Croatia smooths path through border for migrants

Though weary and far from homes they may never see again, there was relief among people walking towards the remote Croatian village of Bapska yesterday.

They had crossed many borders on a voyage which, for most, started in Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, and they knew well the perils that could lurk in those thin lines on the map that divide one country from another.

About 3,000 people have died crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe this year, including some 250 on rickety boats lurching from Turkey to Greece, at the start of a "Balkan route" that now runs through Bapska.

At other borders on their trek through Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary, migrants have been beaten and robbed by criminals, fleeced by corrupt police, confronted by razor wire and tear gas-wielding anti-riot forces, and crammed by traffickers into a truck from which they would be carried dead two days later.

They know all this, the thousands of people still coming every day through the Balkans, and so they feel grateful for the small mercies they found on the road from the Serbian border to Bapska: dry weather, some food and water, and the professionalism and decency of Croatian police who led them to buses bound for a nearby transit camp.

Different welcome

After registering at the Opatovac camp, they board buses and trains to Hungary, where a very different welcome awaits: gun-toting soldiers and army Humvees deployed by Hungary’s prime minister,

Viktor Orban

, to keep a close guard on people whom he calls a threat to Europe’s security, values and identity.

By taking the chaos and panic out of the border crossing – by not making people run from police, sneak under a security fence or collude with smugglers – Croatia and other states are helping families stay together on their voyage.

Relatives do still get separated, however, as happened dozens of times at the Serbia-Croatia frontier after Hungary sealed its border with Serbia on September 14th. As a result, more than 80,000 people have diverted through eastern Croatia, and it took this rural region time to adapt to the influx.

At Opatovac – and many other key transit points on the Balkan route – the Red Cross helps to reunite families using a combination of tried-and-tested techniques and a new online search system for migrants, called "Trace the Face".

"We've had about 90 cases so far, most of them soon after people started coming this way," said Vesna Krivosic, head of the tracing service for the Croatian Red Cross, recalling chaotic scenes at nearby Tovarnik train station two weeks ago.

Red Cross staff meet buses arriving at Opatovac to offer immediate help to people who have lost relatives. A man with a megaphone walks around the 5,000-capacity camp, calling out the names of those being sought by their families.

Inside one of several Red Cross tents in the camp, workers help migrants to search an online database of people who are looking for their relatives, and to enter their own details and a photograph so that other family members can find them.

"Even if they have to move on from here without having found each other, the online system helps them reunite further along their journey, in Hungary or Austria or wherever else they go," Ms Krivosic said. "Most people we manage to reunite here at the camp, and the others will hopefully find each other later. A few unaccompanied children have also arrived here, and they are being looked after locally by the social services."

Smooth transfer

By managing the smooth transfer of people from the Serbian border, through Opatovac and onward, Croatia is also minimising another, albeit small, risk associated with thousands of people passing through the area on foot: landmines.

Twenty years ago, Croatia and Serbia were coming to the end of a four-year war that saw many minefields laid and left large areas littered with unexploded ordnance.

Croatia’s mine action centre (Cromac) believes that more than 50,000 mines are still present across almost 500 square kilometres of the country’s territory, but a demining programme this summer fortuitously cleared much of the remaining danger from the migrants’ current path.

“Until we finish with the procedure and issue a final clearance certificate that the land is cleared and safe . . . there is still potential danger, but very low,” said Cromac’s assistant director, Miljenko Vahtaric.

Additional warning signs have also been placed near the Serbia-Croatia border, and leaflets in English and Arabic are being handed out to passing migrants.

For now, thousands of people are moving relatively smoothly each day through Croatia to Hungary and then on to Austria and Germany – the favoured destination for most migrants.

But if Orban carries out a threat to close a fence along the Hungary-Croatia frontier, then the Balkan route will shift again, leading new arrivals to new borders and new dangers.