Balkans struggles to contain migrants

The Balkans struggled with a growing backlog of migrants 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 said was hosting more than 10,000 migrants 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 migrants 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 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 Medit-erranean and Aegean seas, many of them Syrians fleeing war.

Hungary’s right-wing government says the mainly Muslim migrants 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 EU has agreed a plan, resisted by Hungary and several other ex-Communist members of the bloc, to share out 120,000 refugees. 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 migrants across its territory.