SARAJEVO – The living conditions of hundreds of homeless migrants in Bosnia, bordering the European Union, are “completely unacceptable”, said EU envoy Johann Sattler yesterday.
The migrants have been left homeless in freezing and rainy conditions since their camp near the northwestern town of Bihac burned down last month.
“The situation is completely unacceptable,” said Sattler, the EU’s special representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“The lives and basic human rights of many hundreds of people are seriously jeopardised,” he said after a meeting with Bosnian Security Minister Selmo Cikotic.
Fire engulfed the Lipa migrant centre in the country’s northwest on December 23 last year. There were no casualties from the blaze, but much of the site’s infrastructure was destroyed.
The incident deepened the crisis over where to house thousands of migrants, as Bosnian authorities failed to find new accommodation for the newly homeless.
Police believe the blaze was started deliberately by migrants living there to protest the withdrawal of the United Nations International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which had been running the camp.
IOM had left complaining that the accommodation was not fit to house people during the winter months.
Opened in April, the Lipa camp had never been hooked up with electricity or running water.
Sattler met Cikotic along with the German, Italian and Austrian ambassadors, according to a statement released by the EU delegation here.
The aim of the meeting was “to discuss urgent solutions to the extremely concerning migration situation”.
Bosnia lies on the so-called Balkans route used since 2018 by tens of thousands of migrants heading towards Western Europe as they flee war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
The country currently hosts some 8,500 migrants.
The European Commission, which finances the running of several migrant camps in Bosnia, has called for another centre in Bihac to be reopened, but local and regional officials oppose the idea.
That migrant centre, in an abandoned factory, was closed in October under pressure from locals.
In the hugely decentralised country, the government has also suggested that the centre, which could house 2,000 people, be reopened. However, it is not in a position to order local authorities to do so.
The UN’s human rights office earlier warned against the “unacceptable suffering” of the migrants from the Lipa camp, calling for an urgent solution to the issue.
In a bid to ease the migrant crisis, the government has deployed the army to set up tents at the site of the burned-down camp, but the migrants appear unwilling to use them, as they are unheated and without water.
In a sign of the growing protest, the migrants refused meals distributed on Friday and yesterday by the Red Cross and a local charity, a Red Cross official told FTV public television. – AFP, January 3, 2021
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