After Hungary closed its southern frontier, the Balkans struggled with a growing backlog of refugees on Monday as thousands of people waited on cold, wet borders.
The Balkans struggled with a growing backlog of refugees on Monday as thousands of people waited on cold, wet borders after Hungary closed its southern frontier and diverted them to Slovenia.
Slovenia imposed a daily limit of 2,500, forcing fellow European Union-member Croatia to also ration entry from Serbia, which the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said was hosting more than 10,000 refugees on Monday, with more on the way. "It's like a big river of people, and if you stop the flow, you will have floods somewhere. That's what's happening now," UNHCR spokesman Melita Sunjic said from the Serbia-Croatia border, where about 2,000 people were stranded in desperate and deteriorating conditions.
Groups of refugees fought with each other in the morning, aid workers said, after a night spent under open skies lashed by autumn wind and rain. "Open the gate, open the gate!" they chanted, their passage barred by lines of Croatian police who on Monday erected an improvised fence to control access.
Slovenia found itself dragged into the path of the greatest migration of people in Europe since World War Two after Hungary sealed its border with Croatia to refugees on Friday. A country of two million people bordering Hungary, Italy, Austria and Croatia, Slovenia said it would only allow in as many as it could register, accommodate and send on to Austria. It said Austria had limited its own intake, something Vienna denied. Most refugees want to reach Germany, which for the moment is letting them enter.
What initially looked like a smooth and well-coordinated response by fellow ex-Yugoslav republics Slovenia and Croatia quickly broke down into the kind of discord and disarray that has characterised Europe's response to the hundreds of thousands reaching its shores by boat across the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, many of them Syrians fleeing war.
Communication breakdown
Hungary's right-wing government says the mainly Muslim refugees pose a threat to Europe's prosperity, security and "Christian values", and has sealed its borders with Serbia and Croatia with a steel fence and new laws that rights groups say deny refugees their right to seek protection.
The European Union has agreed a plan, resisted by Hungary and several other ex-Communist members of the bloc, to share out 120,000 refugees among its members, a small proportion of the 700,000 refugees the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) projects will reach Europe's borders from the Middle East, Africa and Asia in 2015. It is also courting Turkey with the promise of money, easier EU travel for Turks and "re-energised" accession talks if Ankara tries to stem the flow of refugees across its territory.
In Croatia, about 1,800 people were halted on a train short of the Slovenian border, where Slovenian police barred access with an improvised fence. They disembarked and walked along the tracks, wrapped in raincoats or plastic sheeting against the rain. Around 150, mainly families with children, were allowed to cross the frontier, the rest spent the night in the open, warming themselves around open fires. Slovenia accused Croatia of sending more, unannounced, on Monday morning.
"Yesterday the Croatian side stopped answering our phone calls so we do not know how many refugees to expect, which is making our work very difficult," Slovenian Interior Minister Vesna Gyorkos Znidar told a news conference on Monday. Her Croatian counterpart, Ranko Ostojic, told reporters in Croatia: "Slovenia first said it could receive up to 8,000 refugees (daily), then 5,000, then 2,500 and now it has been reduced to zero. It would mean that the whole burden is being left to Croatia."
Upwards of 5,000 people are flowing daily across Balkan borders further south, from Greece into Macedonia and Serbia, both former Yugoslav republics with barely the money or resources to cope. "Overnight everything here collapsed, people were fighting with clubs, arguing; there are no shelters," said Jan Pinos, the head of a group of Czech aid volunteers on the Serbian-Croatian border. "The Serbian authorities have failed to secure and take care of this place," he said.
Watch: Europe's refugee crisis and Syria situation explained
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