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Chaos at border as Croatia says it can’t cope
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AMID chaotic scenes at its border with Serbia yesterday, Croatia said it could not cope with a flood of migrants seeking a new route into the EU after Hungary kept them out by erecting a fence and using tear gas and water cannon against them.
The European Union’s newest member state said it may try to stop taking in migrants, just as the 28-nation bloc announced an emergency summit next week to try to resolve the crisis.
More than 7,300 people entered Croatia from Serbia in the 24 hours after Wednesday’s clashes between Hungarian riot police and stone-throwing refugees at its Balkan neighbor’s frontier.
At the eastern border town of Tovarnik, Croatian riot police struggled to keep crowds of men, women and children back from rail tracks after long queues formed in baking heat for buses bound for reception centers elsewhere in Croatia.
Police were also deployed in a suburb of the capital Zagreb, taking up positions around a hotel housing hundreds of migrants, some of them on balconies shouting “Freedom! Freedom!”
“Croatia will not be able to receive more people,” said Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic.
The flood of migrants into Croatia has accelerated since Hungary sealed its southern, external EU frontier with Serbia on Tuesday, to keep out the asylum seekers and refugees, many of whom hope eventually to reach Germany.
The EU is split over how to cope with the influx of people mostly fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Next Wednesday’s meeting, called by European Council President Donald Tusk, will discuss migration and a proposed scheme to distribute 120,000 asylum seekers across the bloc.
On Monday, the bloc’s interior ministers failed to agree on a mandatory quota system designed to spread the burden of this year’s huge influx of migrants and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for an emergency summit.
Dimitris Avromopoulos, the EU commissioner for migration, rebuked Hungary over its actions, telling a joint news conference with Hungary’s foreign and interior ministers that most of those arriving in Europe were Syrians “in need of our help.”
“There is no wall you would not climb, no sea you would not cross if you are fleeing violence and terror,” he said, describing barriers of the kind Hungary has erected as temporary solutions that only diverted migrants, increasing tensions.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto hit back, saying that siding with rioting migrants, who pelted Hungarian police with rocks on Wednesday in clashes that injured 20 police, was encouraging violence.
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