‘Refugee-friendly’ Sweden launches border crackdown

Sweden will start from Thursday to introduce temporary border controls in the country’s south, said Anders Ygeman, Swedish Minister for Home Affairs on Wednesday.

An Oxfam-funded report compiled by the Serbia-based Belgrade Center for Human Rights says dozens of people interviewed after crossing into Serbia from Bulgaria have spoken of police extortion, robbery, violence, threats of deportation and police-dog attacks.

The warning also said a “large proportion” of asylum-seekers were giving false identities to stay in Germany and that “the discontinuation of identity checks has also facilitated infiltration by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists into Europe”.

David Cameron is willing to commit nearly half a billion of the UK’s aid budget over the next five years in an effort to stop the flow of migrants and refugees to Europe.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said: “The Dublin system is dead”.

Tiny Slovenia has become the latest in a line of nations putting up barriers against a surge of asylum-seekers seeking to reach Western Europe.

Police asked travelers entering Sweden this morning to show their documents, and that is a big departure.

Numerous migrants appeared reluctant to get off trains at first, but eventually obeyed the police, who carried standard-issue arms and wore bright yellow vests.

Bulgaria has erected a fence and deployed troops on the border. The border controls came at the request of Sweden’s Migration Agency and can be extended for 20-day periods. He added “We must hurry, but without panic”.

He added that “time is running out” to rescue the travel zone which has functioned for 30 years.

Croatian special forces have arrived at the Harmica border crossing on the Croatian side, while Slovenian special police with long barrel weapons are standing on the Slovenian side. There was no comment from authorities in Greece, where a general strike was taking place Thursday.

The reemergence of border checkpoints is set to sweep across Europe, while one of the most senior European Union officials conceded the “clock was ticking” on the termination of the Schengen Agreement.

WERTHEIMER: Sweden has long welcomed refugees and asylum seekers, but there is a growing anti-immigrant movement in the country.

Slovenia followed Hungary in sealing its borders last month. “We expect the same reaction from Slovenia, they will move it”.

He said the country’s export-driven economy, which boomed from the 1950 to the 1980s on the back of a steady influx of immigrants, had also played a part. If that figure was repeated in an election, it would certainly strengthen their position in parliament and prevent either the centre-right or centre-left from forming a majority, but mainstream parties would together still be supported by eight out of ten voters.

Slovenia had said it was avoiding contested border areas unresolved from the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia.

As Sweden’s liberal shelter policies have gone under risk, disorder at inward European Union boarders has moved attention for control of the alliance’s outside boundaries, principally the Aegean Sea frontier in the middle of Turkey and Greece.

Migrants enter a bus that will bring them to the ferry for their passage to Sweden on November 12, 2015 at the port of Rostock, northeastern Germany, where refugees in transit wait to continue their trip through Europe.

So far this year, an estimated 120,000 refugees from Syria and Afghanistan especially have found their way to the Sweden with an estimated 80,000 more planning to arrive by the end of the year.

Loefven also clarified, according to Bloomberg, that the checks are “exactly according to the rules”, and that they are “not a fence”.

The Anadolu Agency says 27 other migrants were rescued by Turkish coast guards. “We have to make sure we know who is coming to Sweden”, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven insisted. “We’re not going to control all who are travelling across the border, but there is going to be a mainly randomized selection”, he said.

“We are now considering anything new like that at the present moment”, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said on the sidelines of Thursday’s summit between European Union and African leaders in Malta. “If we do not act now, we will have a collapse in the system”, she warned.