Police controlling border and refugee transit, says Interior Minister Ostojic

Speaking to the press at the Opatovac reception centre in easternmost Croatia, he said a train with 1,800 migrants left Tovarnik on the Croatian-Serbian border at 10.30 am today for Cakovec and Mursko Sredisce, where it was expected after eight to ten hours. Six hundred migrants will descend at Cakovec, half of whom will be transferred by bus to Macelj on the Slovenian border and the rest to Mursko Sredisce, also on the Slovenian border.

 

Ostojic said 188,700 migrants had entered Croatia since September 16, when they first started arriving from Serbia. "The Croatian police are controlling the Croatian border... Everything is under complete control and organised," he said, adding that the Hungarian border was closed only for "the reception of migrants coming from the emptied camps in Greece and Turkey."

 

He said "it would be much better to hold these press conferences in Greece, which is in the Schengen Area, where every migrant showed a document which proves that he became an asylum seeker or that he is in a refugee camp. Relocation has been agreed with the European Union and, at the time of its implementation, Croatia will take on its part of the burden - 1,640 people, as agreed."

 

Ostojic said everything that had happened and was happening was purely a humanitarian problem, the relocation of people and the emptying of camps without any agreement.

 

"Regarding the Croatian government's Plan C, it's not the Slovenian government's plan C, because there was neither Plan A nor Plan B there, but it was agreed on the operational level that Slovenia could take in migrants at such and such points, which Croatia will honour," he said, dismissing any combinations involving the opening of humanitarian corridors, which he said the EU should have decided about. "The situation is the same as 31 days ago," he said, adding that the situation on the Greek-Turkish border had still not been solved.

 

Asked to comment on President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic's statement that all refugees should be rerouted towards Croatia's official border crossings with Serbia such as Tovarnik and Bajakovo, Ostojic said "she can easily agree that with her friends in Serbia." "She is free to agree the rerouting... and we'll have no problems," he said, adding that this would make Croatia's job easier.

 

Asked by a Slovenian reporter if it was odd that Hungary sealed off its border with Croatia after Grabar-Kitarovic recently visited Hungary, Ostojic said "a much bigger issue are the armed forces, the guns, the combat vehicles on the border, which can't be considered a friendly act, so we continue to maintain that if anyone is undermining relations, it's certainly Hungary, while Croatia, even in such a situation, isn't making such moves."

 

Asked by Serbian reporters about the possibility of Croatia stopping the flow of refugees from Serbia, Ostojic said that "as long as the transit corridor works, we can take in refugees." He said the best cooperation with Serbia would be if it directed the migrants towards Horgos on the Hungarian border, so that they could cross Hungary en route to western Europe, because ,"in the end, someone is responsible for the additional torture of these people, since they must enter Croatia and then cross into Europe."

 

He reiterated that Hungary, like Croatia and Slovenia, was not the migrants' goal and that all the migrants who had entered Hungary had also left it. "Croatia will not become a collection centre or let someone make us the ones who should suffer because Schengen is not being honoured in Greece. We will absolutely defend Croatia's national interests."

(Text & photo: HINA)