Balkan route

Hungary, Austria, and Serbia have agreed to coordinate to reduce illegal migrant flows on the Balkan route, with Serbia deploying more police along its southern border and Austria providing reinforcements.

The figures underline the ruthlessness of smugglers leading migrants to their deaths while making a fat profit out of human suffering.

Frontex, the European Union border agency, has announced that so far this year nearly 230,000 migrants have arrived illegally in the EU, the largest number since 2016.

Over 200 migrants were arrested this week after Serbian authorities cleared a makeshift migrant camp along the Hungarian border. Traffic along the Balkan migration route continues to surge.

A report published this week by Save the Children has claimed that minor migrants travelling along the Balkan illegal immigration route have been subjected to “horrific” violence by people-smugglers, border police, and others.

People-smugglers have been accused of abandoning a Bangladeshi migrant the Albanian wilderness where he died of a “brain stroke” while trying to enter the European Union illegally on the Balkan migrant route.

Spanish and Austrian police arrested two radical Islamic jihadists who are said to have fought in Syria and entered Europe illegally.

A German-led European police taskforce claims to have arrested eight “highly dangerous” people smugglers and 127 others who operated a major migrant smuggling network that allegedly helped 10,000 enter Europe illegally. The European Union police agency Europol announced the results

The EU border agency Frontex reported that in the first ten months of 2021, illegal crossings into the bloc have increased by 70 per cent.

Police in North Macedonia have arrested two Pakistani nationals and two Afghans suspected of trafficking and allegedly torturing migrants.

Hundreds of migrants were stranded in a burnt-out squalid tent camp in Bosnia as heavy snow fell in the country.

Authorities in Udine and Tricesimo in the northeast of Italy have been forced to use buses as temporary quarantine areas for migrants due to a lack of space.

Despite the continuing coronavirus outbreak, Italy has seen a surge in migrants at its northern border and one the island of Lampedusa, which is becoming overwhelmed.

Anti-mass migration Slovenian Democratic Party leader Janez Jansa, a close ally of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, has been appointed Slovenia’s new prime minister.

Bosnian security minister Fahrudin Radoncic has claimed that as many as 100,000 migrants could be heading from Greece to Western Europe in the coming weeks.

Video footage has been released of a group of 50 to 70 migrants who attempted to storm the Hungarian border earlier this week but were pushed back by border police.

Police in Bosnia say officers found 34 migrants in a van near the country’s border with Serbia.

Bosnian police say they have detained three people at two separate locations on suspicion of attempting to smuggle 19 migrants through the Balkan country.

Croatian police have discovered several dozen migrants hidden in a truck and detained two suspected people smugglers.

Bosnian border patrol agents seized 100 migrants attempting to cross into neighboring Croatia Monday as migrants seek out alternative routes into Western Europe.

The Croatian government has sounded an alarm to the rest of the European Union claiming that the Balkan migrant route may reopen in the very near future with 60,000 migrants ready to cross into the political bloc.

NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has claimed that 90 per cent of young migrants between the ages of 15 and 25 have been abused by border guards and that Bulgarian guards are particularly violent.

Contents: Protesters storm Macedonia’s parliament fearing calls for ‘Greater Albania’; Brief generational history of Macedonia; Heidelberg Conflict Barometer

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) — Austria’s foreign minister says closing the so-called “Balkan route” to migrants seeking to reach central and northern Europe was the right move.

Contents: Thousands of migrants risk freezing to death as deep freeze spreads across Europe; Migrants in eastern Europe trapped in deep freeze temperatures; European Commission resettlement plan appears to be a disaster

Significantly less than half of all the failed asylum seekers and economic migrants, who have no right to remain, are deported from the European Union (EU), it has been revealed.

Despite the closure of the Balkan route that saw the majority of the migrant traffic in 2015, German authorities say thousands of migrants were still able to use the route to reach Germany.

Hungary plans to build a second fence on its southern border with Serbia that would enable it to keep out any major new wave of migrants, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday.

Serbia detained over 3,000 migrants illegally entering into the country in one month, a military spokesman said, suggesting many were still trying to make their way along a Balkan corridor to the European Union despite border closures.

Contents: Number of migrants reaching Greece surges since Turkey’s attempted coup; Concern grows over unsafe conditions in refugee camps in Greece; Fears grow that the EU-Turkey migrant deal will collapse

Contents: Migrants trapped in Serbia march toward border with Hungary; The refugee problem continues, despite EU-Turkey deal

Over 1,200 migrants have massed on the Serbian-Hungarian border as many fear the area could turn into another Idomeni-style migrant camp. The Balkan route continues to see more migrants crossing into Europe but now due to the stricter regulations by the Hungarian

(REUTERS) – Fifty young men line up in a Belgrade park where aid workers hand them supplies for the journey ahead – a backpack each, containing a torch, phone and blanket. But the aid organisations can do little more for

Italy has surpassed Greece as the preferred entry point for migrants into Europe, with arrivals into Greece dropping by 90% between March and April and Italian immigration taking up the slack.

Nearly a thousand migrants rescued in the perilous Strait of Sicily have arrived into southern Italy Friday, among whom are hundreds of Syrians, Iraqis and Egyptians, which signals the adoption of a new migratory route from the Middle East into Europe.

Contents: EU threatens to impose travel restrictions on US/Canada visitors; EU migrant crisis moves to Italy as Austria begins closing border; Austria begins construction on border controls with Italy