Serbia to launch new police, army teams to beef up border security against refugees
Belgrade says it plans to form joint police and army patrols to protect its borders and step up security there against refugees, warning that it would not allow Serbia to become a “parking lot” for EU-bound migrants.
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic made the remarks on Saturday, urging the European Union to find a “global solution” to the massive tide of refugees, which rose last year and triggered Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II.
He also warned that Serbia would not be a “parking lot for Afghans and Pakistanis arrived in Serbia from EU countries, whom no one wants.”
Vucic told reporters that those refugees who cross Serbian borders without providing documents and not seeking asylum would be evicted within a month.
Serbia is located on the so-called Balkan rout, through which hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, have marched towards Western Europe, particularly Germany, since last summer.
Vucic’s comments come as the number of refugees trapped in Serbia has been constantly growing since Hungary, its neighbor to the north, introduced strict new measures last month in a bid to bar refugees to step on its soil.
On July 13, Human Rights Watch condemned Hungary for its “cruel and violent treatment” of refugees before forcing them to return to Serbia.
“Migrants at Hungary's border are being summarily forced back to Serbia, in some cases with cruel and violent treatment, without consideration of their claims for protection,” the HRW said in a statement.
According to Serbia’s official figures, the country can only accommodate 6,000 to 7,000 refugees, much less than the number of refugees currently stranded there.
Europe is facing an unprecedented influx of refugees, most of whom are fleeing conflict zones in North Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria. Last year alone, well over a million refugees made their way into Europe.
Germany, as the ideal destination for refugees, registered some 1.1 million refugees between January and December 2015 and expects another 2.5 million to arrive by the end of 2020.
Many blame major European powers for the exodus, saying their policies have led to a surge in terrorism and war in the violence-wracked regions, including Syria and Iraq. The refugee crisis in Europe and a series of terrorist attacks related to the Daesh Takfiri group across the globe have also led to the rise of Islamophobia among racists and xenophobes in the West.
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