The five-bus convoy carrying migrants and volunteers from Sarajevo to Mostar on Friday was intercepted in the town of Konjic by the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton (HNK) police. The buses were prevented from travelling towards the asylum centre in Mostar and were forced to return to the Sarajevo Canton.
Some 270 migrants who settled in and around a park in the centre of Sarajevo had set on their way to Mostar asylum centre Salakovac on Friday.
According to N1’s Aida Hadzimusic, the packing and boarding of migrants to buses began at 5 a.m. this morning. The entire operation was assisted by the Sarajevo Canton police units and members of the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
However, when the buses arrived in Konjic, a town in the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity, they were intercepted by the Cantonal police who told them they couldn’t go any further.
According to the information from reporters at the scene, the HNK cantonal government had never made any decisions concerning the migrants. No one from the cantonal government was available for comments.
N1’s Hadzimusic said the volunteers told her that the entire convoy was returned from the area of Herzegovina-Neretva Canton to the area of Canton Sarajevo. They added that some of the migrants were panicking and in tears.
Director of the Foreigners’ Affairs Service of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slobodan Ujic, told N1 he was stunned by the decision to stop the migrant buses in Konjic and that he has no clue why anyone would make such a decision.
“We prepared for this operation together with the Interior Ministry of the Sarajevo Canton for the past two days. Every detail was done perfectly. I am really shocked and I don’t know what all this means,” Ujic said.
Bosnia’s Security Minister Dragan Mektic characterised this move by the HNK Interior Ministry as a “sort of a coup.”
“For a police commissioner to make a decision preventing state institutions from implementing their constitutional duties is a sort of a serious coup, in my opinion. This is a blow to the constitutional order of the State,” Mektic told N1.
He also said he ordered the State Investigation and Protection Agency to inform the state prosecution about this event.
“I told them the Prosecution must react urgently and arrest the one who prevented the state institutions from doing their job,” he said.
When asked by N1’s Adisa Imamovic if there were any previous information that the convoy’s entrance could be blocked at the entrance of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, Mektic said that the whole operation was “secretly prepared.”
“They (the HNK police) secretly prepared for this operation and the conducted it secretly,” Mektic told N1’s Adisa Imamovic.
The UN’s team for Bosnia had also welcomed the Bosnian state institutions’ efforts to provide humane living conditions for the migrants and refugees including making the Salakovac asylum centre available for housing of these persons.
Following the great media attention and the reactions by state institutions, the HNK Prime Minister’s cabinet finally made a statement saying that neither the cantonal government nor the City of Mostar were ever contacted or consulted about the possible arrival of a greater number of migrants to the Salakovac centre. They said that such a decision aims only to destabilize the Canton, which will not be allowed.
