Hungary fires tear gas, water cannon to stop migrants

BELGRADE, Serbia Hungarian police on Wednesday fired tear gas and water cannon to push back hundreds of immigrants trying to enter the country as a wave of other asylum seekers sought new routes to take them deep inside the European Union.

The immigrants, stuck in a no man’s land between Hungary and Serbia after Budapest slammed its doors to asylum seekers, hurled bottles and rocks at police in riot gear as helicopters flew overhead.

They became frustrated after waiting for passage to the Hungarian village of Roszke since Monday night and tried to break through the border.

Croatia, Slovenia and Austria, meanwhile, began scrambling to deal with the thousands of migrants they anticipated after Hungary sealed its border Tuesday. The move rerouted the Balkan migration route for people fleeing countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq from Hungarian soil to its three EU partners.

Croatia said it will allow unfettered passage through the country and build shelters for the travelers and even hinted that it might establish corridors with its western neighbor Slovenia.

“We will above all have (the) interests and security of Croatia on our minds, but we will not forget that we’re humans, Christians before all,” Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said in parliament.

As migrants began arriving in Croatia on Wednesday, he said authorities were ready to transport some across the country.

“It doesn’t matter which color or faith they are,” he said. “Those people are here. They are women, children and men who want to live and create, but they don’t want to be in Croatia.”

Until it sealed its border, Hungary was the main gateway for more than 100,000 migrants. Many are trying to reach Germany, France and Sweden.

There was no immediate information on injuries in the violence at Roszke.

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International described the conditions in which about 1,000 people are stranded there at the Hungarian barricade as “abysmal and rapidly deteriorating.”

The immigrants are sleeping in the open on a closed highway with limited access to food, running water and toilets, it said.

“Guarding borders with violent means is not compatible with European values and principles,” EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos warned during a debate in the European Parliament in Brussels.

Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic hinted that Croatia and Slovenia might open a corridor for the migrants rerouted from Hungary. As the vast majority seek to reach Germany, the path would have to lead to Austria.

“I talked (on the phone) with the Slovenian interior minister,” Ostojic said, according to a tweet from the Croatian government. “If necessary, we will organize corridors.”

He said Croatia expects 3,000 people stranded at Serbia’s border with Hungary and another 1,000 from Presevo in southern Serbia to arrive. The country “can handle the first wave ... and accommodate 1,500 a day without putting up tented camps,” he said.

The figure is set to be higher, however, as migrants continue pressing from the south. Macedonian police said Wednesday that 2,107 new arrivals were registered in the previous 24 hours.

Conservative opposition Croatian Democratic Union leader Tomislav Karamarko criticized Milanovic’s government for what he said was a slow response to the crisis.

“We have been warning ... plans should have been completed,” he told state HRT television. “At the moment when Hungarians started building the fence (in June), it was clear that it was a detour to Croatia.”

Hungary on Tuesday began enforcing severe anti-migrant measures, slowing the number of registered illegal arrivals from almost 18,800 in three days to 366 on Tuesday.

In Roszke, workers began hauling away trash and dismantling a now nearly empty tent camp that sheltered thousands in recent weeks.

Croatian police were collecting the migrants in the border area of Tovarnik, then transporting them to police precincts with the capacity to register them.

All those who decide to apply for asylum in Croatia will be accommodated in Jezevo on the outskirts of Zagreb, said Zdravko Kelic, the head of the Vukovar country rescue service.

Landmines infest parts of Croatia’s border with Serbia and Bosnia since the wars of the 1990s. It was not immediately clear whether the refugees are in danger, but minefields are marked on maps available online, and migrants have already asked about them.

“They already called and were directed to the map that they can download to their smartphones,” an official at the Croatian Mine Action center said by telephone.

The change of the migration flow in Serbia prompted Austria to impose controls on the border with Slovenia, Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said.

Controls on the border with Hungary will remain in place despite the dwindling number of arrivals from that direction, she said.

Germany, Slovakia and the Netherlands have also enacted new border checks.

(c)2015 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany)

Visit Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) at www.dpa.de/English.82.0.html

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.