Una-Sana Canton

The UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina on Monday condemned the Croatian police's allegedly violent pushback of a group of migrants trying to cross the border into the European Union country.

A minister in a Bosnian canton bordering Croatia said the EU member state had forcibly returned over 7,000 migrants and refugees to Bosnia last year, asking why his own country had not done the same to its neighbours.

Human and minority rights, the rule of law and media freedom remain endangered in several Southeast and Central European countries in 2020, especially in the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, Human Rights Watch, HRW, said in its latest report published on Wednesday.

The report looks at over 60 countries, among them Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, Hungary and Poland.

The authorities in the Una-Sana Canton, in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration, moved a first group of about 120 migrants and refugees to the new reception centre in Lipa, not far from the town of Bihac, on Tuesday.

The International Organization for Migration, IOM, which manages temporary reception centres, TRCs, for migrants and refugees in Bosnia and Herzegovina, told BIRN it had found no cases of coronavirus among the roughly 6,500 migrants held in them.

The idea is to provide temporary accommodation for migrants and refugees who have previously been sleeping rough on the streets of Sarajevo.

According to the IOM, the migrants will first go through a medical check-up pending registration after which they will have access to shelter, food, medical assistance and other humanitarian needs.

Representatives of Serbs who returned to Bosnia's Federation entity after fleeing during the war urged the authorities in the Una-Sana Canton on Monday not to build a tent settlement for migrants in the village of Lipa.

Experts who spoke to BIRN BiH say the rules must urgently be harmonised and the law updated to reflect the new challenges.

"This could be disastrous because many of them [migrants] do lack personal identification documents," said Vehid Sehic, a former judge and lawyer in Bosnia.

In an abandoned building near a train station in the north Bosnian town of Banja Luka, 25-year-old Afghan Mohammed is trying to keep himself warm.

It's mid-November, and the temperature is just a few degrees above freezing. Mohammed's jacket does not look like it was made for the cold Bosnian winter.

The Bihac City Administration has informed local utility companies that it will no longer pay for services such as water delivery and garbage collection from the troubled "Vucjak" migrant camp, whose closure has been demanded by the UN among others.