Bosnia’s Vucjak camp: Migrants, a garbage dump — and a road to nowhere
Winter is coming to Bihac in the northwest of Bosnia Herzegovina, and hundreds of migrants are still living in unheated tents atop the nearby defunct Vucjak landfill. Many of them have scabies or body lice, or are suffering from hepatitis due to the lack of clean water and adequate medical care.
The situation at the camp is fast taking on crisis proportions: The EU is demanding that the makeshift camp’s residents be relocated, locals are protesting against the migrants, doctors are warning that winter might soon claim lives and local officials are struggling to find an alternative site, as tensions between Bosniaks and Serbs also come into play.
So what are the elements behind this dire state of affairs?
The setup
It takes less than half an hour by car to get from Bihac, a mostly Muslim city of some 45,000 people, to the Croatian border. Thousands of illegal migrants arrived in the city in recent years in a bid to sneak into the EU and continue their journey westward. Local authorities were overwhelmed. Bihac residents reported that migrants were breaking into their houses, harassing people on the street and fighting among themselves.
Bihac’s two main refugee accommodation centers, Bira and Miral, were already bursting at the seams. In June this year, officials imposed a curfew to limit migrants’ movements between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. The local police also started rounding up migrants from the streets and parks and taking them to a new location — Vucjak.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina: Fearing winter at the Vucjak refugee camp
When all you feel is the cold
The end of October brought a foretaste of the cold season to Vucjak refugee camp. Temperatures in Bosnia have already dropped to well below 10 degrees Celsius. Most migrants are not equipped for the cold; they’re reliant on donated clothes and blankets. Some don’t even have a sturdy pair of shoes.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina: Fearing winter at the Vucjak refugee camp
Smoke poisoning, or freezing to death
To warm themselves just a little, the Syrians, Afghans and Pakistanis who are stuck here collect firewood to heat their accommodation. They are forced to choose between constantly freezing in a tent of thin tarpaulin, or risking respiratory problems.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina: Fearing winter at the Vucjak refugee camp
Living on a rubbish tip
Vucjak was created in June out of sheer necessity. There are only around 7,000 – 8,000 migrants in Bosnia-Herzegovina right now, but the majority are stuck in the northwest of the country near the small town of Bihac. All the camps were full to overflowing, so Bihac erected the improvised camp on a former landfill site. It doesn’t meet the standards required by international organizations.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina: Fearing winter at the Vucjak refugee camp
Highly dangerous
Aid organizations are urging the Bosnian authorities to close Vucjak and provide the migrants with better accommodation. “If people spend the winter there, there will be deaths — within a few days or weeks,” warns Peter Van der Auweraert, Western Balkans Coordinator of the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina: Fearing winter at the Vucjak refugee camp
The EU: So near, and yet, so far
Vucjak is only about 8 kilometers from the border with Croatia. Many refugees try to cross into the EU illegally through the unfenced border areas. Many don’t succeed; they end up coming back to the camp, like these three men from Syria. They’re better off sticking to the road — this area is full of uncleared landmines left over from the Yugoslavian wars of the 1990s.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina: Fearing winter at the Vucjak refugee camp
Cold shower
Cold water from a canister is all there is in Vucjak. The hygiene situation is disastrous. Diseases, like scabies, are spreading. What medical care there is, is rudimentary. People are only taken to hospital if they have a really serious disease or injury.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina: Fearing winter at the Vucjak refugee camp
Connection with the outside world
Both water and electricity are in short supply. Anyone who still has a cellphone, though, is lucky. Many refugees say their phones were destroyed or stolen by Croatian policemen at the border. Croatia denies the accusation. A cellphone is a migrant’s most important possession — with it, they are able to stay in contact with their families and friends, and organize their escape route.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina: Fearing winter at the Vucjak refugee camp
A little piece of home
These men are trying to make the best of the little they receive in Vucjak. They’re baking flatbreads, the kind they eat at home. The Red Cross supplies food, but it’s often only enough for two meager meals a day. In the summer, the head of the Red Cross, Selam Midzic, accused the central government in Sarajevo of abandoning the region and leaving it to deal with the migrants on its own.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina: Fearing winter at the Vucjak refugee camp
Sticking together — and longing to get away
A fire alone is not enough to keep body and soul warm. These people want to get out of Vucjak as soon as possible. “I saw buildings for animals in Slovenia and Croatia that were better than this camp,” says a man from Afghanistan. “This isn’t a camp. This is no place for humans.”
The landfill
Authorities placed around 700 migrants, all of them male, in the improvised camp of Vucjak. The camp is raised on top of old landfill located some 10 kilometers (6 miles) away from Bihac.
City officials poured a layer of dirt and gravel over the site before transporting migrants to Vucjak. However, the camp had no solid buildings or pre-existing infrastructure to provide electricity, heating, clean water or sanitation. Activists warned that trash bellow the camp could still emit harmful gases.
Reporter Semir Mustafic from the regional N1 television has shared a video taken on the site.
Local doctors inspected the site soon after the camp was opened and slammed it as unacceptable. Speaking to DW’s Bosnian department, provisional director of the local state clinic Jasminka Ljubijakic called the situation a “humanitarian disaster.”
“Living conditions in Vucjak are inadequate and we cannot take responsibility for the health of people accommodated there,” she said in June. “We cannot work in such conditions.”
Vucjak residents rely on canisters for water
The border
Migrants living in Vucjak also have to contend with unexploded mines near the site that were buried there during the 1990s Bosnian war. There are also vast minefields in the nearby mountains that separate Bosnia Herzegovina from Croatia. People who attempt to sneak across the border are risking their lives.
Some camp residents pay thousands of euros for safe passage into Croatia; other look for guides and maps. But crossing the border is only one part of “the game,” as the migrants have dubbed their attempts to continue their journey.
Under EU law, migrants are allowed to ask for asylum once they reach EU soil. However, migrants at Vucjak say that Croatian police are simply refusing to accept their asylum requests. According to the asylum-seekers, the police officers regularly beat and rob the migrants and then send them back into Bosnia. International activists, including Amnesty International and the Border Violence Monitoring Network, corroborate these accounts. Many Vucjak residents have reported crossing the border several times only to be caught, beaten and pushed back.
Croatian officials have repeatedly denied mistreating refugees. In an interview with Swiss television SRF in June, however, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic said that “when you are pushing people back, there is a little bit of force.”
The deadlock
The EU is refusing to fund the Vucjak camp and demanding its immediate closure. The bloc has already provided around €10 million ($11,1 million) for new, more appropriate accommodation. However, local communities are resisting efforts to build a migrant camp on their territory.
Authorities in Bosnia’s Una-Sana Canton, where Bihac is located, recently suggested a site near the small village of Lipa, some 20 kilometers from the city. The village is populated mostly by Serbs, who, with Croats and Bosniaks, make one out of three constitutional nations in Bosnia Herzegovina. The suggestion triggered protest among Serb politicians. Serb representatives filed a lawsuit against the Bihac mayor, claiming that the officials were trying house migrants at Lipa in order to prevent Serb refugees from returning to homes they had abanodoned during the 1990s war.
Meanwhile, leases for the other two migrant centers in Bihac, Bira and Miral expired on November 15. Authorities have not yet began to move over 2,300 migrants living at those locations and it was not immediately clear what will happen to them.
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‘Inhumane conditions’ at Bosnian refugee camp in Vucjak
Forced removals
It’s estimated that 8,000 refugees live in Bihac. The camps are overcrowded and every day there is talk of burglaries. There was a stabbing in front of the kindergarten. Next to Camp Bira, there were about 500 people not registered with the International Organization for Migration (IOM). In mid-June police picked them up and drove them to a site called Vucjak.
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‘Inhumane conditions’ at Bosnian refugee camp in Vucjak
800 people living on garbage
Within a few days, police continued to bring more refugees to Vucjak — a site that was the city’s garbage dump for decades. It was covered with soil and then flattened. Local residents say it is omitting methane gas. Apart from the putrid stench, there are only three tents and some drinking water tanks. No toilets, no showers, no electricity, no paramedics.
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‘Inhumane conditions’ at Bosnian refugee camp in Vucjak
Red Cross hopes for relief workers
Local Red Cross workers from Bihac say that neither the government in Sarajevo nor the IOM are giving them any funds to look after the refugees or buy medical supplies. The IOM staff stopped by briefly but did nothing. They then made a plea to the people of Bihac to donate food.
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‘Inhumane conditions’ at Bosnian refugee camp in Vucjak
Eating in filth
Those at the camp receive paltry soup and bread twice a day from the Red Cross. There is no electricity, no toilets, no showers, and no way to wash clothing. Almost everyone has skin rashes, open or purulent wounds, and their legs and feet are bloodied. There are no doctors. Red Cross medics say they have inadequate supplies to provide relief.
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‘Inhumane conditions’ at Bosnian refugee camp in Vucjak
Medical emergency
Abdul Rahim Bilal screamed in pain as he was unloaded from a police van. Shortly afterward he became unresponsive and lay in the dirt with his hands on his appendix. The bus drove off. After desperate calls for help, another policeman called an ambulance which took half an hour to arrive. According to the hospital, he was released three days later.
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‘Inhumane conditions’ at Bosnian refugee camp in Vucjak
Stories of war
Most in the camp are young men from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria; some are also from India, Egypt and Gaza. The refugees in Vucjak have been making their way to Europe for at least 10 weeks, some even up to three years. They speak of the war in Syria, terrorist attacks and police violence in Pakistan and air raids in Gaza.
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‘Inhumane conditions’ at Bosnian refugee camp in Vucjak
No strength left
Jouma Al Hamid was in an Assad prison in Syria. He comes from the Idlib area. He’s been on the road for three years and spent one year in Camp Moria on Lesbos. “I can’t take it anymore,” says the 26-year-old. “I just want to live in a house, that’s all. I’m frightened, by the police, by criminal gang lords here.” People smugglers charge €3,000 ($3,400) but he does not have it.
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‘Inhumane conditions’ at Bosnian refugee camp in Vucjak
Without rights
Hassan Ali was forcibly removed from Camp Bira to Vucjak by police despite being registered as a migrant at IOM and having a place in the camp. They gave him no explanation: “The police arrested me in town. When I showed my IOM card and said I was in Bira, they said if I say that again they will beat me. Then they brought me here. I don’t know why.”
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‘Inhumane conditions’ at Bosnian refugee camp in Vucjak
Being a child at the garbage dump
The youngest refugee at former-garbage dump campsite is 12 years old. He actually should be at Camp Bira, or in one of the hotels where women and children are accommodated but the police picked him up and brought him to Vucjak. His only possessions are the clothes he is wearing.
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‘Inhumane conditions’ at Bosnian refugee camp in Vucjak
‘This is not camp’
The people here are crying out to be heard. With a paper and a marker, a woman from a French human rights organization helped them write a legible sign, in a desperate attempt to get help.
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‘Inhumane conditions’ at Bosnian refugee camp in Vucjak
The EU knows everything
The European Union can’t deny that they know what the situation is like here. Two EUFOR soldiers were in Vucjak and witnessed everything. They will have reported to their headquarters. This situation is strongly reminiscent of the war in Bosnia. Bihac was a “UN protection zone,” but only on paper. UN observers were here and they didn’t do anything. Just like EUFOR.
The danger
This week, the federal goverment of Bosnia decided to use two old military garrisons, one near the capital, Sarajevo, and the other near the eastern city of Tuzla, as accommodation for the migrants currently located in the country’s northwest. The buildings have yet to be prepared for housing migrants.
The Vucjak migrant camp is set to remain open until alternative arrangements can be made. An EU delegation is expected on the site on Monday.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that residents of Vucjak camp were still walking around in “flip-flops, without socks or jackets, a lot of them suffering from respiratory infections and from skin diseases caused by the horrific living conditions.”
“Unless the authorities provide safe, appropriate, winterized accommodation and adequate services to these people, we fear that it’s only a matter of time before we see people dying” said MSF representative Nihal Osman.
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Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/bosnia-s-vucjak-camp-migrants-a-garbage-dump-and-a-road-to-nowhere/a-51279684?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf