Refugees find journey imperiled as cold weather, divisions hit Balkans

OPATOVAC, Croatia — Cold and bedraggled, but a little closer to what they hope will be refuge in Western Europe, hundreds of people traipsed into a transit camp in Croatia on Friday after spending a rainy night on the border with Serbia.

They arrived on foot in the early morning, many unprepared for the arrival of fall and still dressed in light clothes and summer footwear, but unwilling to wait for transport to ferry them 10 miles from the frontier to the camp at Opatovac.

Others arrived on Croatian buses after sleeping rough near the border village of Bapska, huddled under plastic sheets and blankets and warmed a little by food and drinks handed out by aid workers and volunteers.

“There were maybe 500 people there last night, near the border. Kids were getting sick, and old people. They gave us some food there, and we made a fire, but in the end we just walked here,” said Hamou Halebi from Aleppo in Syria, as he hugged a grey blanket to his shoulders and waited to enter Opatovac.

His travelling companion, Hardi Farid from Kirkuk in Iraq, said local people and police had treated them well since they crossed into Croatia.

“They are good here, we will be okay now,” he said, wrapped in a think blue plastic shawl to keep off the rain.

Local and foreign helpers gave the asylum seekers hot soup, tea and coffee in the parking lot outside Opatovac, where an unofficial camp has sprung up – dotted with the tents of refugees, volunteers and aid groups.

Doctors said they had treated almost 200 people overnight, most for blisters and other foot problems caused by walking long distances in the rain in poor, wet footwear.

Under a blanket provided by UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, Zakaria was dressed in long, yellow shorts and a t-shirt, having expected only warm weather when he left Beirut just four days ago.

As colder, wetter weather closes in on the refugees’ route through the Balkans, so their onward path to the west is also narrowing, with Hungary nearing completion of a security fence on its border with Croatia, and unfurling razor wire along its frontier with Slovenia.

It was Hungary’s construction of a 13-foot-high fence along the Serbian border that forced many refugees to re-route through Croatia 10 days ago. Since then, about 55,000 people have entered the country from Serbia, putting the Opatovac facility under strain and sparking a bitter dispute between the ex-Yugoslav states.

With thousands of refugees now heading north towards Croatia, and unknown numbers of others preparing to follow them before winter, much now depends on Hungary’s fiercely anti-immigration prime minister, Viktor Orban.

Scores of refugees have queued to enter Opatovac, where they are registered, given food and basic medical help and put on buses to Croatia’s border with Hungary; there, they change vehicles and continue to Austria – a route that bypasses Hungary’s costly fence on the Serbian border, enraging Orban and his allies.

Hungary’s Orban has denounced the “suicidal liberalism” of such policies, saying that refugees are “overrunning” a “rich but weak” Europe.

“Our borders are in danger, our way of life built on respect for the law. Hungary and the whole of Europe is in danger,” Orban said this week, as Hungary’s parliament gave its army broader powers to stop people entering the country illegally.

Germany is the favored destination for most migrants, because of its strong economy and relatively open policy towards asylum seekers, particularly Syrians.

“I’m very tired – I’ve had three hours of sleep in four days. But I’m glad to be getting closer to Germany,” said Zakaria, an 18-year-old from Homs, Syria, who has been living in Lebanon for several years. Like many asylum seekers, he declined to give his name because he feared reprisals against relatives still in Syria.

Bashar, another 18-year-old from Homs, had bought new, warmer clothes in Athens, after being caught in a heavy storm on the Greek island of Chios, where he landed with dozens of other refugees on a smugglers’ boat from Turkey.

“Sure, we are cold and tired, but it’s alright – the worst is over,” said Bashar, who studied law in Homs before fleeing Syria’s brutal civil war.

“The road is hard and long, so we have to be strong. The worst danger was the sea, on the boat to Greece, and that is over. Now, maybe, we are only a few days from Germany,” he added.

But the path remains fraught as governments quarrel over what policies to put in place.

Having blocked Hungary’s border with Serbia by means of 109-mile fence, Orban’s officials say a barrier along the Croatian frontier will be finished in the next few days. Razor wire also appeared yesterday along part of Hungary’s border with Slovenia – potentially the refugees’ next route if the Croatia-Hungary path is sealed.

“Introducing the border protection to Serbia has met expectations. Our duty is to make it happen on the Hungarian-Croatian border as well,” Orban said after talks in Vienna on Friday with Austria’s chancellor, Werner Faymann.

Hungarian officials have said they may allow refugees to use a “corridor” to cross the country to Austria and Germany – if those two countries and the European Union agreed to “take responsibility” for it – but Orban suggested that Vienna did not support such a plan and backed tighter border controls.

“Austria grudgingly accepted that in order for Hungary to comply with its international legal obligations, it has to control its borders,” he said.

“If we cannot uphold this, that will spell trouble for ourselves, for Austria and Germany; therefore, we must uphold it.”

Orban insisted, however, that he would consult Hungary’s neighbors and the U.N. before closing the Croatian border – which could block many thousands of refugees and prompt them to seek a westward route to Austria through tiny Slovenia, or divert them east from Serbia into Romania.

Croatia’s anger at how Serbia is allowing scores of buses and taxis to ferry thousands of refugees to its border each day has prompted it to ban all Serbian-registered vehicles from its territory.

In turn, Serbia has barred Croatian cargo and trucks and, amid reports of Serbian citizens being prevented from entering Croatia, it accused the Zagreb government of acting like the fascists who ran the country during World War II.

For a EU that is deeply divided over how to handle the refugee crisis, an increasingly hostile spat between Croatia, its newest member state, and candidate country Serbia, could prove a deeply unwelcome distraction for many on the continent.

“I'm holding intensive talks with my colleagues to remove today or tomorrow the measures that we had to introduce,” said Croatia’s prime minister, Zoran Milanović, shortly after the EU announced on Friday that it was seeking “urgent clarification” over the dispute.