The “Refugee” Crisis from a Croatian Perspective

I exchanged several emails today with our Croatian correspondent Vortac about the “refugee” crisis as it is currently being felt in the Balkans. Before we get to Vortac’s comments, however, let’s do a brief review of the major migration routes now being used by “refugees” to get to Central and Western Europe.

The bulk of the migrants pass from Turkey into Greece, either by the land route through Thrace, or more often by sea from Anatolia to the Aegean islands. The island arrivals are ferried to Athens by the Greek government.

The “refugees” then proceed northwards through Greece, and thence into Macedonia and Serbia. Until Hungary closed its border with Serbia, the preferred route to Austria passed through Hungary. For a brief period after the border closure, the migrants made a little side-trip through Croatia to get to Hungary. In response, Hungary closed its border with Croatia. Very little of the migration flow passes through Hungary now.

The new alternate route proceeds northwestwards through Croatia and Slovenia into Austria, and from there into Bavaria and points north.

The following map shows the current migration routes through Croatia and Slovenia to Austria. I could only find a German version of it, but it should be fairly clear. Ungarn is Hungary and Österreich is Austria. The dark blue lines show the migration routes. The light blue line is the outer border of the Schengen Area. The broken red lines show border controls at internal Schengen borders. The solid red line marks the closed border between Hungary and Croatia. The black line represents a border fence when solid, and when dotted, a planned border fence.


(Click to enlarge)

As you can see, a feeder line from Bosnia joins the main flow. Presumably many of those “refugees” are Bosniaks, i.e. Muslims.

Notice also that the route forks in Croatia before entering Slovenia. We’ve previously covered the eastern route and its deleterious effects in Austria — the latest videos from Spielfeld are horrific. But I haven’t yet seen any footage or photos from Klagenfurt on the western route, so I don’t know how bad it is there.

Here’s Vortac’s email about conditions in Croatia:

The consequences of multicultural insanity have finally reached Croatia. Luckily, I live in the western part of the country, which hasn’t been affected by the refugees so far, but I am aware it’s only a question of time now.

Croatians were under the Ottoman yoke for centuries, and people are generally very cautious (to put it mildly) about Islam in any shape or form, but there are big differences in opinions how to deal with the crisis at hand, from advocating firmly closed borders at one end all the way to “we should welcome refugees heartily and offer them jobs” on the other end. Our government has taken a position somewhere in the middle, opening the borders and allowing all the refugees to pass freely, shipping them as fast as possible through the country (previously to Hungary and now to Slovenia), but it’s obvious this strategy will buy us maybe a couple more months, and then we will face progressively increasing problems soon afterwards.

What’s even more depressing than this invasion is the sorry demise of the EU political system, with local politicians and bureaucrats bickering about how many refugees can be shipped through, and even threatening each other with “sanctions” according to the Schengen Agreement, as if that agreement has not been a dead piece of paper for many months now.

A few weeks ago, the Croatian government even closed official border crossings with Serbia, causing huge delays in legal, international traffic. It was a desperate attempt to force Serbian government to re-route refugees to Hungary and not to Croatia. So we had a situation where legal crossings were impossible, with a huge column of trucks stalled at the border, but only 100 meters away refugees were crossing the same border on foot, illegally, without any documents. That insane policy was rescinded after a few days, and official border crossings were opened again, but it’s a good example of the Orwellian levels of absurdity we are reaching here now. The EU Politburo is abandoning its peripheral members, and local politicians — used to getting directives from Brussels — are now left on their own to deal with the situation.

Again, I must say how useful a source of information GoV is in a crisis like this. Even now, when Croatia is experiencing the full brunt of multicultural disaster, the mainstream media are still serving up the usual PC/MC propaganda. In fact, it’s not even propaganda now, it’s becoming more and more obvious that the journalists themselves do not believe in what they are writing anymore, but it’s like they are stuck in a loop and cannot force their brains to write anything different now.

When I wrote him back, I said this:

If the “refugees” were able to get what they want, you wouldn’t end up with many in Croatia, because almost all of them want to go to Germany (or maybe Sweden). They could just pass through and you’d be done with them.

But now that Austria is tightening its border with Slovenia, the migrants will be backing up in Slovenia. And yesterday Germany decided to send police to Slovenia to help with the border there, so you can expect the migrants to start backing up in Croatia! Your government will eventually have to seal the border with Serbia, and then it will be Serbia’s problem.

And his reply:

Yes, Croatia can close its border with Serbia relatively easily, because approximately one half of it is the River Danube (which is of course quite difficult to cross illegally) and the other half is perhaps 150 kilometers of flat terrain where it would be easy to put up fences and wire. But refugees could then try to enter Croatia via Bosnia and Herzegovina, and our border with Bosnia and Herzegovina is 1,000 kilometers long, lots of dense forests, lots of mountainous and hilly terrain.

It’s almost impossible to seal that border completely. It would be a nightmare of colossal proportions, especially in wintertime.

The dénouement of the current mess has not yet begun. When will we see the first signs of it? The freezing weather will be coming soon…

19 thoughts on “The “Refugee” Crisis from a Croatian Perspective

  1. To call what we are witnessing and experiencing here in Austria chaos is the understatement of the century. Government is chaotic, their decisions lacking or incomprehensible or simply wrong, a headless turkey, dangerous for the public, as is currently playing out in Spielfeld and its surrounding towns. However, the “media” do not report the misgivings and fears of the public although some of their reports make it into social media.

    The police and military are overburdened and understaffed, not surprising considering that in the last decade the military has been drained of staff and material. The medical force of the military is severely understaffed, with doctors reporting in sick rather than dealing with the onslaught of young men (with a few women and children). A current (though officially held back) internal report indicates that “refugees” traveling from Turkey to Austria and Germany are forced to walked no more than five kilometers in total! This could explain the lack of rugged clothing on the backs of the “refugees”.

    Finally, to date there have been no reports of refugees flooding into the city of Klagenfurt. The southern-most route indicated in the graph is not being used. It is currently only Spielfeld that is in use. Which is horrifying enough.

    One last note: The public is beginning to grasp the monstrosity of the invasion. However, it appears that is too late. The fence that may not be called a fence will not deter anyone this late in the game. Good night Europe, farewell freedom. Hard not to say “Told ya so.”

    • Well, Elizabeth, I for one am not prepared to say “Good night, Europe…” or “…farewell freedom.”

      I take comfort from the fact that I can seriously consider the only remaining viable course of action because I have long understood that democracy is dead and buried. The ‘ballot box’ solution has become a total non-starter because, simply put, the European governing classes and their wealthy multinational paymasters have engineered the demographic in order to protect their comfortable sinecures to the death – preferably our deaths unless we the Europeans are prepared to get off of our backsides and remember who we are, where we came from and how we allowed ourselves to be subjugated and invaded and thus how we foolishly enabled the globalist cultural terrorist cabal to initiate our ethnic cleansing in order secure their as yet partially established power base for all time.

      We have been comprehensively betrayed by our own politicians, academics and affluent chattering classes in what amounts to one of the greatest crimes in our collective history; the Princes and Archbishops and Popes of our traditional Christian Ecumene have cast us, their flock, adrift on the winds of time in the interests of professional close-ranking with the barbarian clerics of Islam; two generations of our young have been indoctrinated with what at best could be described as wishful altruistic thinking and at worst a self-hatred which has induced a lemming-like rush to righteous self- destruction and we, the older generations, out of fear, inertia or self-delusion have let it happen, we stupidly put down our swords and picked up useless, withered olive branches then howled at the moon when that didn’t work.

      Yet..yet…our native blood lines are long and most of us who can trace our European lineage back deep into the mists of time will carry in our veins and in our physical and mental DNA some mix of Hunnish, Gothic, Vandal, Celtic, Norse, Saxon, Rus and other true European blood lines – a warrior inheritance that may have been diluted by indulgence and weak, sick ideologies but still remains within. Enough is enough, I say; and yes “It is always darkest just before the dawn”, but we can hope that dawn may not be far away, and even help it along.

      Then, when it breaks, we must cast aside our useless olive branches, once again pick up our swords, and I don’t mean metaphorically either, and descend upon our enemies out of darkness at the rising of the that sun, descend at last as a really united Europe with a real common purpose and pray that by the fall of night all of the false Kings, Princes, Prelates, their Hand Maidens and Cup Bearers, their Kith, their Kin and their Barbarian Shock Troops are no more.

      Bear in mind, dear Elizabeth, that freedom is never free or cheap, but it is always affordable in the long run because a failure to pay the asking price means the complete loss of it, and that is terminal and our following generations that are unfortunate enough to survive will never forgive us their chains.

      • Dear Seneca III, you and I do not disagree. By saying “Good-bye Europe” and farewell to freedom I was referring to the status quo. The Europe we have known and loved is gone. Given what is currently taking place in Germany with the virtual burning, i.e. banning, of books written by Akif Pirincci; given that the chief editor of Austria’s largest newspaper was forced to resign over a commentary, penned by him, that was critical of “refugees”; given that hate speech laws are being tightened in both Germany and Austria, allow me to be pessimistic. The reality is: freedom of speech – which implies all other freedoms – is dead.

        Having said that, I will not stop fighting and pointing the finger. I owe it to my daughter. It’s no fun for her having her mother called a racist by her classmates.

        The situation is more dire than ever. Perhaps a breaking point?

        • Yes, Elizabeth, the Europe we have known and loved is gone; this is a reality we have both had to come to accept. And, yes, I do know what you have so courageously tried to do down all these years, and the price you have had to pay for that commitment and courage. As a father of a daughter myself I can feel for your child, but if you in turn feel it appropriate please tell her from me that she can wear such slurs as a badge of her mother’s honour, as I do to mine when she has to listen to the importunate, invertebrate driveling of the indoctrinated.
          Tell me, Elizabeth, do you remember what I said just before the last time we wished each other auf wiedersehen? It ended with the words “…history will not permit it”, and now I have become convinced that I was wrong. History demands it, for if we do not pursue that course then we will have no history. Either we all become Europeans now, pulling together for once in common cause, or there will be no Europe and no Europeans.
          My best wishes to you, your family, your community, and your people and for all of our futures, demanding though that future will be. T.

      • A heart-felt war cry! I would only pause to add that, to the Roman Empire (or what was left of it) the Goths and Vikings etc WERE the barbarians at the gates.

        Where they differed from Islam is that, in settling on lands in which Roman influence still existed, they did not assume that their own culture was superior. It was obvious to them that the opposite was the case, so like intelligent human beings, they adopted many of the ways of the more sophisticated civilization.

        The Hellenic-Roman Classical legacy was thus not wiped out! A hybrid culture evolved and after the establishment of Christianity, that Classical legacy was fused with Judeo-Christian morality. This is the foundation of Western civilization!

        By contrast, Islam believes it is head and shoulders above every other civilization, despite ALL EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY! ISIS is binding its enemies to the extraordinary ruined pillars at Petra, and blowing them both up.

        Islam has a raider mentality typical of non-agrarian peoples, where the land and its occupants are there to be ripped off and conquered. Nothing has changed. They are marching through Europe, (minus the camels), taking what they can, trashing our villages and towns and holding their hand out for what they consider, their rightful due.

        However, they are the last to extend help to each other! Nearly half the Palestinian refugees, for example, have been living in the surrounding nations of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon for four generations. But they are treated like pariahs! SA is refusing to take any of the displaced Sunnis! Their double standard beggars the imagination – except that it is echoed, as you say, in the duplicity of our own elites!

        An appeal to blood lines is also problematic. This is the signature of the Wagnerian myth of Hitler’s VOLK, which he set out to PURIFY in the Final Solution. I would rather say that all those who accept our shared community of Western values, (not including the Marxist PC utopians who are manipulated slaves to the Global Financial Empire) are welcome to join us in this life and death struggle to defend freedom of speech, democracy, love of our history and the Judeo-Christian ethic, which has given us human-rights law and democracy itself.

        Once everyone has possession of their DNA portrait, no doubt there will be some surprises. Perhaps those Muslims who have ‘Crusader-Western’ blood will do the right thing by their vengeful God, and cut their own throats!

        • Yes, there were big differences in the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire, primarily in the willingness to adopt what was superior in Roman civilization and accept what was becoming (or had become) the Roman religion. Eventually they even revived the “Roman Empire” in a “Holy” form.

          The Germanic peoples did not bring with them a “submit or die” theology that already had many centuries of conquest behind it and dozens of established states across three continents and large reserves of wealth with which to buy the fealty of the Romans and fund propaganda telling the Romans they had a moral duty to change their ways to accommodate the barbarians.

          • If this is how we respond to an unarmed ragtag supposedly unarmed enemy I dread to think how we are going to find enough gumption to deal with this mob when they are strategically placed and armed with anything and everything from knives and forks to nukes? What would happen if our entire population just walked in everywhere and helped themselves to stuff and stuffing? Our clever Dick governments are being snookered left and right. A disasterous precedent being set here. The Muslim hordes may not have stormed the walls of Vienna but they definitely have found that unguarded soft underbelly everywhere from Uropa to America and Oz.

        • “However, they are the last to extend help to each other! Nearly half the Palestinian refugees, for example, have been living in the surrounding nations of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon for four generations.”

          Of course they don’t allow the refugees access to their country. They are of the same tribal mentality and understand very well that members of one tribe will happily commit genocide against another tribe. The refugee camps know they are on a tight leash and act accordingly.

          The Saudi Arabians are not being more duplicitous than usual when they refuse to take a single refugee. They are simply manifesting the will to survive that our leaders have done away with in the case of Europe.

          By the way, it’s not true that it’s too late to put up fences. The countries involved will have to put themselves on a wartime footing, which means militias, an armed population, appropriation of resources to make fence-building and refugee removal the first priority of all enterprise in the countries.

          It’s a pipe dream, but definitely possible.

    • “A current (though officially held back) internal report indicates that “refugees” traveling from Turkey to Austria and Germany are forced to walked no more than five kilometers in total!” So the neat columns are posed? Who is organising this? And what exactly is the plan – does anyone know? If not why not, and if yes why hasn’t it been explained in terms that everyone can understand?

      • And going on that piece of info, what became of those 4 or 5 hundred invaders who simply disappeared from inside of Germany?

  2. Only a month and a half ago, a work colleague who was sent on a business trip to Croatia was telling me how wonderful a country it is, and how little cultural enrichment there is to see… how quickly things can change in the new Europe!

    I am slightly puzzled as to why the Croat and Serb governments are taking a softer line. To the north, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland are all pretty decidedly against a mass influx of refugees – yet Croatia and Serbia are busy bussing them across their borders.
    Countries, which in the past were among the most vicious in their approach to dealing with Muslims!

    Is the age-old Balkan multiculturalism, as well as perhaps people getting tired of all the conflicts, making itself felt – and hence the Balkans becoming easy fodder for political correctness?

    • After our scummy treatment of our old ally Serbia. Ripping off their Kosova province and giving it to drug dealing migrant mules and their racist Christian hating buddies I imagine a few Serbs might be partial to letting “the allies” and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) experience a little of the same. Have a nice day.

  3. As a Slovenian I can confirm that the blue line from Brežice to Klagenfurt/Celovec is not in use. All illegals are transported to Šentilj/Spielfeld. Of course there are transitory camps for migrants in Dobova and Brežice and some other places in Slovenia but only for short stays because the illegals want to continue their journey as soon as possible. There was a case when a young invader gave birth in Brežice hospital and continued her journey the very next day.
    Most people are starting to grasp that this is invasion however the media still writes politically correct. There is a loud minority of leftists, anarchists and NGO that claim that we should pamper the invaders better and threatens to sue Slovenia in the European court for human rights because poor illegals must sleep outside.

  4. Once social services like health and education are adversely affected and taxes (whether direct or indirect) increase, the indigenous population will suffer more than they are willing to swallow. Then the anti-immigrant political parties will get a further boost. The invaders can’t all be offered jobs when there are few jobs to offer.

    Eventually perhaps housing zones will be established until they can be sent back. There are plenty of precedents for sending people back, the most recent being the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe (where they had lived for FIVE CENTURIES!) after WW2 – (which I am not condoning)

    Wiki..

    ‘By 1950, a total of approximately 12 million Germans had fled or been expelled from east-central Europe into the areas which would become Allied-occupied Germany and Austria. Some sources put the total at 14 million, including migrants to Germany after 1950 and the children born to expelled parents. The largest numbers came from territories ultimately ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union (about 7 million), and from Czechoslovakia (about 3 million). During the Cold War, the West German government also considered as expellees some 1 million foreign colonists settled in territories conquered by Nazi Germany.’

    The ONLY positive aspect to this invasion is that it exposes the sham PC ideology that the West has been indoctrinated with since the 1960s. Like the people existing under Communism, (who never believed one word published by PRAVDA), Europeans know the media is lying through its teeth and that their political leaders are a bunch of traitors. Not only traitors, but weak, venal individuals incapable of moral obligation and hiding their cowardice under the false narrative of Nazi racism.

    The Jews never threatened Western civilization as the Muslims do! They were not followers of a paranoid, genocidal ideology, strapping on suicide bombs, butchering people and blowing up buildings. They tried to fit in, despite anti-semitism, and their contribution to commerce, science and the arts is beyond parallel!

    Even today, the EU elites show their Nazi proclivity, by supporting those who continue with Jewish Pogroms – ie the Palestinians!

  5. The shear numbers arriving in Germany and other countries makes a mockery of Merkel’s assurance that Germany can cope. That is nonsense and what is clear is that hundreds of thousands will never be absorbed in German society at all. They will have to be housed in refugee camps, such is the volume, and there they will remain for years. Quite possibly becoming “no go” ghettos run by Islamist gangs.

    • That’s what and how it is in Europe and anywhere you find Muslims now. How could it be any different? Where and when has it ever been any different? Indifference is guaranteed “dead”. I hope our churches start filling up again soon. They definitely will later. “There are no atheists in the trenches” or in the new war zones being constructed by our governments at taxpayers expense – “neighborhoods”.

  6. If Greece would stop ferrying them from its islands (which are only an hour’s ride in a motorized boat away) to the mainland, this would stop.
    Greece should ferry them BACK to TURKEY, or they can just stay on those islands.

    And have you seen pictures of all the ripped rubber boats and mountains of life preservers on Greece island coasts?
    The rubber boats are slashed just before or at Greece’s shore – (presumably to prevent the refugees from coming back to Turkey?) – then the migrants debark and shed their life preservers.
    It is the people who continue to help them on their way who are also the culprits. People make it easy for them giving them free food, new clothes, rides, and a pass through their country, not really caring if the next country doesn’t want them.

    Greece directs them all to little Macedonia (population only 2 million, the same size as Slovenia) – only Macedonia doesn’t seem to complain like Slovenia & Croatia.
    I think it is because Serbia takes them up so quickly and readily, and Serbia’s western puppet traitorous leader, Aleksandar Vucic, keeps saying that Serbia won’t close its borders or anything against them.

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