Subotica : “Emergency conditions” end with a mass deportation to Macedonia and a fire in the migrant jungle

On the 8th of February 2012, when the temperatures have been steadily below zero for days, “emergency conditions” were declared in Serbia. Schools and many offices were closed as temperatures dropped below -25°C. The local authorities in Subotica – a Serbian town on the border with Hungary where hundreds of migrants are blocked for months due to increasingly securitised border with Hungary – took a decision to move the migrants from the outdoor make-shift “jungles” made out of old blankets, tarpaulin and scrap material, into an abandoned hotel “Fontana” in Palić, about 10 km from Subotica. On the 22nd of February, it was declared that the “emergency conditions” are over – and things are as they were before. People live outdoors in the jungles – if they have not been among the fifty that have been deported to Macedonia, or if they have not had their tent burnt down.

End of “emergency conditions”, arrests in Palić

The conditions in the hotel “Fontana” in Palić, while an improvement from staying outdoors in -25°C, were still very difficult. Between 100 and 150 people lived in one big room with poor heating. There was a layer of styrofoam on the floor and a layer of thin mattresses. There was one set of washing facilities and only a 5 litre boiler for hot water. The Red Cross distributed food and provided basic medical checks – but did not provide serious treatment for people, many of whom suffer from chronic conditions from living in the cold and damp with insufficient nutrition for months.

The day after the emergency was declared to be over, the police raided the hotel at around 6.30 in the morning and arrested everyone who was still there. It was clear that everyone was gathered in a hurry and did not have time to collect their personal belongings : a few hours after the raid the blankets laid in piles on the floor, the shoes, clothes and personal possessions were scattered everywhere.

Police did not want to give the exact number of how many people were arrested – but it is estimated to be over 50. This is the biggest arrest in Subotica in a long time. Looking back at the decision to accommodate migrants in Palić during the “emergency conditions”, and then arresting everyone who was still there the day after the official “emergency conditions” were over, it seems like the noble humanitarian inclination to provide people with a warm(er) place during the extreme cold, was just a pretext to gather a great number of migrants in order to arrest them all more easily. Especially because, as it transpired later, everyone arrested was mass deported to Macedonia.

Arrests and a fire in the jungle, deportation to Macedonia

Once the “emergency conditions” were officially over, a number of migrants left Palić. They correctly assumed that the police might raid Palić and returned to the jungles the night before everyone in Palić was arrested. But on the same morning police also raided the jungle. They burnt down one set of tents and arrested everyone that they could catch, said the people who managed to run away from the police that morning. When asked about the fire in the jungle, the police pretended they did not know anything about it.

This is not the first time that the police burnt down the jungles – during a big raid in November 2011 they burnt down the jungle and arrested many people. Everyone arrested was put on buses and deported en mass to Macedonia.

Like in November, the purpose of these mass arrests was a deportation to Macedonia, one border back on the path across the more and more securitised borders of the Balkans. After the whole day of trying to get information about what happened with the people who were arrested, the arrestees called in the evening, saying they were all in Macedonia. Many of them wanted to ask asylum – which, according to the Serbian asylum law, they can do at any point of the arrest – but they said the police did not listen to them. They were all put on a bus and driven to Macedonia and let free on the Macedonian side of the border. They have there joined hundreds of others who are trying to cross the increasingly guarded Serbian-Macedonian border, and where conditions of life of undocumented migrants are similarly difficult as in Subotica.

Dysfunctional asylum system, the border is the problem

The police disregarded the law when they refused to acknowledge the expressions of intention to ask asylum. But it should be stressed that the asylum system in Serbia is completely dysfunctional. The reception centers in Banja Koviljača and Bogovadja are full and cannot accommodate all asylum seekers. Furthermore, since the start of Serbia’s asylum system in 2008, there has not been a single person who got granted refugee status. And even if anyone would get a refugee status, there does not exist an “integration” act or strategy for refugees in Serbia. All of this explains why asking asylum and staying in Serbia is, for many migrants, not a bright prospect.

But the border to Fortress Europe is difficult to cross. As the mainstream media and popular discourse abounds with a xenophobic rhetoric, it is often forgotten that the “problem” in Subotica are not “migrants” – but the border itself.