“One day last week, I woke up in the morning, and there were at least 20 of them in front of my house,” said a resident of the village Rakitovec, which, like its neighbouring settlements, has been facing an influx of migrants for some time now. And after the migrants appear practically on the doorstep of the local residents, it takes some time for the police to come and pick them up. Even though the police are doing their best to do their job, there are actually too few of them for such a large number of migrants. There are so many of them that they have to be taken away in buses. Every day. According to the villagers who report their arrivals to the police, migrants are coming to our country from all over – from India, Nepal, and Pakistan, and in the last month, there have also been many from Africa. Apparently, the news about our country being a great place for them travels fast, and it seems that everyone already knows that Slovenia is a kind of paradise for migrants – and even if they do not know it beforehand, then they hear about it in Croatia.
Recently, we have received several messages from concerned residents of the village Rakitovec and other settlings nearby. Rakitovec is a settlement in the Slovenian Istria, administratively part of the Municipality of Koper, which lies close to the border with Croatia. The villagers (their names are being kept in our editorial office) have already contacted several media outlets, but according to them, no one wants or dares to report on the issue. This is due to the fact that migrants have been coming across the border in large groups into our country on a daily basis for some time now. One of the villagers said that he had, among other things, called the journalist Eugenia Carl, who works at the national media outlet Radio-Television Slovenia (RTV), in order to talk to her about the problem, but she allegedly told him that “they are not allowed to report on this and could even lose their jobs if they do” – we, of course, sent questions to RTV, asking about this. Meanwhile, the residents say that they are even willing to step before the cameras to talk about what is going on.
Migrants are crossing the border in large groups as often as several times a day – this happens more often at night, but more recently, it has also been happening during the day. Witnesses say that migrants come to the border on forest paths and then cross the green border, with some saying that they even cross at the smaller border crossings. “They are not even hiding anymore,” a concerned villager told us, explaining that migrants move freely in Croatia before entering Slovenia. They supposedly have an agreement with the Croatians that they have to leave within seven days, or they are returned to the country from which they came – Bosnia, for example. When they arrive in Slovenia, they are picked up by buses at several places and then taken to Koper for “processing” and then on to Ilirska Bistrica, Logatec, or wherever else where there are asylum centres – according to some reports, the centres are already full everywhere. “We have so many that we have nowhere else to put them,” a policeman admitted to a villager.
“Your information that illegal migrants are being taken to Ilirska Bistrica by buses is true, although I can only confirm this unofficially, from information provided by citizens. In Ilirska Bistrica, the police register the migrants and then they are taken elsewhere. I have no information where,” said Emil Rojc, Mayor of Ilirska Bistrica, who added that last week, police arrested a large group of migrants in the village of Dolenje, near the Croatian border – unofficially, there were 52 of them. At the tourist spot of Črnje njive, less than a kilometre from Ilirska Bistrica, a pile of clothes weighing more than 900 kilograms was recently removed by their municipal company. It apparently belonged to only one major group of migrants. “To sum up, our municipality is currently a transit municipality, and we have not recorded any conflicts with the locals. The question is, though, what will happen to the indigenous European population if this trend of uncontrolled immigration continues,” the mayor added.
Some of the villagers also believe that the arrivals of large groups of migrants are being organised by the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, as it seems impossible to them that they would be arriving in such large numbers on a daily basis. The migrants also tend to have a lot of luggage, are well dressed – and are not muddy, like they would be if they were trying to cross the border in the forest without being noticed. “Young, well-dressed boys are coming here,” said one villager, who claimed that a group from Serbia had arrived earlier in the day and that they had been escorted by the police from the border crossing onward. “The Municipality of Koper is aware of the problematic situation, which is why the mayor has convened a meeting with the presidents of the local communities along the busiest migration route, representatives of the Administration for Civil Protection, and the Public Company Marjetica Koper, as well as the Chief of the Koper Police Station Ensad Nadarević and Inspector for the State Border and Foreigners, Viljem Toškan,” the mayor’s office told us. We are still waiting for a response from the police.
The Ministry of the Interior replied that Slovenia shares the same fate as the other countries of the European Union and from the region, in terms of the number of illegal border crossings, as the number is increasing along all migration routes in the Mediterranean, with the Western Balkans migration route being particularly burdened. According to Frontex reports, by August this year, 86 percent more irregular border crossings were recorded in the EU area than in the same time period last year, and in the Westen Balkans region, the increase was as high as 205 percent. Based on interviews with foreigners and publicly available information, the Slovenian police conclude that this trend can be attributed to visa liberalisation policies in the Western Balkan countries, in particular Serbia, which are not in line with the EU visa legislation. In particular, there has been an increase in the number of arrivals of third-country nationals who fly to Belgrade and then continue illegally to Western Europe. Most of them are citizens of Burundi, India and Cuba, who mostly leave Slovenia within a few days and continue their journey to other EU countries. “Slovenia, which has close operational contacts with the countries along this migrant route and will strengthen them at the political level, has been drawing attention to this trend in various forums, and we will also be drawing attention to this problem in a letter to the European Commission in the coming days, in which we will call, among other things, for Serbia’s visa policy to be brought in line with the EU policy, in order to curb this worrying trend, and the Minister of the Interior will also discuss this with the Commissioner in Luxembourg on the margins of the meeting of Council of the European Union, which will be held on the 13th and 14th of October 2022. This problem requires a common EU approach and cooperation with the Western Balkan countries,” they explained, adding that operational cooperation between the police forces of the two countries (Slovenia and Croatia) implementing return operations under the inter-state agreement is progressing well on a daily basis.
Sara Kovač
