Tag Archives: Serbia

Migrants stranded in Serbia march toward Croatian border

Refugees and migrants cross the Old Sava Bridge heading in the direction of the Croatian border, in Belgrade, Serbia

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Some 150 migrants, trapped in Serbia, set out on Friday to walk about 125 km (80 miles) to the Croatian border, demanding free and secure passage toward Western Europe, police said.

Police are following the group along the highway connecting Belgrade and the border.

“We started marching toward the border with Croatia. The camps are full, we sleep in parks, we cannot stand it any more,” said a migrant from Pakistan who gave his name as Habib.

According to the U.N. refugee agency, around 6,400 migrants from countries such as Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan are currently registered in Serbia, while local non-governmental organizations say their number is close to 10,000. They mostly arrive from Bulgaria and Macedonia.

Last month another group tried a similar protest march toward the Hungarian border, but eventually decided to return to Belgrade. Hungary has practically sealed its borders to migrants.

Last year a total of 579,518 migrants and asylum seekers were registered arriving in Serbia, out of more than a million who made it to Europe by land and sea.

A deal between Turkey and the European Union, struck in March, has largely shut off the flow of people reaching Greece and the Balkans, but Austria kicked off consultations with Balkan states this month to see what measures can be taken if the deal collapses.

(Reporting by Marko Djurica, writing by Igor Ilic in Zagreb; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Serbia must improve disabled children’s care to join EU

Serbia must improve disabled children's care to join EU

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia shuts disabled children away in institutions with substandard care and the European Union must make better treatment for them a prerequisite for joining its ranks, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

A report by the rights watchdog said Serbia, which has begun negotiations to join the EU, has ratified United Nations conventions on the rights of children and of people with disabilities as well as against all forms of torture.

But its investigators found that parents of children born with disabilities were pressured to put them into state-run institutions where they were mostly neglected, got little schooling and were cut off from their families.

Serbia should aim to return children to their families if possible and support their inclusion in family and community life, where research has shown their mental and emotional development progresses much better, the report said.

“The European Commission, as part of monitoring compliance with the EU accession requirements, should hold Serbia to its obligations to respect the human rights of persons with disabilities as a precondition for EU membership,” it said.

EU talks with Belgrade should stress “the absolute prohibition of neglect and discrimination against children with disabilities,” it added.

Serbia’s public health system is run down and has been short of funds since the former Yugoslavia’s wars began in the early 1990s. In this traditional Balkan society, disabled children are often not understood and rejected by their own families.

The disabled make up about 80 percent of the children in the often understaffed care-giving centers, the report said, and 60 percent of the children in institutions do not attend school.

The report, citing studies of children returned to their families, urged Serbia to stop building these care-giving centers and establish a system of services for the children and their families to help integrate them into society.

“Children who were moved from an institution into family-based environment demonstrated signs of improvement in their intellectual functioning, attachment patterns, reduced signs of emotional withdrawal, and reduced prevalence of mental health conditions,” it said.

The report recommended that EU member states make sure that respect for the U.N.’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is “part of the accession requirements”.

It called on international financial organizations including the World Bank to help with funding to organize “support services for families of children with disabilities and prevention of institutionalization of children”.

Serbia opened accession negotiations with Brussels last December and hopes to wrap up the talks by 2019.

(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Migrants Clash with Hungarian Police at Border

Hungarian police have used tear gas and water cannons to drive Syrian migrants away from the now closed Hungarian-Serbian border.

The migrants responded by throwing rocks, bottles and other projectiles at the police.

The Hungarian government closed the border on Tuesday and made it illegal to either enter the country or to damage the new razor-wire fencing at the border.  Serbia’s foreign ministry said that Hungary has actually closed the main border crossing between the two nations for 30 days.

Hungary also announced the fact-tracking of trials for migrants who have been arrested for illegally entering the nation.

Serbia has protested the firing of tear gas into their territory.

The same time that Hungary has shut down the borders of their nation, Croatia has said they will allow migrants to cross through their land to make their way to other EU nations.

“We heard that Hungary was closed so the police told us we should come this way,” Amadou, 35, from Mauritania told AFP news agency.  “We don’t know what we should do now. Do we have to catch a boat?”

The EU’s border agency says the total number of migrants entering their borders has passed 500,000.  Only 280,000 entered the EU throughout all of 2014.

A plan championed by Germany to force all members of the EU to take a certain amount of migrants or pay financial penalties collapsed after arguments within the EU leadership.