re not afraid of anything because after Daesh [the Arab term for Islamic State] nothing scares us”.
But some were a little more circumspect. Kawa, a 30-year-old agricultural engineer from north-eastern Syria, reckoned it was better to wait at the Hungarian border until he got word that the Croatian route worked. “After Croatia [it] is Slovenia,” Kawa said. “And we don’t know what Slovenia will do.”
Hungary angrily brushed off criticism from the UN’s secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, about its treatment of migrants and refugees at Horgoš, a day after it implemented strict border controls.
Ban said such actions were shocking and unacceptable but the Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, defended the police’s actions at a press conference in Budapest.
“The interpretation of the events at the border yesterday by the international political elite and certain international media has been bizarre,” he said. “Aggressive people such as seen yesterday will never be let in. Hungary will defend its borders no matter what outrageous criticism it gets from whomever in the international political elite.”
