Migrant Crisis: Slovenia asks for European Union police help to regulate flow

Migrants traded punches and scuffled with police at a Serbian border crossing and a man was stabbed in a similar clash on the Slovenian border Thursday, as pent-up pressures on their trek toward hoped-for safe haven in the European Union boiled over.

The government said that it was still investigating the cause of the blaze, but police at the scene told AP that asylum seekers set a stack of blankets, supplied by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, deliberately on fire to protest against the conditions in the camp on the outskirts of the town of Brezice in eastern Slovenia.

Sweden yesterday said that it expected up to 190,000 refugees this year, putting unprecedented strain on a country famous for welcoming refugees, but planning to house many in tents this winter.

Baloch says a few 4,000 migrants have arrived in Slovenia since Hungary shut down the border on midnight Friday.

Germany has said it expects 800,000 asylum seekers this year, but it is believed the number could be as high as 1.5 million. From there, they will be taken to a nearby camp and after registering with the government continue on their journeys to Austria and Germany.

Anas Kaial, a 31-year old Syrian from Hama, where he ran a snooker bar, spent the night under open skies with his mother, wife and three children. “Around 60 percent of the people we have had here are families and maybe 45 percent of them have been children under the age of five”. “We are standing by Slovenia in these troublesome moments, Slovenia is just not alone”, EU’s migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos stated after assembly Gyorkos Znidar. “We can’t afford more bloodshed and shelling”, he said.

With the crisis showing no sign of abating, France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve reinforced security in the port city of Calais from where migrants and refugees try to cross to Britain.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban urged European leaders late on Wednesday to change their immigration policies and involve voters in a debate about the continent’s future, saying they would otherwise face a political crisis and a threat to the democratic order.

Member states have been slow to follow up with promised financial help – out of the 2.8 billion euros ($3.2 billion) pledged at an emergency European Union summit on September 23, only about 474 million euros has materialised.

“I don’t often cry but when I see, night after night, this long procession of refugees which reminds me of images from the end of World War Two…it nearly makes me cry”, he said Wednesday.

Slovenia has said it can handle no more than 2,500 entries per day, and has accused Croatia of sending too many migrants through. Meanwhile, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called for a meeting of several European leaders for Sunday.

European Commission sources said that Austria, Germany, Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland have all offered to send police reinforcements.