Tents without solid floors, lack of electricity and water supply, no heating options in the onset of winter: These were the living conditions for the residents of the migrant camp Vucjak in northwestern Bosnia.
EU officials insisted on the immediate closure of the misery camp. Now the authorities have apparently yielded to international pressure. They began evacuating and disbanding the improvised camp. At noon, first buses drove to the camp ten kilometers outside the northwestern Bosnian city of Bihac, reported the news portal "avaz.ba".
The approximately 600 residents of the camp are to be brought in the next three days in a former barracks near Sarajevo. Journalists and camera crews did not let the police go to the camp on Tuesday.
Camp Vucjak had established the community of Bihac last June on the site of a former landfill site. It wanted to cope with the increased influx of migrants and refugees who were stuck in the border region to the EU country Croatia and found no place in the regular camps of the UN organizations.
With the onset of winter, snowfall and nocturnal temperatures deep in the minus area, the situation in Vucjak became completely unsustainable. Many residents did not just wait there for lack of alternatives, but because they wanted to stay close to the border with Croatia. Refugees and migrants try again and again to make their way across the "green" border into the EU neighboring country.
Since the extensive closure of the Balkan route, which leads from Greece via Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary to Central Europe, an alternative route via Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia has become established.
