Hundreds of migrants stranded in an abandoned camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina spent New Year’s Eve in icy temperatures, according to humanitarian groups, as authorities in the country struggled to balance their security with growing hostility from local people.
About 700 people slept in abandoned shipping containers on Wednesday and in the open in and around the former camp Lipa, in northwestern Bosnia. The humanitarian organizations said they remained in poor condition, without electricity, water, winter clothing and tents.
The Lipa camp was abandoned last week after aid workers considered it unsafe. When the migrants left, a fire destroyed most of the remaining tents.
The migrants, mostly from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, were to be relocated to an old military site in the nearby city of Bihac this week, but the mayor of Bihac refused to accommodate them. The buses transporting the migrants to Bihac had some people hiding in the vehicles on Tuesday night, but Lipa left empty the next day.
The migrants’ uncertain fate was the latest example of Bosnia’s struggle to provide basic assistance to those seeking to reach the European Union. Migrants had an increasing hostility from residents on the Bosnian side of the border, and abuse by the Croatian police on the other side.
The Bosnian government on Thursday agreed to relocate the migrants from Lipa to Bihac, 15 kilometers north, very quickly, but did not provide an exact date.
“We stress that this is an urgent and temporary care for migrants during the winter months, until the Lipa reception center is built and equipped for a longer stay,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement, adding that the Lipa camp would be rebuilt. with water and electricity service, and be ready to house migrants permanently by April.
The ministry has asked local authorities to facilitate the transfer and meanwhile help accommodate migrants in the camp in Bihac. “Obstructing and rejecting the proposed solutions for the housing of migrants now in public can only aggravate the humanitarian situation, cause extra suffering and even cause human casualties.”
But Peter Van der Auweraert, head of mission in Bosnia for the International Organization for Migration, said he was not optimistic that the decision would be implemented soon due to local opposition.
“Dozens of people are protesting along with the mayors of two towns who say they do not want to accommodate migrants, and as a result the state, whose mandate is to relocate the migrants, is under pressure and decided not to relocate,” he said. . Said Van der Auweraert.
“But the migrants and refugees are in dire need of life-saving humanitarian aid,” he added.
As countries such as Turkey, Greece and Hungary have made it more difficult for migrants and refugees to reach the richer countries of the European Union, Bosnia has become a central transit point for those making their journey to the mainland in recent years. The Balkan nation is not part of the European Union, but it shares more than two-thirds of its borders with Croatia, a member state.
While 750 migrants were admitted by Bosnia in 2017, there were more than 29,000 in 2019. According to Mr. Van der Auweraert reduced the number to 17,000 in 2020, saying that the failure to accommodate them, despite the smaller number, exacerbated the crisis.
Since Bosnia became a transit route in early 2018, thousands of migrants, mostly men, have remained in Bihac and other nearby towns surrounded by icy hills and mountains, the European Union just a few kilometers away.
Human rights organizations and local residents in the remote areas have reported several cases of abuse by the Croatian police. Dozens of migrants, residents, doctors and aid workers interviewed by The New York Times this year said migrants were being deported without due process.
More and more anti-immigrant attitudes in places like Bihac have also solidified. “I do not want them here, nor here,” Bihac Mayor Suhret Fazlic told The New York Times in 2018.
Residents of his small town, near the border with Croatia, gathered in front of the barracks of the old military site on Wednesday and promised to block the access of any migrants.
“We have been bearing the brunt of the migrant crisis for three years and offer our accommodation to migrants,” he said. Fazlic told local news agencies, adding that he would refuse to carry out the order to relocate them.
The camp in Lipa was set up in April as a temporary response to the Covid-19 pandemic. But Mr. Van der Auweraert, at the International Organization for Migration, said that his organization, as well as the Red Cross, Médecins du Monde and the Danish Refugee Council, had made it clear to Bosnian authorities that the camp, mostly from tents, was not a viable long-term solution.
The organization said in a statement this week that the camp has never been ‘overwintered’, a process that usually involves adding thermal floor mats and insulation to shelters, and spreading blankets, stoves and fuel.
Up to 1,600 people lived in the camp, without electricity or water, on slopes exposed to strong winds, and organizations running the facility dismantled it last week after being deemed unsafe. A prayer tent collapsed earlier this month, and Mr. Van der Auweraert said residents were in danger by staying in the camp.
“It was safer for them to go somewhere in abandoned buildings in the area, than to stay in large tents where the risks of collapse and fire increased,” he added.
Nearly a thousand of the migrants are on their way to the vicinity of Bihac, where they have stayed in temporary camps and abandoned buildings, but hundreds have stayed around Lipa. Their hope is to relocate to an old military site in Bihac, a former housing facility for migrants, which the local authorities closed this autumn.
Earlier plans to move the migrants to another city were also abandoned after the mayor and local politicians there refused to cooperate.
On Thursday, footage shared by local news agencies on social media showed men trying to warm themselves around a fire, among the remains of a tent in Lipa. Some can be seen walking on the frozen ground with sandals and without socks.
Mr. Van der Auweraert said aid programs for the stranded migrants in Lipa on Thursday would provide winter sleeping bags, warm clothes and food, while the Bosnian civil protection agency would distribute tents.
But leaving the migrants in tents in icy conditions was not sustainable, he said.
“If you do not open the camp in Bihac, you will keep people out of control in abandoned buildings,” he said. Van der Auweraert said. “I do not see how it is better for the safety of the residents there, rather than having a centralized camp that provides the most basic services to those who need it.”