A shop selling tickets for the lutrija, the city lottery, is a few hundred metres away. Ramo, a lutrija employee, wears a light-blue Adidas cap and square glasses. His voice is as smoky as the small, darkened shop where he sits filling out lottery slips. I actually wish more of them would come, he says. I don't have any problem with them - in fact, they're my friends. Ramo does have problems with the man who lives directly above the lottery shop, though. He recently reported Ramo to the police in secret because he doesn't like the fact that Ramo invites the Pakistani and Afghan refugees into his shop every day to give them food and coffee. I haven't committed any crime! He says that no one can tell him who he's allowed to give food to - not even the police.
Up there - the term is a synonym for Vučjak, a place that is 15 minutes' drive from Bihać. Global media outlets often refer to Vučjak as a "horrific camp" for refugees. It was set up in early summer 2019, on an old landfill site. The mayor of Bihać, Šuhret Fazlić, did so in the hope that the EU would later help turn it into a proper camp. But it didn't. Currently, four or five workers from the local Red Cross look after the refugees - between 700 and 1,000 of them - who live in the most appalling conditions there. Small meals are served twice a day.
The inhumanity of Vučjak is clear even at first sight: Draughty tents riddled with holes (donated by a Turkish NGO when the "camp" was being set up) now serve as homes. They are surrounded by rubbish and, much worse, landmines - even a quarter of a century after the war, Bosnia is still littered with them. At the entrance, a small map that looks as if it dates from the war alerts people to the landmines. It shows the "suspected areas", as these are situated close to where the refugees sleep, not far from a small water tank with a thin garden hose that people use to "shower" outside in the cold. Are the residents aware of the danger? T hey have other things to worry about, says a young Red Cross worker.
If you live in Bihać, though, you don't need to read the reports. Everyone here knows about the brutal tactics deployed by the Croatian police. That includes Ramo, who regularly has battered and sometimes seriously injured refugees limping into his shop. Croatia is on the cusp of becoming part of the EU Schengen area, so it seems likely that the Croatian government wants to prove that it can effectively protect the EU's external border that now runs along its own border. This is not going unnoticed at the EU level - including in Austria, where Karoline Edtstadler, head of the Austrian People's Party delegation in the European Parliament, recently spoke to the Austria Press Agency, praising the Croatian police's effective border protection and calling for the EU's newest member state to be welcomed into the Schengen area with open arms.
They mockingly call these attempts "the game".
Another young man, this time from Pakistan, also has a story about the violence. He says that he has attempted the game at the border 25 times, and that the Croatian police beat him back to Bosnia 25 times. But I'll try again, he says, laughing, a black shirt hanging from his thin frame. How can a person still have so much spirit after experiencing all of that? They have to do it. Otherwise they wouldn't survive, says the volunteer. It's a kind of protective mechanism for them. It keeps them alive because they can't give up, she says. It seems as if she herself has become numb from all the suffering she's witnessed while writing her violence reports.
Some refugees actually do manage to illegally cross the mountainous border to Croatia, picking their way through the forests and past mines, bears and wolves. Then they save their route on Google Maps and send it via their mobile phones to those who are still suffering back in Vučjak. Most, however, return barefoot and seriously injured to northern Bosnia, either to Bihać or neighbouring Velika Kladuša. Whichever it is, there is usually no space left in the overflowing official UN refugee camps. So they either spend their days wandering the streets and find shelter in bombed-out houses from the war, or the police pick them up and take them back to the horrific conditions at Vučjak.
When asked about the situation, the IOM gives a harsh reply: The very first time that Mayor Fazlić suggested Vučjak as a possible camp, we made it very clear that the IOM will not accept this location because we cannot guarantee the refugees' safety there, says the IOM's Peter Van der Auweraert. He says it as if the words are a mantra that he has uttered countless times before. Vučjak, he continues, is a former landfill site that presents significant health risks and is surrounded by mines left over from the war. There is no electricity and not even a proper road leading to it. These are all reasons why the IOM didn't want to set up a camp there, and the mayor was well aware of that. Despite our objections, he decided to set up the camp and that's why we're now in this situation, says Van der Auweraert, adding that Vučjak was never and will never be the solution.
"Despite our objections, he decided to set up the camp and that's why we're now in this situation."- Van der Auweraert, Head of the International Organization for Migration in BiH
To understand why financial support from international organisations like the IOM is so important for Bosnia, you only need to visit a camp run by the IOM. One such camp is located in Velika Kladuša and is called Camp Miral. Before the some 470 residents could even be admitted into the camp, they had to be registered by the Service for Foreign Affairs, an administrative unit in the security ministry that is responsible for foreigners entering and staying in Bosnia. After registration, the IOM gives the refugees a form of photo ID. Without it, they cannot enter the camp; security guards strictly demand that everyone shows their ID. Those who are most in need are registered here, explains an IOM employee, meaning: people who are seriously ill or injured, or people fleeing countries at war.
No one knows how these homeless people and the residents of Vučjak are going to survive the winter. Speaking in his small office in Bihać, mayoral spokesman Mehadžić says: Vučjak won't close, definitely not. Not until we've found somewhere else where we can house the refugees instead. When asked about security minister Mektić's announcement that the "camp" will close, he almost smiles: You shouldn't believe too much of what Mektić says, he says. I for one don't believe it. And Mehadžić is not the only one who thinks this. When we ask an older employee of the local Red Cross if he believes that Vučjak will close, he starts laughing: What politicians in Bosnia say and what they do are very different things, he says, clearly amused.
" What politicians in Bosnia say and what they do are very different things."
- local Red Cross employee
Last week, Mayor Fazlić suggested Lipa as an alternative for Vučjak. Bihać owns a field there, about 22 kilometres outside of town. But it is entirely without infrastructure. And although Fazlić and his spokesman are convinced that, with money from the EU and management by IOM, they would quickly be able to build an official refugee camp on the field in Lipa and supply it with water, electricity and tents, Van der Auweraert sees things differently: Lipa is a field with no water and no electricity, in the middle of nowhere. Even if the EU delegation accepted it as an alternative to Vučjak, it would take a long time to set up proper refugee accommodation there. So it's not a solution in the short term.
Original in German. First published in December 2019 on DATUM. Translation into English by Barbara Maya.
This text is protected by copyright: © DATUM / Marija Barišić und Allegra Mercedes Pirker. If you are interested in republication, please contact the editorial team. Copyright information on pictures are noted directly at the illustrations. Cover picture: A plant in Vučjak. Photo: Manu Brabo / AP / picturedesk.com