Official figures claim only 200 migrants were returned from Croatia to Bosnia, but we have 7,200 individuals claiming they were returned from Croatia to Bosnia, BiH investigative journalist Avdo Avdic said Tuesday, claiming all this can be confirmed by comparing data from the web portal of the Slovenian police.

“Slovenian police returned over 9,000 migrants to Croatia in 2020. This can be seen on the web portal of the Slovenian police which clearly states the number of migrants returned to the territory of Croatia. These data are clear evidence that Croatia transferred migrants illegally to the territory of BiH. This is clear evidence that over 7,000 migrants were illegally dumped into Bosnia last year,” Avdic said for N1.

Speaking about the readmission to Bosnia, Mirsad Buzar, Deputy Director of Foreigners’ Affairs Service told N1 that BiH had officially received some 1,500 migrants over the past 3 years.

“We received 1,563 foreign citizens in the past three years. The Service also worked on the removal of foreigners from BiH, and in the past three years, we have removed over 3,000 foreigners [from the BiH territory]. Migrants started hiding their documents thus making the re-admission process more difficult for us. We returned some thirty people to Croatia,” he said.

Speaking about the Lipa camp in the north-west of the country, he noted that the BiH Armed Forces have set up some 80 army tents for the accommodation of 947 migrants, adding that they are mostly of Pakistani origin.

Shirt Fazlic, the mayor of Bihac where most BiH migrants are located due to its proximity to the EU border, said the city had mostly been coping with the problem by itself over the past three years, and only recently has the state-level started playing an active role in this.

“Migrants in Bihac reside in the Retirement Home, in abandoned factories, ruins. No one alive knows how many there are, and according to the latest estimates, there are between 750 and 1,000 migrants [in the streets of Bihac]. The state didn’t start doing more, but it only now started doing its job. So far, we have dealt with these problems on our own, with the help of the IOM and organizations. The main features of the crisis were a large number of migrants, the disorderly situation, the fact that we had to deal with it alone. We had over 2,000 people running over the part of the town where Bira Camp was located. It's a lot easier for us now that Lipa Camp opened,” Fazlic said told N1.

Migrants in the Bosnian #LipaCamp are slowly being allowed to enter the tents which the #BiH Army has been setting up for them over the past several days. #Bosnia https://t.co/uECU6it71L pic.twitter.com/rXVDwrFOQa

— N1english (@N1info) January 8, 2021