Bosnian Security Minister Dragan Mektic said the current migrant situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be called a crisis of a sort. The problem is that there is no coordinated response from the neighbouring states and that there is a moratorium on employment in Bosnian institutions, which is why the Border Police are missing 520 police officers.
“We could hardly do anything about this crisis. These are illegal migrations. We might have been able to respond to this crisis more effectively had we had some understanding from our political elites for the security institutions and structures in the country. We have not had a single budget increase for our security institutions in the past decade, but the security challenges keep growing,” Mektic said.
There is a significant difference between the 2014 crisis and this one, now. The crisis in 2014 was a sort of massive refugee inflow, the borders were open, and the countries transported between 30,000 and 40,000 people, daily. The countries were obliged to accept the migrants at the border and transport them further. The current crisis is the illegal migration of people.
“On Thursday, we had an incident at the border with Serbia, a group of some 80 migrants attempted to enter Bosnia, violently. Our police reacted in coordination with Serbia, whose police refused to help us at first… there were tensions, negotiations… but they agreed to help us in the end,” Mektic added, describing the situation on the ground.
Talking about the recent incident in the town of Konjic when a five-bus convoy travelling from the Canton of Sarajevo to the Mostar asylum centre ‘Salakovac,’ was stopped and prevented from entering the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton on the account that the competent institutions were not informed of this move, Mektic said that absolutely every institution in that canton was informed about the move and that the Security Ministry has the competence to order such a move, without the approval of the Council of Ministers or lower levels of government.
Back then he called the incident a coup and an attack against the institutions of the state.
“Whoever prevents state institutions from exercising their constitutional and legally prescribed competencies, such a person or a group of persons are said to be committing a coup d'etat. The lower level of power has prohibited the state institutions from exercising their Constitutional obligations under the threat of use of force,” Mektic said.
“The issue of migration is the original jurisdiction of the state and we derive that competence from the Constitution itself.”
The Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) entity President Milorad Dodik told the Radio Television of RS recently, he would not allow the relocation of migrants in RS. According to him, there is a “hidden Sarajevo structure” which wants to settle the Syrian, Afghan and other, primarily Muslim, migrants in order to “strengthen the Bosniak position in the country and then, in some four, five, 10 years say that there is a clear Bosniak, meaning Muslim, majority in the country.”
Speaking about this statement, Bosnian Security Minister said:
“Dodik wants to deceive the citizens in RS and win some political points. He abuses these people (the migrants) who are going through hell.”
Mektic told N1's Emela Burdzovic that Dodik was allegedly lying when he said the RS would not allow for any type of asylum centre to be open in the RS, because two asylum centres have existed in the RS for the past 10 years, in Lukavica and in East Sarajevo.
“We have around 100 people there, at any moment. Politicians are causing political crises on this issue in order to stay in power for as long as possible,” Mektic concluded.
