Vienna - Thousands of refugees shivered in cold and mud as Austria, Slovenia and Croatia exchanged bitter recriminations over how to deal with the latest stage of Europe's chronic migration crisis. Countries along the so-called Western Balkans migration route engaged in a toxic blame game, accusing each other of passing the buck by allowing thousands of migrants to cross from one nation to another on their relentless march in search of a better life. Slovenia reduced the number of refugees allowed to cross its border with Croatia, blaming Germany and Austria for cutting back on the numbers that they in turn were prepared to accept. Vesna Gyorkos Znidar, Slovenia’s interior minister, accused neighbouring Croatia of ignoring her government’s appeals and of seeking to dump "an unlimited number of immigrants" on Slovenia. "It's completely unacceptable," she said. Slovenia is the latest country to find itself dragged into the biggest migration of people in Europe since World War Two after Hungary sealed its border with Croatia, closing off a route that had been taken by tens of thousands of refugees over the summer.
The result was thousands of refugees, the majority from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, spending days and nights in the cold and wet, trying to keep warm by lighting fires as crying children wandered around barefoot in the rain or huddled under plastic sheets. Around 1,500 people were trapped in a no-man’s-land on the border between Croatia and Slovenia, with Slovenia refusing to let them pass. Croatia, for its part, argued that it was pointless to try to stop the refugees because they are determined to reach countries such as Germany and Sweden and have no intention of seeking asylum in the Balkans.(FA)
